Why is Dad's weekend so early? Is this because of the move to semesters? IIRC, Dad's weekend was always a huge draw during MAC play. Having Dad's weekend for the Marietta game is lame.
I believe they've put Dad's weekend in one semester, and Mom's in the other semester. I agree, it would be nice to have Dad's weekend for a "better" home game. I'd like to think there could be some communication about that between the university and athletics, but my gut feeling is that there is not. Of course scheduling for hoops is such a difficult thing. We'd all like to see the Belmont game be sometime other than Thanksgiving weekend for the sake of having students present.
One beef I do have, is the MAC as a whole not working their schedules around having students on campus. I've been against the 18 game conference schedule from the outset, and part of the reason is that 2-3 conference games get played when students are on breaks. My feeling is that The MAC has the ability, by way of going back to 16 games, and how they schedule games, to avoid this. Combine that with not scheduling the best matchups on the weekends that you're going to have potential ESPNU slots, and I have a tough time understanding the conference portion of the schedule.