Conference realignment discussion - v. 2015

[Bill Marsh]

JPSchmack has admitted multiple times that the probability of St Bonaventure being invited to the Big East is infinitesimal. His belief that the Bonnies with the aid of Big East membership would capture hearts and minds from buffalo to rochester as well as the value of increased probability of additional NCAA bids at this current time for the conference can be doubted.

No one, however, has disproved the logic of his idea - namely that

1) by adding a school(s) to the bottom of the conference
2) that schedules and wins OOC to manipulate RPI
3) would significantly improve the NCAA tournament resumes of the teams above them
4) creating a high probability of reducing the "bubble" teams and increasing the "lock" teams
5) thus earning potentially a significant amount of money for the conference and per team

The conference distribution of NCAA payouts has not been stated as of yet.

There is a max number of schools that can be added before seeing diminished returns.

Secondarily, he and sheg have proposed a 13 school schedule to compensate losing the 10 school round robin.

The flaw in Schmack's theory is that there's absolutely nothing predictable about this characterization of Bonaventure or anyone else. While the idea of a consistent bottom feeder that is consistently successful OOC sounds good in theory, can any school really be counted on for this kind of performance over the long term? The idea is ludicrous.

Membership is permanent. Performance in any season or decade is temporary for any program. What's important for the conference in considering expansion is to focus on programs that have the infrastructure, fan base, and demonstrated institutional commitment to be a viable conference member for a long, long time. A track record of success fits in that evaluation as well. Bonaventure simply is not a viable program to consistently compete on the Big East level. Nor can it be counted on to produce the results that Schmack is proposing. Neither can anyone else.

Another mistake often introduced into a discussion of candidates is markets. These are not pro franchises which create support simply by their location and geography. Demographics play a big part in a college program's success. Dayton, for example is often dismissed on the basis of market redundancy. Big mistake IMO. In a location where the Big East has to compete with both Cincy locally, Ohio State on a larger scale, and even Kentucky across the river, the intensity of an intraconference rivalry could be extremely helpful in controlling the interest in that market.

Furthermore on the subject of Dayton, the fact that X and UD are located in SW Ohio does not mean that's their market. They are not local commuter schools dependent on local interest. They draw their student bodies from Catholics over a fairly large region. That larger region is their market. Many of those fans and alums may have trouble getting to games and contributing to ticket sales because of the distance, but they certainly can contribute to TV ratings in addition to more sporadic game attendance. They would not be competing AGAINST each other but would be competing TOGETHER for fan interest in a large state of 12 mill + the interest of fans in adjacent parts of Kentucky and Indiana. Having 2 programs in a regional market that large is certainly as valuable as having Crighton in Nebraska's tiny market. No offense to Creighton, which is a major asset for the conference.

Unlike Bonaventure, Dayton meets all of the criteria of infrastructure, fan support, and institutional commitment that the conference needs. They have a reasonable history of success and it doesn't hurt that they are a large university by the standards of Catholic colleges. Eschewing them in favor of a candidate like Bonaventure borders on the bizarre.

[handdownmandown]

LOL. Adding teams because they are essentially 'easy' is not a valid argument by any stretch.

If wins are hard to come by, improve your product.

[DudeAnon]

First of all, all the arguments are theoretical, so don't act like they are factual.

Second of all, aren't we trying to fix something that ain't broke? Can we honestly say any of our teams that didn't make the tourney deserved to? Until the answer to that question is yes, we have no reason to tinker. If anything, other conferences should be following our model. AAC has been destroyed by the committe every year and the Dayton was the last team in last year with 26 wins.

[stever20]

First of all, all the arguments are theoretical, so don't act like they are factual.

Second of all, aren't we trying to fix something that ain't broke? Can we honestly say any of our teams that didn't make the tourney deserved to? Until the answer to that question is yes, we have no reason to tinker. If anything, other conferences should be following our model. AAC has been destroyed by the committe every year and the Dayton was the last team in last year with 26 wins.

2 years ago you could say that St John's maybe should have and Xavier having to go to the PIG game. And PC wouldn't have made it had they not won the BET.

[marquette]

Alright JP, persistence and passion have actually spawned a (completely improbable) discussion so here goes.

