In the past two weeks, Georgia State’s men’s basketball team has traveled approximately 3,800 miles — roughly the same distance as Atlanta to Alaska — to play six games. During one stretch, the team left on a Tuesday and didn’t return to campus until Saturday night.
When asked Monday about Colonial Athletic Association scheduling, coach Ron Hunter simply said: “This is murder.”
They have played 10 games this month with five flights. The combination of missed class time and fatigue are some of the reasons why Georgia State athletic director Cheryl Levick has asked the rest of the CAA’s athletic directors to discuss changing the scheduling format when they meet before the league tournament begins March 2.
She hopes they can eventually come up with a proposal that can be voted on during a league meeting in June. CAA commissioner Tom Yeager said he understands Georgia State’s concerns, but points out that geography can’t be changed. But he said he looks forward to any discussion that will improve the conference.
This isn’t an issue specific to this season or the GSU men’s basketball team. Women’s basketball and the non-revenue sports have dealt for several years with the logistics of a conference that stretches from Boston to Atlanta. But this is Hunter’s first year in the league, and he wants to see changes.
“I hope this is the last year we can do this,” he said. “If we are doing this for TV, there are other alternatives. I can come up with something.”
Levick sees four alternatives:
The CAA could move its tournament from the week of March 2-5 to the following week, which is when most conferences hold their event. She said that’s not ideal because the tournament could lose its television exposure.
The CAA could play 16 games instead of 18. She’s not in favor of that either. Yeager said this option was discussed last year, but the athletic directors decided to stick with 18. Other conferences play 18 games. The ACC will go to 18 for the 2012-13 season.
Eliminate the Bracketbuster game, which adds a non-conference game in the middle of the conference schedule. She’s not in favor of losing the TV exposure that some of the schools receive.
Move some conference games to December to eliminate three-game weeks. Levick said she will be a stern advocate of this solution, ideally moving the conference games played on Mondays in January and February to December. Georgia State has played two of those games this season. The Panthers played one conference game in December this season. Levick would like to see at least one more so that her students won’t miss as many classes in January and February. Hunter also favors this idea.
Yeager said this is a possibility, but trying to schedule games around the 12 schools’ final-exam periods, which can take up as much as three weeks, can be difficult. That doesn’t factor in Thanksgiving and Christmas tournaments.
“Everyone has their own particular problem,” Levick said. “Let’s look at top to bottom and see what else we can do.”
The Panthers will tack on another 850 miles when they go to North Carolina Wilmington for Wednesday’s game. They will take a charter flight — one of three the school has budgeted at a cost of between $15,000-$25,000 each. They don’t charter more because of the cost.
The CAA schedule is compressed because it tries to squeeze most of its 18 games — nine home and nine road — into an eight-week window. To accomplish that, the teams sometimes play as many as three games a week and five games in 11 days. In the past, Yeager said there has been just one three-game week. The Panthers went 1-4 in their recent five-game stretch, losing their spot atop the conference standings. Because of the travel, they haven’t had a full practice since Jan. 16. Jihad Ali said he was exhausted even before Saturday’s game against Virginia Commonwealth.
“At the tail end of stretches guys are tired,” Ali said. “We were playing off the crowd’s momentum. In that sense it hurts the product, but it’s not an excuse. We knew we had to play those games.”
While other league coaches say the schedule is fair because they must all deal with the same schedule, Levick and Hunter said it’s not fair in reality. Most of the Virginia-area schools can take a bus to many of the away games and be home in time to go to class the next day. They must fly everywhere.
“There are no buses for Georgia State,” Hunter said. “It’s killing our kids; it’s killing them academically.”
Ali, who is in graduate school, attended the first Wednesday class of the semester and hasn’t been back because of the road games. He keeps up with his work by emailing his teacher.
“You sometimes have to cram stuff in on buses or on airplanes,” he said. “I’m in grad school taking two classes, so it’s not bad as for me. But I see other players staying up late after games trying to get work done.”
About the Author
