I just pop in here every few weeks in the offseason, and when I saw how big this thread is, I was like, "Wow! The schedule must be coming together early, and/or there are some really interesting opponents!"
But no, just Tulane and Bucknell so far, the rest is people arguing whether we should schedule Cleveland State and Youngstown State or not.
I personally don't really care, with a slight lean towards "yeah, let's do it" for the following reasons, particularly with respect to Cleveland State:
1) Easy road game, and if Cleveland State's fan support is as bad as it apparently is, we can perhaps outnumber them in their own home, which is always great.
1a) As little interest as a CSU/Akron game or series might engender right now, I guarantee we play 3-4 OOC games each year that is even less interesting to both markets. At least.
2) Things change. 10 or 20 years from now, we might suck and CSU might be great. Especially with the fluidity you see in mid-major conferences. If you're not nice to people on the way up, they won't be nice to you on the way down.
2a) Cleveland State of course made an elite 8 appearance in the 80s, and wasn't it around that time that games against them and Mouse McFadden were breaking JAR attendance records for Zips MBK that still stand? (Fact check me on that). Maybe we can build that magic again, and it'd be helpful to lay the foundation for it now.
3) Some of you seem to be saying we should tell high majors to go to hell, while also espousing us to behave like mini high majors with respect to other mid and low majors.
3) Observations like "We can't give that CSU a home-and-home because that'd legitimize them" is way overthinking it IMO. It's highly unlikely our fates are gonna hinge on whether we scheduled the 2nd- or 5th-best Horizon League to a home-and-home, and it ain't all up to us anyway; these would all need to be two-party agreements, to state the obvious.