Last month the Ohio Valley Conference announced a basketball enhancement plan to help reward successful men's programs.  At their annual spring meetings, the league's board of presidents agreed to give out up to $500,000 annually to each of the conference schools.  That money is a portion of the extra revenue earned from recent wins in the NCAA men's basketball tournament.  With their fiscal year ending June 30th, the conference has made the initial distribution available to the schools.  Belmont, which did not officially join the conference until July 1st, will not be eligible for one of these distributions until after the 2012-13 season.
 
Money is given out when schools meet one or more of six criteria:
 
- Overall RPI
- Improvement in RPI (three-year rolling average)
- Increase in Division I wins from the previous year (three-year rolling average)
- Division I non-conference wins (three-year rolling average)
- OVC tournament or regular season championships in the last four years
- 40% of non-conference games being played at home or neutral sites
 
Simply put, this formula will do the most to help schools at the top of the conference and teams at the bottom who strive to improve to even the middle of the conference.  WPSD Sports has attained a list of the initial distribution figures:
 
- Murray State $106,214
- Tennessee State $70,874
- Tennessee Tech $64,657
- Morehead State $47,536
- SE Missouri State $43,211
- Jacksonville State $37,710
- Eastern Kentucky $35,269
- Austin Peay $28,703
- Eastern Illinois $21,047
- UT Martin $15,735
- SIU-Edwardsville $13,037
 
SIU-Edwardsville's share is lower due to their recent transition to being a full-fledged Division I program.  That transition was completed on July 1st.
 
Murray State Athletics Director Allen Ward tells us he plans to take his share of the money and put it directly into the basketball program.  Ward said he's doing that since he believes that's why the plan was put into place.  While Murray State may be able to win another championship next year, it will be difficult for them to improve upon their record-setting season in 2011-12 in terms of RPI and wins.  Even if they take a slight step back in both of those criteria, their distribution next year would then likely be less.
 
There does appear to be one loophole in this enhancement plan.  There are four schools that earned less than $30,000 from this year's distribution -- somewhere around $75,000 less than Murray State earned.  Any of those schools could make up that difference by simply playing one or more "money games" against any big-time school in the country.  The thing to watch will be if schools try to help themselves by scheduling more money games or to help the conference by following the formula -- and then hoping to earn more money from the enhancement plan.
 
This plan is in place because of the extra revenue earned from the NCAA Tournament wins in the last four years.  If the conference goes through a drought where they don't win any tournament games for five or six consecutive years, and that extra revenue dries up, this plan will most likely not be able to sustain itself.
 
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