Jason Gardner and IUPUI are moving up to the Horizon.

https://news.iu.edu/stories/2017/06/iup ... eague.html

Maybe these road losses didn't hurt:
@ Michigan Big Ten L 65 77
@ Marquette Big East L 79 104
@ Illinois State MVC L 63 77
@ Illinois Big Ten L 77 85
@ Northwestern Big Ten L 65 87

Not that we're aspiring to the Horizon League, but...

YUP !! Minor league plus frozen feet !! They are what they are--very little !!

I know that most smaller state schools have to overdue it that much to hit a $ quota. I would agree that 5 of those games is too much, and I understand PM just taking the buyout and saving some pride rather than having NC State try to weasel into only playing at their place. However, 2 or 3 right placed guarantee games would immensely help the program. If a school like TCU (miles from Jackson's hometown) or Clemson (flush with football national championship cash) wouldn't want to come to LU on a 2 for 1 or even a 3 for 1 because of "market inefficiencies that benefit the Power 5", bite the bullet and go there. Everyone here knows that we can beat those teams (see NC State last year), so why not prove it to the world?

Hypothetically (and emphasis on the hypothetical as our schedule and most other teams' schedules are pretty much complete), if we filled out our schedule with say TCU, Clemson, and Kentucky, next year's team will have more than a fighting chance to sneak a statement win out of either of the 1st two, we get a probably lopsided game out of the third (think us playing Eureka, just with us losing and not having to spend money hosting that game), bring in much needed resources (read: money) for the program, and quite frankly prepare us for conference play better than any of PM's schedules have done (see his putrid conference record).

There are 75 Power 6 (P5 plus the Big East) teams. Some won't want to play us period (cough*NU, DPU, MU*cough), but we still would have plenty of options to schedule so that we don't play an IUPUI schedule where all we do is travel and at the whim of whatever P5 team we need to hit our revenue mark. PM has a 4 year extension, and he got it despite losing 7 of the last 9 games of the season. He hopefully feels like he has enough job security where he doesn't need to milk every win to inflate his winning percentage. So if there's a time to do it, now is it.