Miami (Ohio)'s scheduling woes highlight NCAA power structure issues

There is not going to be a bigger battleground team when it comes to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament than No. 19 Miami (Ohio). On the surface, there should be nothing to argue about. They enter Friday’s game against Ohio with a 30-0 regular-season record and are just one win away from completing an extremely rare unbeaten regular season. 

In just about any other situation a team with that record, at this stage of the season, would almost certainly be a No. 1 seed in the tournament no matter what they do in their conference tournament.

This is not the case with the RedHawks.

Not only are they not going to be a No. 1 seed, there is a very real debate as to whether or not they should even make the tournament if they fail to win the MAC Conference tournament and earn what will likely be the conference’s only bid.

The argument is entirely based around their schedule. 

The MAC is a small, mid-major conference with no real powerhouse programs in it.

Miami also played a relatively weak non-conference schedule and has not played a single AP top-25 team all season. 

The weak non-conference schedule is not entirely by choice, and their rebuffed efforts to put together a stronger non-conference schedule highlight one of the biggest problems in the college sports landscape.

The big-name, power conference teams control everything

Miami (Ohio) Athletic Director David Sayler has been going to bat for the RedHawks all week, especially in the wake of social media criticism from former Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl. 

He spoke to On3 earlier this week and said they are "trying to fight the evil empire here" and that everything is set up for the power conference teams to set their own schedules and pick and choose who they play, and when they play them. They can buy home games. They can play neutral site games. They can rarely ever have to go on the road. 

While the schedule Miami (Ohio) ultimately put together has been criticized, a report on Thursday from long-time college sports writer Matt Brown highlighted all of the teams Miami tried to schedule, as discovered through an open records request. The school sent him more than 20 emails of the program trying to schedule non-conference games with several power-four programs, including Pitt, Wisconsin, Ohio State, Kansas and more. 

All were either declined or ignored. 

It is not a surprise with Pitt because it stopped playing its historic "city game" against crosstown Atlantic 10 rival Duquesne years ago. If it is not willing to schedule mid-majors in its own city (including Robert Morris), why would it be willing to play one from out of state? 

Instead of playing Miami (Ohio) on the proposed date the RedHawks game, Pitt played Hofstra at home ... and lost anyway. 

This is a testament to the power that major programs and conferences have over college sports, and the way they run everything and squeeze out the mid-major and smaller programs. The bigger schools can hide behind their "stronger conference schedules" and justify playing a weaker non-conference schedule because their conference games will feature enough challenges and resume builders. Just as it is in college football, nobody that is a bubble team is going to want a potentially bad blemish on its record by losing games to stronger mid-major teams. So it is easier to just not schedule them, pile up easy non-conference wins, and take care of business in conference.

Teams like Miami (Ohio) are told they need to schedule better teams.

When they try, the better teams either refuse to do a home-and-home series and instead insist on a two-for-one (or even three-for-one) deal, or outright refuse any game. 

Sayler called it a double-edged sword. That is exactly what it is. 

Now all his program can do is just keep winning games through the MAC conference tournament. Because anything short of a conference championship is quite possibly going to result in them being left out whether they go 31-0 during the regular season or not.