Mid-major
Mid-major is a term mainly used in
American college basketball and, to a lesser extent,
college football, to describe schools not affiliated with a
Bowl Championship Series (BCS) conference. Though not always the case in the past, the term today has basically the same meaning in basketball that it has in football. Still, "mid-major schools" face different dilemmas in each sport.
There has been much debate, especially in the last decade, as to the true definition of the term "mid-major" as it relates to college basketball. Some still believe that the term has an arbitrary litmus test of sorts, such as how many teams a conference qualifies for the NCAA tournament in a "good" year, or how much success said conference has in the NCAA tournament, or even conference revenue, attendance, and so on. Factors such as these have been shown to be poor indicators, at best, in recent years as conferences such as the
Missouri Valley and
Horizon League have either a) received two, three, or four NCAA tournament bids every single year since the 1990's (MVC), or b) had a higher NCAA tournament winning % than all but one non-BCS conference over the last four years (Horizon League). The Horizon League is also one of only two non-BCS conferences that has had a Sweet 16 team in two of the last four NCAA tournaments, with C-USA being the other. Possibly even more telling, for 2005-06 the MVC had an average attendance of nearly 2,000 more people per game than the A-10, and outdrew C-USA by over 2,000 per game.
NCAA D-1 attendance figures, 2005-2006 It is quite possible that the parity shown in this year's
NCAA tournament is a reflection that, outside of being BCS members, higher-rated conferences can no longer be differentiated from each other with any clarity when it comes to the "mid-major" and "major" labels.
The term "mid-major" does
not apply to schools belonging to the following six conferences:
*
Bowl Championship Series (BCS)
**
Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC)
**
Big 12 Conference**
Big East Conference***The
University of Notre Dame, otherwise a Big East member, retains its independent status in football.
**
Big Ten Conference**
Pacific Ten Conference (Pac-10)
**
Southeastern Conference (SEC)
For at least the past decade, the Atlantic Ten, Conference USA, the Mountain West Conference, and the Western Athletic Conference have been considered above the level of the other non-BCS conferences (although generally below the level of the six conferences named above). Due to recent changes in membership in those conferences, as well as the sustained success of other non-BCS conferences, many people no longer consider those four conferences to be above the level of other "mid-major" conferences for college basketball based on prestige, performance, recent post-season results, and national perception, both because of a weakening of those conferences and a strengthening of former lower rated conferences (such as the Missouri Valley Conference).
This list is not static from year to year, as most fail to agree which conference's during any given year are the "majors". Some refuse to consider the MVC to be a major conference, despite it having outperformed several other conferences that same individual considers "major" (the A-10 and WAC, for instance) for many years now. Regardless, there are many conferences (besides the six BCS conferences) that have regularly had teams advance to the Sweet Sixteen or beyond, regularly challenge for multiple bids per year to the NCAA tournament, have multiple teams "buy" games from lower-ranked conferences, and have all finished in the top 12 in conference attendance every year for the last decade.[
1] Many, including college basketball experts, coaches, players and administrators, have agreed that these are just some of the important traits that preclude a conference from being considered a mid-major.
The term "mid-major" is sometimes used to describe all of the other 31 conferences not normally considered to be a major conference. Most of the time, the term is specifically applied to only the non-major conferences that consistently produce quality teams. Often the defenition of a basketball mid-major will be of a conference that can put at least one at-large bid in the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, while not garnering the attention and television dollars of a major conference. The conferences most likely to be considered a mid-major include:
*
Atlantic 10 Conference (A-10)
*
Colonial Athletic Association (CAA)
*
Conference USA (C-USA)
*
Horizon League*
Mid-American Conference (MAC)
*
Missouri Valley Conference (MVC)
*
Mountain West Conference (MWC)
*
West Coast Conference (WCC)
*
Western Athletic Conference (WAC)
Note that a very strong team in a mid-major conference may be effectively a major program; the most notable examples of this being
Gonzaga of the WCC, and
Memphis of the "new" (post-realignment) C-USA.
