Sports Illustrated‘s Stewart Mandel tweets this fascinating link: a scheduling board for college basketball.

It’s the Craigslist of college hoops scheduling!,he writes. Note St Bonaventure’s pitch: “We lose 2 of our top 3 scorers”

Among the other highlights: Kansas needs to buy someone (a “guarantee game”) for 11/21 or 11/22, St. Bonaventure is hoping that the prospect of a game at Buffalo’s HSBC Arena might attract a “high major” opponent home-and-home, and Cameron Dollar at Seattle University is offering “competitive and creative guarantees” (is vacant Key Arena pitching in, perhaps?).

And: with a good enough opponent, Penn State dangles the prospect of ESPN or ESPN2, while Youngstown State, which needs a pair of home-and-homes, plays up its sacrificial status even more than St. Bonaventure: “We loose (sic) 5 seniors, 4 starters, 3 out of 4 top scorers. We have a lot of open dates.”

None of this is shocking of course, just interesting to see the nuts and bolts, as well as the volume of schools looking for games at any given time. I guess I’m used to college football (fewer games, and all non-conference action finalized much further in advance).