A big Polyfro shout out to fellow Jesuit institution Xavier, for finally having enough of the ridiculous "Mid-Major" label and telling a major media outlet how they feel about it.
Rivals.com named point guard Drew Lavender their "Mid-Major Player Of The Week", but Xavier refused the honor, saying the term was quote "a black eye for its program."
Nice. You go, Xavier! But wait, it gets better:
Atlantic 10 commissioner Linda Bruno backed the Musketeers' stance. "I really am puzzled why anyone would consider us a mid-major," she said. "It's a term you really don't need. It got started because the media use football terms for basketball leagues. Give people credit for what they're good at. The term is derogatory."
The media use football terms for basketball leagues. That's hilarious, and quite prescient...the media has slapped the "BCS" label on basketball leagues for years, and I've always kind of been mystified by it. What in the hell does the Bowl Championship Series have to do with college basketball? Its laziness, or ignorance, or both, to use BCS to refer to anything other than football. There are no bowls in basketball, last time I checked. Things are settled on the court, where they should be.
Now, I know what you're saying. "They're just using BCS for lack of a better term to describe the Big Six conferences!" Hell, my own dad, a Big Ten Man through and through, tries this same argument with me all the time. Here's my problem with that: what do you say to the Big East teams who play basketball, but not football? Are they really BCS teams when they don't play D1 football? Am I supposed to believe that by virtue of playing in the same league, that DePaul and Marquette are "BCS" teams? That's absurd. That's the problem with using football terms for basketball leagues.
Rivals added the mid-major award this year in order to recognize players outside the BCS conferences. Bruno said not to bother calling any A-10 schools about the award in the future.
"I would suggest that you don't," Bruno said. "It's up to the schools, but I don't think you're going to get any takers."
I'm actually blushing as I read that, it makes me so proud. What a fantastic day.
You bet.
Incidentally, within the same article, they show the MVC as being the seventh-best league in America, ahead of the A-10 and just behind the SEC. Not sure I buy that the MVC is better than the A-10 this year, but I won't argue with it.
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