Let's say in magic land 5 years down the road we decide to expand, not to 12 but to 13. We add two of Dayton, SLU, VCU and are looking for #13 to round out this scenario. At this point we have 12 teams. Each has an arena over 9,000 seats (Butler is low man, VCU is expanding theirs to 10,000 in the next couple years). Each has practice facilities (in the case of SLU and X theirs are built into their arenas). Each school has attendance over 6,000 with a conference average just a hair under 10,000 fans per game. Those numbers are all in line with other power leagues, in fact the attendance is a smidge low and puts us 5th of the 6 power conferences, although we are only 300 lower than 4th place Big 12 and 2,400 higher than the Pac 12. Bonaventure, academic side budgetary issues aside, has none of these things. Their arena holds a little over half of our average attendance, 700 fewer than the average attendance of our lowest drawing school. No practice facility. Attendance of just under 4,000.

Even if the Big East could add bonaventure without an on-court improvement, our perception as a power conference would require them to come into line with these other numbers. You won't find too many power schools who don't have similar numbers. What would this cost the cash-strapped bonnies? UW-Milwaukee's very basic proposed practice facility is estimated at $12 million. Davidson's was $15 million. I haven't found any numbers less than $25 million for an arena in 8-10,000 range. They would have to advertise and get on their journalist alumni to talk them up in the newspapers of Rochester, Albany, and Buffalo in order to increase their attendance. This is all assuming we would take them without any kind of on-court improvement. All in all what are we talking? $50 million? $60? Seems a bit far-fetched for a cash-strapped school to go through just for an extra $4 million a year.

[stever20]

Alright JP, persistence and passion have actually spawned a (completely improbable) discussion so here goes.

Let's say in magic land 5 years down the road we decide to expand, not to 12 but to 13. We add two of Dayton, SLU, VCU and are looking for #13 to round out this scenario. At this point we have 12 teams. Each has an arena over 9,000 seats (Butler is low man, VCU is expanding theirs to 10,000 in the next couple years). Each has practice facilities (in the case of SLU and X theirs are built into their arenas). Each school has attendance over 6,000 with a conference average just a hair under 10,000 fans per game. Those numbers are all in line with other power leagues, in fact the attendance is a smidge low and puts us 5th of the 6 power conferences, although we are only 300 lower than 4th place Big 12 and 2,400 higher than the Pac 12. Bonaventure, academic side budgetary issues aside, has none of these things. Their arena holds a little over half of our average attendance, 700 fewer than the average attendance of our lowest drawing school. No practice facility. Attendance of just under 4,000.

Even if the Big East could add bonaventure without an on-court improvement, our perception as a power conference would require them to come into line with these other numbers. You won't find too many power schools who don't have similar numbers. What would this cost the cash-strapped bonnies? UW-Milwaukee's very basic proposed practice facility is estimated at $12 million. Davidson's was $15 million. I haven't found any numbers less than $25 million for an arena in 8-10,000 range. They would have to advertise and get on their journalist alumni to talk them up in the newspapers of Rochester, Albany, and Buffalo in order to increase their attendance. This is all assuming we would take them without any kind of on-court improvement. All in all what are we talking? $50 million? $60? Seems a bit far-fetched for a cash-strapped school to go through just for an extra $4 million a year.

I think if we were going to take a flyer on someone(no pun intended)- Duquesne or Detroit Mercy would be much more likely.

[trephin]

The flaw in Schmack's theory is that there's absolutely nothing predictable about this characterization of Bonaventure or anyone else. While the idea of a consistent bottom feeder that is consistently successful OOC sounds good in theory, can any school really be counted on for this kind of performance over the long term? The idea is ludicrous.

While past performance is not an indicator of future returns as financial investments warn, why can't an historical analysis of a school's OOC be valid? How is it different than when the current membership's history in NCAA bids and overall success is/was discussed? The OOC is just a subset of that data.

...all of the criteria of infrastructure, fan support, and institutional commitment...a reasonable history of success

I agree that those should be part of the criteria of ANY expansion candidate. I don't think that necessarily precludes JP's RPI manipulation idea.

If wins are hard to come by, improve your product.

Someone has to be in that bottom third of the conference. The idea is that by adding school(s) you increase the bids for the middle third.


Again, forget the name St Bonaventure. I don't think the time is right to expand but no one has disproved the logic behind JPSchmack's idea.

[gtmoBlue]

First of all, all the arguments are theoretical, so don't act like they are factual.

Second of all, aren't we trying to fix something that ain't broke? Can we honestly say any of our teams that didn't make the tourney deserved to? Until the answer to that question is yes, we have no reason to tinker. If anything, other conferences should be following our model. AAC has been destroyed by the committe every year and the Dayton was the last team in last year with 26 wins.