Issues mid-major programs face
Mid-major teams often have a difficult time scheduling major conference opponents, especially at home. Major conference teams usually will not schedule a high quality mid-major team, knowing that there is an uncomfortably high chance that they will lose (especially if the game is at the mid-major team's home court) and if the major team does win, there is often little benefit in media exposure for beating non-major school. Some major conference teams also believe that scheduling games with additional competitive teams isn't necessary for their current team's development, as they believe there will be enough "tough games" during conference play. This phenomenon often manifests itself in major squads playing mostly lower ranked mid-major or low-major conference teams (while refusing schedule requests from better mid-major squads) in their out-of-conference schedules[
2], thereby establishing very impressive records against lesser foes and bypassing higher quality mid-major teams in the process (
Georgetown has often been used as an example of this phenomenon). In recent years, the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee has stressed the importance of a team's strength of schedule (SOS) in the nonconference portion of their schedule. Teams with a low-ranked nonconference SOS have often been penalized in their seeding and in some cases not selected for the tournament at all. In 2006, Florida State was left out of the tournament field in large part because its out-of-conference schedule was rated #316 out of 333 Division I teams.
The difficulty most mid-majors have in scheduling BCS conference opponents has a large effect on their ability to qualify for the
NCAA basketball championship tournament and for the
National Invitation Tournament. Often, mid-major teams with outstanding records are passed over for
at-large berths in the NCAA Tournament in favor of teams from BCS conferences with mediocre records, based partly on the fact that the mid-major teams often have a lower strength of schedule. Other reasons often given are that BCS conference teams may also bring a larger fan contingent to the tournament game than some mid-majors would, as well as many reasons having to do with money. Without the ability to play more "major" opponents, most mid-majors have to stake their Tournament hopes on winning their conference's season-ending tournament (which promises an
automatic berth in the NCAA Tournament) since the possibility of an
at-large bid is often remote.
Gonzaga's men's team faces a slightly different set of challenges. Since its
Elite Eight appearance in
1999, it has successfully established itself as the closest thing to a major program in a mid-major conference, making the tournament field in every year since, even in years it failed to win the
West Coast Conference tournament. Its position in a mid-major conference is no longer a primary issue with regard to making the tournament field, but is often perceived to adversely affect its tournament seeding. The
Bulldogs typically play a nationally competitive nonconference schedule, frequently going on the road, and have proven themselves capable of defeating nationally prominent opponents. However, the relative weakness of the
West Coast Conference (WCC) hurts Gonzaga's strength of schedule, which in turn lowers the Bulldogs'
Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) (an important numerical criterion in tournament selection). Other mid-major conference schools, such as
Memphis, that establish themselves on a national level are also likely to face these challenges.
The NCAA tournament selection for the 2006 men's tournament was surrounded by controversy related to mid-major programs. A number of teams from mid-major conferences had unprecedented success in the non-conference portions of their schedule, and were therefore ranked highly in the RPI throughout the season. A change in the NCAA RPI rating process, prior to the 2005 season, also bolstered many of these teams' chances. The NCAA changed from a formula that treated home and road wins and losses equally, to a formula that gave higher weight to road wins and home losses. Because many BCS conference teams played no more than one or two non-conference games away from home, there was a de-facto bolstering of RPI ratings for mid-major teams, leading to speculation about how this "new" version of the RPI would be used in the selection process by the NCAA tournament selection committee. Inspite of a new precedent being set by the committee, which left the highest ranking RPI team ever, #21
Missouri State of the
Missouri Valley Conference out of the tournament field, some high RPI-ranking mid-majors received at-large bids over less deserving BCS conference teams. This prompted harsh criticism from sports writers and coaches of BCS conference teams that did not receive bids. Such criticism flew in the face of the fact that the six BCS conferences still received the exact same number of bids (32) from the committee as in most years past. The mid-major teams that were selected went on to quiet those critics when a record number (five) advanced to the "
Sweet 16". Even more significantly, one of those teams,
George Mason of the
Colonial Athletic Association, became the first mid-major to reach the Men's
Final Four in more than a quarter-century.
In
college football the term "mid-major" denotes those
Division I-A schools that do not play in the six
BCS conferences.
Notre Dame has retained its independent status in football, but is a member of the Big East in most other sports, and is also included in the BCS. Mid-major football schools play in the following Division I-A conferences:
*
Conference USA (C-USA)
*
Mid-American Conference (MAC)
*
Mountain West Conference (MWC)
*
Sun Belt Conference*
Western Athletic Conference (WAC)
*Division I-A independents -
United States Military Academy (Army),
United States Naval Academy (Navy), and
Temple University (which will become a full football member of the MAC in 2007)
Mid-major football schools face the problem of not being part of the BCS, which controls access to the unofficial National Championship of Division I-A football (since the
NCAA does not sponsor a I-A football champion). Mid-major schools have very limited opportunities to participate in the five BCS
bowl games with only the
University of Utah,
Texas Christian University (both schools are now members of the Mountain West Conference) and
Boise State (of the WAC) having success in recent years.
*
Mid-Majority
