Stipulating that I wish P4 teams didn’t dodge mid majors, if they’re going to I’d be okay with a huge multi week tournament in the future. It’d at least foster some goodwill among the P4 conferences, which is more than we can say about that dynamic when it comes to football.
My hot take is I’m fine with Otz “settling” for an 18 point win. If someone has impacted you at really any point in your career, you can understand how Otz sees McDermott. Or if you think that’s all sentimental BS, the bottom line is Otz is who he is and that’s not going to change. And he’s pretty open about his gratitude toward Iowa State and various people he’s worked with, so it’s not like his decision was out of left field. If St. John’s doesn’t score at the end maybe Iowa State is playing for additional money regardless. Or if they’d beaten St. John’s by 10 it also wouldn’t have mattered. What if they’d snuck into the third place game and gotten spanked by Tennessee? Drawing Syracuse is annoying, no doubt, but there are too many hypotheticals for me to lose sleep.
Speaking of Syracuse, at least one of them and Creighton should end up being a decent win come February. And you got a marquee win even if not. So while I would’ve preferred a different format I disagree that this was all a ruse and Iowa State should boycott. I would’ve been more sympathetic to that argument last season, but it’s hard to quantify how beneficial even just the first two games have been for the freshmen and Buchanan
