Conference realignment discussion - v. 2015

[JPSchmack]

Missouri, Texas A&M, Rutgers and Maryland have zero to do with Big East expansion.

You can't compare the addition of a Big East program to the addition of Rutgers & Maryland for the Big Ten. The Big Ten OWNS A CABLE NETWORK and moving BTN from the 600-level extended sports-fan tier to the 300-level basic cable tier in the NY/NJ, Baltimore, and DC metro areas is a massive financial windfall for them that pays for the split of additional teams no matter how good or bad Maryland/Rutgers might be.

Your revenue from Fox is locked in, whether you have 110 people or a 110 million people watching. It only effects your NEXT negotiation, which is six years away.

The idea that focusing on NCAA Bids is "short-sighted" is craziness as far as I'm concerned; For starters, the NCAA bids/units is the sole thing the Big East is going to grow its' brand with. Why do people watch the 10 of you to begin with? Because you win at basketball, make the NCAA Tournament, and win NCAA games. Anything that helps you do more of that is good, and everything else is secondary. (MIT and Carnegie Mellon are great academic institutions, but they're not getting free 2-hour windows on CBS in March).

Secondly, your Fox payout is what, $5 million per school? That's less than three NCAA units. I don't know how you split your NCAA Units up as a conference, but it's FAR MORE important for the Big East to focus on NCAA Units than it is for the SEC, who get $30 million per school from TV contracts. (Not to mention, had Dayton been a Big East member the last two years and performed exactly the same, it would be 7 additional units for the BE, roughly $12-13 million, but also $12-13 million LESS for the Atlantic 10).

And third, more NCAA bids helps your TV negotiating position anyway, period.

[BEwannabe]

I really like the hire of Will Wade at VCU. I think he will continue with the success there and keep the recruits.

With regards to Dayton, it is certainly more of a community of coaches that has led to its historical success. Before Miller, they had Purnell, Gregory, Jim O'Brien and Don Donoher. Surprising that O'Brien was so poor at Dayton, considering he was able to coach for three different teams in the NBA.

The cool thing about the Big East is that teams are not made by one coach, one player, one team, etc. Each school strives for continued success regardless of head coach, players, administration, etc.

In regards to Jim Obrien at UD, he was snake bit , some say cursed because UD fired Don Donoher and after 1 glorious year big NCAA run with a big senior class he transformed he was a bust. To keep it short, 1 player sums up his curse, Chris Daniels, Chris blew out his knee as a freshman, he later recovered not till his senior year and was a stud before dying ( cardiac arrest). Chris's brother wanted to follow Chris to UD but OB and staff were under heat and couldn't take a risk on Chris's younger and shorter brother so he went to Bowling green and then on to a little place known as the NBA for 13 seasons. It's crazy how some things work!

[Bill Marsh]

Only UCONN or Gonzaga move the needle. We shouldn't add unless it's one of those. The president's don't want Gonzaga and UCONN is still hoping for F5 so we minus well wait, we've got 10 years left on our contract. There is no hurry.

How do e know that the presidents don't want Gonzaga? How do we know that they do want UConn? It sounds to me like there are a lot of assumptions eing made.

[Fieldhouse Flyer]

Frank - thanks for your comprehensive post. I agree with much of what you posted, but I have to take exception to the following:

THINGS THAT BIG EAST FANS OVERRATE:

(1) Recent on-the-court results - They matter, but they aren't outcome determinative. I've seen a number of references to fans being concerned about what "pundits" will think if the Big East adds a weaker on-the-court team, which is something that's completely irrelevant to conference realignment.

THINGS THAT BIG EAST FANS UNDERRATE:

(1) SLU - People keep bringing up on-the-court records for SLU, but they are irrelevant with respect to that school. They are school #11 for the Big East. Period. The reason why they aren't in the Big East right now is because they can't decide on school #12. That's it.

