What's Next for the League?

Ok Horizon League fans. Everybody not named Butler is asking themselves the same question. What does Butler's success mean for OUR school?

The first and most obvious answer is money. The Horizon League tournament champion is guaranteed a berth in the NCAA Tournament and as a reward for winning games in the tournament the league receives a share or unit of money. That money is distributed to every team in the league. The distribution of that money is subject for debate. Commissioner LeCrone has stated that Butler will be given a bonus for their performance in this year's tournament. What each school does with that money is going to go a long way to answering the question of ‘who will challenge Butler over the next 3-5 years'.

How do you take that money and new exposure and turn it into more revenue and, of course, wins?

Every team in the HL now has a home game against a Final Four participant. That should be a huge draw and could/should be a giant marketing tool to generate more interest in the home team and highlight other games on their schedule.

It's also a recruiting tool for everybody in the league as well. Butler will only get more and more nationally televised games and those are great opportunities for the rest of the league to make some noise. Selling that opportunity to prospective players is something everybody in the league will do.

Looking at the ‘best' examples of a mid major making the Final Four or having a school with a profile that may overshadow other schools in their league are George Mason and Gonzaga. Both examples are flawed.

Gonzaga has never made a Final Four and they play in a very different conference. The Horizon League has outperformed the West Coast Conference in recent years and has better overall depth. The geography of the WCC also prevents it from generating as much interest on television outside of Gonzaga's visibility. The 8-team WCC only has 14 conference games and that is a huge factor in scheduling for the teams in that league. With 18 conference games, HL teams are limited in their out-of-conference scheduling. There's also the fact that Gonzaga has never actually made a Final Four.

George Mason's team and on-court situation was very different from Butler. They were an older team and barely made the tournament. Their conference, the Colonial Athletic Association, is more similar on the court to the Horizon League than maybe any other conference in the country. Some of their marketing strategies should be looked at to gauge what is successful at this level (high-end mid-major conference). But they didn't sustain the tournament success. George Mason missed the NCAA Tournament the year after their run and the CAA only has two NCAA Tournament wins since George Mason's run.

I would like to see Butler's strategy of putting together a tough out-of-conference schedule adopted by more teams in the league. This doesn't necessarily mean going out and scheduling Michigan State, Purdue, and North Carolina, like Valpo did this past season. It means taking 2-for-1 deals and playing some regional power conference teams or good mid majors. Butler has proven that by challenging your team you are rewarded late in the season.

The next few years could go a long way to making the Horizon League a perennial two-bid league.

There's no blueprint for the success in the wake of this improbable Final Four run but there is a huge opportunity.

Agree? Disagree? Tell me what you think your team should do to capitalize on Butler's success and the raised profile of the Horizon League. Tweet me, @HLNAdam.