The Marquette/Georgia Game Has Turned Into A Disaster Of A Decision

There’s a good chance reading this website will be your only way to find out what is happening in the game.

Remember back in January when Marquette men’s basketball announced that they would be traveling to the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas for a game against Georgia on November 23, 2024? I remember. I remember because this was my summary of the idea of taking a 2,800 mile round trip to play one game against an eh opponent was this:

I don’t know if you can tell, but I am not particularly thrilled by this game announcement.

As a Marquette season ticket holder, this was a game that was, to a certain extent, being taken away from me being able to attend it in person. There was pretty much zero chance I was going to talk my wife into a weekend getaway to the Bahamas for one basketball game. If it was North Carolina or Kentucky or something, at least would be “oh, dang, MU’s playing a blue blood.”

My thrill level has fallen in the intervening 10 months.

I’m still not going anywhere near the Bahamas for the game. Georgia missed the NCAA tournament for the 9th consecutive season last year and they’re not projected to go this year. Squeaking past Tennessee Tech 83-78 in their opener didn’t help anyone’s opinion of them, that’s for sure.

And….. you know what else?

Marquette and Georgia never announced a television arrangement for that game.

January turned into April and the offseason, which turned into the summer, which turned into the start of the school year, which turned into the announcement of the Big East television schedule, which turned into the actual start of the season……. and nope, nothing about how anyone who can’t jet off to the Bahamas is going to be able to watch this game.

Seems bad.

And then, on Friday, Jon Rothstein informed the world what I had started to suspect: The Marquette/Georgia game on November 23rd will be available for streaming exclusively on FloSports. It’s not clear which school had a spokesperson tell Rothstein, but I’d wager it’s Marquette because the Big East has a relationship with FloSports. It could also be Georgia, because maybe the Bulldogs aren’t happy with this arrangement, much like you probably won’t be in about 5 minutes.

I can report that this is officially on the Marquette men’s basketball page now, although neither team has made a public statement on the matter.

The starting problem for why this game will not be on television is thus: It’s a neutral site game. As such, neither Marquette and Fox Sports nor Georgia and ESPN holds the rights to the broadcast as they would for a home game in either direction.

Next problem: It’s the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Here’s an very, very incomplete list of college football games that are kind of taking up broadcast space:

• Alabama/Oklahoma
• Texas A&M/Auburn
• USC/UCLA
• Ole Miss/Florida
• Notre Dame/Army

It feels unfair to add Ohio State/Indiana to that list, because no one thought that was going to be a top 10 game in January, but that’s happening on that day, too. So Fox and ESPN are, y’know, kind of busy. That’s why I was figuring that streaming only was going to be the option, but that left ESPN+ on the table as a possibility. I also thought there was a chance that the Big East’s arrangement with FloSports for everything that’s not men’s basketball might come into play. There was also a possibility that CBS Sports Network might pop up, because Georgia is going to play St. John’s the very next day, exactly 24 hours later, and that game, on a Sunday, is going on CBSSN.

And then I was putting together the first What To Watch for this season, and I realized that there is a women’s basketball Battle 4 Atlantis this season. That was not announced and known back in January, but I saw that Villanova has it on their schedule. The Wildcats open up their B4A tournament run…… on November 23rd, the same day as the Marquette/Georgia game, in the same arena…… and FloSports is streaming the first round of the women’s B4A.

You can ask Andrei at Paint Touches or Phil & Joe at Scrambled Eggs, I pointed this out to them in our Discord group chat. I’m looking at the timestamp right now on my theory that this game was going to FloSports: October 26th, 9:50 am Central time.

I take no pride in being right.

Why?

Because the brand newly debuted FloCollege streaming option side of FloSports costs $20 a month, or $9 if you spend $110 for an entire year.

If you use the Big East’s link to subscribe to FloSports, it will cost you $12.50 for a month, but $7 if you have a school e-mail address.

The game is, essentially, on streaming only pay-per-view.

I might be one of the few people who actually watches this game because I have an annual subscription to FloSports so I can write about soccer, volleyball, women’s hoops, and lacrosse. If you don’t want to pay the $13 for this one game and the hassle of remembering to cancel your subscription, especially in the wake of needing to subscribe to Peacock to watch Marquette four times this season, I don’t blame you.

And all of this raises the question: Why exactly is Marquette playing this game against the opponent that they’re playing in the location that they are going to?

The obvious answer would seem to be: Because it’s a fun travel trip for the team.

Except……

Marquette has an 8pm start time on November 19th against Purdue. Best case scenario, they’re leaving for the Bahamas on the morning of the 20th, but y’know, 5 hour flight, and by the way: Nassau is an hour ahead. So that day is kind of shot. Maybe the team gets the 21st and the 22nd to do whatever around the island, but it’s a 10am Central time tipoff on Saturday, so that’s going to be an early night for them because of an early wakeup call to get ready. I doubt they’ll hurry off the island that day, so maybe they come home on Sunday? Or stretch it into Monday, maybe? Marquette has a Wednesday night home game against Stonehill, and I doubt Shaka Smart wants them traveling the day before a home game.

Speaking of things Shaka probably doesn’t want: Some of these guys miiiiiiiiiight need to be in person for a class somewhere in between the 20th and the 26th. I’m not saying “gosh darn it, they need to be in school!” like some kind of crank, I understand that this is 2024 and they can get things done remotely at this point. But maybe someone’s got a presentation or a speech or a lab or something? Missing a bunch of in-person class time right before everyone goes on Thanksgiving break starting on November 27th seems a little silly….. so that might limit the time that the team could reasonably expect to spend in Nassau. Shaka said when he was hired that you have two full time jobs if you play for him: Getting better at basketball and passing your classes.

And if you’re not doing this as an extended fun travel thing for the team, and your fans have to pay extra to watch the game, and it’s not the world’s most exciting non-conference game even if it is an SEC opponent……. why are you doing this at all?

Given that it took until just about two weeks before the game for someone to leak out the news that the game is going to FloSports, it certainly sounds like absolutely none of this was particularly well planned or thought out. If that’s the case, I would have to say that whoever signed off on this on the Marquette administration side definitely does not deserve a raise or a promotion.