RPI Breakdown - Saint Louis Billikens (CBS Sports)

0-12 vs. RPI Top 100 teams

3-2 vs. RPI #101 to RPI #200 teams

5-7 vs. RPI #201 to RPI #300 teams

I can't speak for the BE Conference Presidents nor for the Fox network executives, but I seriously doubt that SLU is the No. 1 choice for BE expansion in the foreseeable future. Saint Louis (both the university and the city) have a lot of good things going for them, but men's college basketball is not one of them.

[R Jay]

Only UCONN or Gonzaga move the needle. We shouldn't add unless it's one of those. The president's don't want Gonzaga and UCONN is still hoping for F5 so we minus well wait, we've got 10 years left on our contract. There is no hurry.

How do e know that the presidents don't want Gonzaga? How do we know that they do want UConn? It sounds to me like there are a lot of assumptions eing made.

They would have been added with one of SLU, Dayton, or Richmond. If the presidents wanted Gonzaga that bad they would have taken one of those three, even if they weren't perfect. Also, Gonzaga has said they would join if if offered.

[Michael in Raleigh]

THINGS THAT BIG EAST FANS OVERRATE

(2) Interest in public schools - ... The desire to not have public schools by the university presidents isn't just random or a mere preference - it's about as strong as any bright line rule that a conference might have in realignment (including the Big Ten with respect to academic standards).

(4) Interest in FBS schools - This crosses over with the interest in public schools. If the Big East wanted a hybrid league, they could have stayed with the AAC schools and had several excellent basketball members (i.e. UConn, Cincinnati, Memphis, SMU, etc.). There's a reason why that didn't happen - ANY school with FBS football has to put *football* first, and the Big East schools (having lived through it with the old Big East) are sick of dealing with it. It doesn't matter how much UConn would draw to MSG or FS1 by joining the Big East again - they are a football-first school by virtue of having a FBS program. At the same time, it is completely unrealistic to think that any school that currently has a FBS program (particularly the ones that still have a smidgen of dreams of joining a power conference) will drop FBS football in the near future.

Frank,

You have talked before about how the Big Ten does have bright line academic standards for their membership, but also that an exception can be made for Notre Dame. Though the Irish have top-notch academics, they have no prospect of membership in the AAU. They fall short of the Big Ten's standards in that regard. On top of that, the Irish add no new markets and no new states to the Big Ten's footprint. But there is only one Notre Dame. They bring something that no one else could. The Big Ten, I'm sure you'd still say, would welcome full-membership of the Irish any day of the week.

Couldn't the Big East view UConn the same way? I'm not arguing that the Big East presidents would want a Wichita State or a Memphis or a Cincinnati or other public FBS school. UConn is different. UConn was with the five east coast schools from day one of the Big East, not mention with DePaul and Marquette for eight years. UConn would mean a LOT to the executives at Fox Sports, whose opinion and influence (and dollars) you admit matters very much to Big East college presidents.

UConn also may be considered worthy of an exception because the Big East would take ONLY them, and not other FBS schools.
- It would be completely different from the old Big East years, when there were 8 FBS and 8 non-FBS schools, with the Big East responsible for a football conference. In this case, there would be 10 non-FBS and just 1 FBS school, and UConn would be responsible for finding a home for its own football home.
- It would be completely different from what the Big East was otherwise scheduled to have: the C7, 3 OBE members (UConn, Cincy, & USF), 6 new members with whom they had no trust or relationships (SMU, Houston, Tulane, UCF, Memphis, & Temple), and 4 FB-only members (ECU, Navy, Boise, & SDSU). The C7 needed to escape that outcome and were willing to give up UConn and the few other good basketball schools in order control their own destiny. That doesn't mean, in and of itself, that they wouldn't welcome back UConn under the right circumstances.

I will grant you that UConn joining would not be imminent. But if there is a viable way in which UConn can give its football team a suitable home (perhaps MWC FB-only membership if the AAC were to lose value by losing a team or two to the Big 12), why wouldn't UConn take interest in the Big East?

