Hoops

2nd Tier Winter League under the NBL

Now.
Once upon a time, it was gentlemanly to stand til ladies were seated. Now it's a law suit for discrimination.

20 years from now.
Once upon a time, the uni games were a piss-up. Now they are (some superlative, you can choose).

Uni's are Aust wide, in fierce competition with each other, are govt and privately funded, already have a built in structure of sorts, (some uni's)are already getting involved with NBL and several other sports. All would have good to excellent standard of facilities and collegiate support staff by the 100's as part of their studies.

USC (University of the Sunshine Coast), for example, have been the major sponsor of the netball success story called Lightning, have just signed on with the Brisbane Bullets, sponsor RipCity in the QBL, Aust swimming teams, field atheletics, impaired swimmers and atheletes, and, have their own social sports club, the Spartans (nothing to do with Southern Districts). And, their facilities are available to community based sports (eg; RipCity in the QBL and for their junior and domestic schedules).

I even envisage a situation where business people with philanthropist attitudes could be more easily attracted to support teams with "noble" association (higher education).

With all that as positives, til all the doubters destroy my faith, does it not make sense to, at least, consider unie's as a 2nd tier comp?

Unis in this country are not about sport. A few large city unis have teams in local footy comps but that's about it. The university games are a joke, just an excuse for a heap of students to go away for a piss-up.

It's not all about Perth.

You gotta be kidding if you think a uni league is going to fill stadiums.

There is absolutely no way you could possibly make money off the idea if you played a traditional home and away season its not the USA.

How is a perth university going to pay 10 players and a few coaches to fly to the east coast almost every 2nd game to play in front of a crowd of 100 people maybe...

$400 return flight x 15 people is $6000.

100 people buying $10 tickets is only $1000.

The problem with any national second tier league is travel cost. This will be the big decider for any uni league as I don't think that its viable financially to be sending players all over Australia.

If Australia was to have a true university league, I think it would have to be a tournament based league, to cut this travel cost.

For example, a 16 team uni league might play tournaments in each state with final placings determining points. Perhaps 4 tournaments per year, rotating so each state/territory hosts every second year.

"That is very true with the UNI idea and teams already being aligned with them, only downside would be the requirement for talent to take on a course to be able to play."

This could be an upside in terms of making sure lower-level NBL guys are being prepared for life post-basketball.

No NBL curtain raisers and even post game should be WNBL fixtures (ie Perth Lynx play after Wildcats during stupid fixturing)

Do you mean summer? There are already second-tier leagues playing in winter.