The MVC is a more stable and beneficial conference to those that are included. There simply is no question on this aspect. As great as it is to get to the NCAA tournament, being in the MVC provided much more institutional stability and public awareness than being in the Horizon League or The Summit League. Yes, Oakland upset Kentucky and will receive some good publication from this win, but the public won't remember their conference. The general public probably thinks that Butler made those prior NCAA championships as part of the Big East, at this point.
@vok22 100% agree. A culmination of a lot of bad things happening at the worst possible time
I understand the move to the MVC particularly at the time it was made. It made sense. Having said that, watching the NEC conference championship with Wagner over Merrimack I was thinking that this is the level Valpo belongs.
I would like to elaborate further on vok22's words and say that the MVC gets leaps and bounds more media coverage than the Horizon League. VU was lucky to get a nationally televised game once every 10 years or so. Now the MVC has agreements with Bally sports Chicago and games are televised on NBC Sports Chicago. March Madness also gives on average a 2 million dollar payout to conferences for each bid they get into the tournament as the revenue made from march madness is split between the conferences that make it and the NCAA. All high majors pay out there members with whatever left over revenue is made after expenses are taken care of to run the athletic conference. Mid Majors, however, do not always pay out member schools as some smaller scale conferences are too broke to pay out schools. While I could not find out how much the MVC pays out to member schools, Valpo is more likely to receive payment from the MVC then they ever were likely to receive from the Horizon. Here is an official pdf from last year as to where money goes where conferences are involved. It is a good read!
https://ncaaorg.s3.amazonaws.com/ncaa/finance/d1/2023D1Fin_RevenueDistributionPlan.pdf
EDIT: While I could not find out how much money the MVC pays out, I did find out that Loyola's run in 2018 made the MVC 8.5 million dollars that was paid out over a 6 year increment.
The rules in 2018 were as such. For every game won in march madness, your conference receives about 1.7 million dollars to be paid out over 6 years
I also found a video that lays out the revenue made in 2021-22 for all conferences (MVC is 4:10)