Worst case scenario in taking back UConn would be that they'd stay for a few years and then jump to the Big Ten or ACC. There would never be threat of a mass exodus or false promises of loyalty to the league as there was before. So what's the big downside in adding UConn, with UConn being the one and only FBS school, even if it's unlikely over the next several years?

[BEX]

. (Not to mention, had Dayton been a Big East member the last two years and performed exactly the same, it would be 7 additional units for the BE, roughly $12-13 million, but also $12-13 million LESS for the Atlantic 10).

Baloney. they wouldn't have made the dance either year if they were in the BE. They finished 6th in the a-10 last year and were the last team in from a weak A-10 this yr.

[Hoyas]

. (Not to mention, had Dayton been a Big East member the last two years and performed exactly the same, it would be 7 additional units for the BE, roughly $12-13 million, but also $12-13 million LESS for the Atlantic 10).

Baloney. they wouldn't have made the dance either year if they were in the BE. They finished 6th in the a-10 last year and were the last team in from a weak A-10 this yr.

You can make the case last season that if we had 12 teams, we get at least 1 more team in the tourney, if not 2. St John's and Georgetown very possibly could have gotten in. This year, maybe Seton Hall gets in if we had 12 teams. So could have been at least 3-4 extra units.

[Bill Marsh]

Entertaining thread, albeit much of it is a rehash of what has been stated before (with the exception of the out-of-left-field St. Bonnie's fetish).

My observations over the past couple of years on this board (and these are obviously generalizations):

THINGS THAT BIG EAST FANS OVERRATE:

(1) Recent on-the-court results - They matter, but they aren't outcome determinative. I've seen a number of references to fans being concerned about what "pundits" will think if the Big East adds a weaker on-the-court team, which is something that's completely irrelevant to conference realignment.

(2) Interest in public schools - VCU and Wichita State are the epitome of the discord between what fans want versus what university presidents want. They are great on-the-court, but are terrible institutional fits (particularly Wichita State). I'll grant that VCU at least has a chance because their geographic location is desirable for the Big East and you can argue that they're simply the public school urban equivalent in Richmond of what DePaul is to Chicago or St. John's is to New York, but Wichita State is completely far off base. The desire to not have public schools by the university presidents isn't just random or a mere preference - it's about as strong as any bright line rule that a conference might have in realignment (including the Big Ten with respect to academic standards).

(3) Interest in Gonzaga - It's a shame that they are so far away geographically because they're an excellent institutional fit with a great brand name program, but there's "bad geography" (i.e. stretching from Nebraska to the NYC market like the current Big Ten and Big East), and then there's BAD GEOGRAPHY (which is what occurs by adding Spokane as an appendage). We can sit here and make justifications that the travel wouldn't be a big deal, the burden would be on Gonzaga, no one cares about travel costs and times, etc., but this is still underestimating how radical it is for a league that is in a power position (which is what the Big East is in relation to the rest of non-FBS Division I leagues) to make such a far-flung geographic expansion move. As much as the media bemoans how large the new power conferences are, they were all fairly conservative expansions geographically with the exception of West Virginia to the Big 12 (which was done when the Big 12 was backfilling and fighting for its life). University presidents still have a mental picture of geographic proximity for conferences - they might push the boundaries, but that doesn't mean that they'll eradicate boundaries completely.

(4) Interest in FBS schools - This crosses over with the interest in public schools. If the Big East wanted a hybrid league, they could have stayed with the AAC schools and had several excellent basketball members (i.e. UConn, Cincinnati, Memphis, SMU, etc.). There's a reason why that didn't happen - ANY school with FBS football has to put *football* first, and the Big East schools (having lived through it with the old Big East) are sick of dealing with it. It doesn't matter how much UConn would draw to MSG or FS1 by joining the Big East again - they are a football-first school by virtue of having a FBS program. At the same time, it is completely unrealistic to think that any school that currently has a FBS program (particularly the ones that still have a smidgen of dreams of joining a power conference) will drop FBS football in the near future.