2 years ago you could say that St John's maybe should have and Xavier having to go to the PIG game. And PC wouldn't have made it had they not won the BET.

You are absolutely correct DudeAnon. JPS puts forth a theoretical model, along with Sheg's 13 team proposal, which proports to increase the likelihood of 6-8 BE NCAA bids a year. Guaranteed? No, but the NCAA numbers provided support his contention.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it". An age old adage of some wisdom. However, in this age of continuous improvement, JP and Sheg offer proposals to tweek our system for better performance, ie; more NCAA Bids/more NCAA monies. Athletic departments, media, fans...we are secondary at best to the whims and desires of the university presidents - the folks that run the show, control the conferences - and the only thing that "moves the needle" for the presidents is money.

Furthermore, should and whenever...the BE decides to expand it will positively impact the next TV rights deal - more content to offer over the span of the next contract.

Regardless, JP and Sheg have offered up scenarios with great positive potential and ought to be given serious consideration by the Big East office in NYC.

[Make Your Bones]

Here's the problem with adding a bottom feeder to increase our number of NCAA bids: you're assuming that the bottom feeder can be guaranteed to win most OOC games and lose in conference. But if that doesn't happen, we just split our TV money another way to have a RPI wrecking ball rip through our league. Do you think Depaul of last year or Temple of this year help their leagues get more bids?

It's not "ain't broke, don't fix it". It's hold you cards and wait for the right opportunity to grab a UConn or Zaga or similar when the next round of reshuffling happens.

[gtmoBlue]

Alright JP, persistence and passion have actually spawned a (completely improbable) discussion so here goes.

Let's say in magic land 5 years down the road we decide to expand, not to 12 but to 13. We add two of Dayton, SLU, VCU and are looking for #13 to round out this scenario. At this point we have 12 teams. Each has an arena over 9,000 seats (Butler is low man, VCU is expanding theirs to 10,000 in the next couple years). Each has practice facilities (in the case of SLU and X theirs are built into their arenas). Each school has attendance over 6,000 with a conference average just a hair under 10,000 fans per game. Those numbers are all in line with other power leagues, in fact the attendance is a smidge low and puts us 5th of the 6 power conferences, although we are only 300 lower than 4th place Big 12 and 2,400 higher than the Pac 12. Bonaventure, academic side budgetary issues aside, has none of these things. Their arena holds a little over half of our average attendance, 700 fewer than the average attendance of our lowest drawing school. No practice facility. Attendance of just under 4,000.

Even if the Big East could add bonaventure without an on-court improvement, our perception as a power conference would require them to come into line with these other numbers. You won't find too many power schools who don't have similar numbers. What would this cost the cash-strapped bonnies? UW-Milwaukee's very basic proposed practice facility is estimated at $12 million. Davidson's was $15 million. I haven't found any numbers less than $25 million for an arena in 8-10,000 range. They would have to advertise and get on their journalist alumni to talk them up in the newspapers of Rochester, Albany, and Buffalo in order to increase their attendance. This is all assuming we would take them without any kind of on-court improvement. All in all what are we talking? $50 million? $60? Seems a bit far-fetched for a cash-strapped school to go through just for an extra $4 million a year.

Marquette. In your scenario we add a mid-tier team in UD and a bottom-tier team in SLU. SBU practice facilities can be remodeled and the Bonnies could do what G'twn and 'Nova do-play some games in the city's arena, some on campus. If the numbers became a nightmare then another team would get the nod (Zags, Richmond, HC, BU, etc.) rather than SBU.. Sheg's 13 team model is not team dependent. JP's more NCAA bids scenario is team dependent.

As for Make Your Bones and others: No there are no "guarantees". But of course there are no guarantees in a 10 team league either. We got 4 bids in 2013-14, 6 last season (2014-15), possibly 4 or 5 this season...or maybe only 3? We have yet to see what transpires the rest of the season. "Hold the cards and wait" is a reactionary position, not proactive. Hold the cards and wait suggests that the conference only moves as a response/reaction to external stimuli...such as only 2 teams making the dance, losing 2-3 of the leagues better coaches, the bolting of a top tier team to another conference, etc. And if there is no "next round of reshuffling" we have sat on our hind parts and wasted a good 5-6 year window of opportunity for proactive league management. Sure...okay...fine.