Qualifications of a Mid Major? How should I know?

I know what your thinking. Everybody and all of sports media have been talking about this issue since Xavier shunned the label calling it an insult to the program. Well I decided to wait and here what everyone had to say and then steal all the good stuff! I kid, I kid. Seriously though it has become quite the topic and with Dayton "pulling a Xavier" this week by also turning down inclusion in a piece about mid majors(let it be known that I think they did it just so they would seem as cool as X) in a national magazine this discussion is far from over.



I decided to come up with my own list of reasons your program is/is not/should be considered a mid major. So here you go in no particular order.



1. Your players tend to stick around for four years and actually earn(gasp!) degrees.

2. The national media reports on your team are so infrequent they have'nt bothered to learn the correct pronunciation(eggsavior)

3.The only way your team makes the NCAA tourney is to win its conference tourney.

4.Your big man is either 6"10 and moves like frankenstein or 6"7 and "plays big".

5. Your Point guard is said to have "a great future in coaching "or is always referred to as "scrappy". BTW guys hate it when you call them scrappy.

6. The only chance you have of getting on national tv is during Bracketbuster week.

7. The arena you play in is often called a "classic gym" or a "throwback". (memo to all schools unless you are Butler or play in the Palestra get a new gym.)



I wanted to come up with some more tangible reasons or qualifications but I kept running into problems like.

1. How is Xavier a mid major but South Florida is a major?
2. What does classification of football conferences(bcs) have to do with basketball?
3. What about Memphis and Gonzaga?
4. With the parity in recent years do we even need to label schools as mid or high major?

After much thought and research I decided that I am not really qualified to decide these qualifications. I also decided that neither is ESPN,Fox sports, CBS, or anyone else. It is simply a ridiculous term created to make it easier for the media to describe teams that rise above the usual place that the media has stuck them. Maybe instead of creating buzzwords they could spend some time researching the schools to find out just how they got so far.