It was around 6 p.m. Sunday evening and the Monmouth University men's basketball team was pulling away from Fairfield inside the Multipurpose Activity Center to move into a three-way tie atop the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference standings.

Unfortunately, that was when seemingly the entire nation was glued to the Seattle Seahawks' dramatic victory in the NFC Championship Game, as the defending champs came back from 17-6 down with just over two minutes to play, and survived a game-tying Green Bay field goal at the end of regulation before winning it in overtime.

There are a lot of factors that go into the scheduling. But the bottom line is that it's a disservice to your fans to ask them to choose between the two.

Throw in some bad weather and crowd of just 654 - the smallest crowd ever to see the Hawks play in the MAC - showed up for the 4:30 p.m. tipoff, the second half of a doubleheader with the women's team. And it's hard to image many people were glued to the ESPN3 broadcast, either.

The question is why?

In this case, something should have been adjusted to make sure no games were opposite the NFL games, which drew record television ratings.

The MAAC traditionally plays games on Sundays, feeling they can get better game officials because most other leagues, like the Big East and AAC, aren't playing. That leaves them playing Friday and Sunday games on a particular week.

But they also have Thursday and Saturday games. This might have been a good week to consider that for the league's games, although the MAC was listed as unavailable for games on Saturday because it was being held as a snow day for Friday's graduation.

One option would have been to move the women's game from a 2 p.m. start to late morning, say 11 a.m. That would have gotten fans home early in the first of the two conference championship games.

Another option would have been to work out a Martin Luther King Jr.Day afternoon game with Fairfield. Except Monmouth had no flexibility due to an 8 p.m. non-conference affair at Penn on Wednesday night, which leaves them playing four games in eight days.

""There is very little flexibility,'' Monmouth athletic director Marilyn McNeil said. ""Because (if) you ask for flexibility, then that's going to impact who's playing before you and who's playing after you, so you get two days rest or three days rest and someone got four days rest. Now we get into who's got the advantage, which is why it comes down to the conference office.''

The reality is that the Monmouth men, who also play at 2 p.m. on Super Bowl Sunday, are exceeding expectations so far this season. The last thing anyone should be doing is making it more difficult for their fans to support them.
