Re: Conference Realignment Thread v. 2016
Posted: Tue Dec 27, 2016 10:09 pm
Bill Marsh wrote:gtmoBlue wrote:Postby GoldenWarrior11 ยป Tue Dec 27, 2016 10:23 am
Noble commentary, JP. Unfortunately, the Big East will not lower its conference standards simply to stack the deck for the league to possibly get an additional team or two into the tournament.
The B1G has done this over and over...Penn St, Rutgers, Nebraska. The ACC added BC, to go along with their regular bottom dwellers. PAC-12 added Colorado. It's happening all over in Basketball for the sake of Football gaining a team or 2. What's so different in the BE emulating our major brethren to work the system?
We average 5 teams a year for the NCAAs. What is sooo terrible in milking the bids for 7 a year? That's an extra 500,000 to 600,000 USD/year (by 2020) for 6 years. That's free money we're talking about. It's insurance money...doesn't cost the conference a dime. I never heard of Jesuits walking away from a dollar, especially a free one!
BC was not a bad basketball program when the ACC recruited them. In fact they went to the tournament in back to back seasons, the 2 years before they ACC came calling and were BE champs and a top ten team in 2001. After they were in voted to join the ACC, they went to the tournament 5 of the next 6 years and were a top ten team again in their first season in the ACC. They've fallen on hard times in recent years, but that's been due more to the ill advised decision to fire Al Skinner and poor hiring choices with the 2 coaches that followed him.
BC is a perfect example of the fallacy in Scmack'a argument. There are no guarantees that any program will continue to be either a winner or a loser. St John's, for example, was one of the best and most consistent programs in college basketball for 50 years. They've declined in the last 10-12 years, but who could have predicted that? OTOH, Butler was a nobody in college basketball for as long as St John's was a somebody, but in the last 10-15 years, they've been a very consistent winner. Who ups have predicted back to back trips to the finals for them and that they would have come within a whisker of winning it all?
All a conference can do is bring in the best programs they can and hope for the best. Everyone will eventually have their ups and downs.
BC was a very good BE hoops program before they left. Michael Adams, Curley, D Barrows, Craig Smith, Troy Bell, J Bagley, Jared Dudley, etc.
PSU was a FB coup for the B1G. Their first year they went undefeated, had one of the most prolific offenses in college FB history and absolutely dominated the B1G. Nebraska is gifted the NC b/c it was Tom Osborne's swan song. They pulled them in when they were at their strongest. Rutgers mistakenly was believed to be bringing the NY market. That's the joke of it all. Good sell job by RU; poor understanding of the NY market (Pro FB town) by the Conf leaders.