THINGS THAT BIG EAST FANS UNDERRATE:

(1) SLU - They are the flip side of VCU/Wichita State: SLU is the epitome of the discord between what university presidents want versus what fans want. People keep bringing up on-the-court records for SLU, but they are irrelevant with respect to that school. They are school #11 for the Big East. Period. I know the on-the-court-focused fans that would rather watch games against VCU don't want to hear it and refuse to believe it, but it's true. The reason why they aren't in the Big East right now is because they can't decide on school #12. That's it. Think of SLU to the Big East as Rutgers was to the Big Ten, where they needed the right partner to make sense, but the location, market and institutional fit means that they could go winless on-the-field/court and still make the university presidents happy. As a general rule, a school still needs to bring value to a league even when they're terrible on-the-court (as opposed to only focusing on their on-the-court peak, which will inevitably fall).

(2) Davidson - ELITE academics - they would be the top-ranked undergrad academic school in the Big East (including above Georgetown). They might have a small enrollment, but ELITE academics (I can't say that enough) combined with consistent on-the-court success and a desirable market location in the Charlotte area means that they're rising up the expansion candidate list much faster than fans are giving them credit for.

(3) The desire to expand overall - The Big East would much rather have a 12-team league than a 10-team league. Don't let the reflexive "We're not interested in expansion right now" commissioner speak fool you. As noted above, the issue is more of not being able to agree who those 2 additions should be. The league sees the writing on the wall: conferences need to diversify themselves both market-wise off-the-court and strength-wise on-the-court. Now, coaches and fans might love the old school double round-robin, but that's going to be a temporary throwback. The modern world of college sports effectively demands that conferences need strength in numbers. (I'd say the exact same thing about the Big 12.)

THINGS THAT BIG EAST FANS APPROPRIATELY RATE:

(1) Dayton - By appropriately rating Dayton, I mean that we really have no idea. They're a great institutional fit with a fantastic fan base and excellent on-the-court program, yet they'd turn the league more Midwestern coupled with an expansion with SLU and they're in a small market that's adjacent to Xavier's market. Big East fans are all over the map with Dayton, and that seems to be how the Big East presidents view Dayton, too.

(2) Richmond - Pretty similar to Dayton in that we (and the university presidents) really have no idea. They provide a more attractive market and better academics than Dayton with a not-quite-as-good on-the-court program (albeit historically solid) and directly competes with VCU.

(3) Other expansion candidates besides the ones mentioned above - Notwithstanding some isolated calls like the one for St. Bonnie's in this thread (no, just no), it seems that Big East fans are in alignment with the presidents on other schools not mentioned up to this point. For example, there isn't any interest in Duquesne despite the institutional fit and favorable Pittsburgh market on paper because the on-the-court product has truly been terrible for far too long. The Big East presidents don't care about on-the-court success in the same way that fans do (where they aren't parsing out how schools perform year-to-year, but the presidents do need to see evidence that they aren't completely inept with no chance for competitiveness and/or a complete lack of history.

Frank, do you have inside information?

It's hard to imagine anyone speaking with the amount of certainty that you so without having some. Is it Purple Book Cat (or whatever his name was)?

[Bill Marsh]

Only UCONN or Gonzaga move the needle. We shouldn't add unless it's one of those. The president's don't want Gonzaga and UCONN is still hoping for F5 so we minus well wait, we've got 10 years left on our contract. There is no hurry.

How do e know that the presidents don't want Gonzaga? How do we know that they do want UConn? It sounds to me like there are a lot of assumptions eing made.

They would have been added with one of SLU, Dayton, or Richmond. If the presidents wanted Gonzaga that bad they would have taken one of those three, even if they weren't perfect. Also, Gonzaga has said they would join if if offered.

You don't know that.

I could say the same thing about St Louis, Frank's favorite expansion candidate. Really you can say that about any candidate. Why weren't they included the first time around? We don't know why they started at 10 and didn't jump to 12 right away. They had their reasons.

It's not about them wanting Gonzaga "that bad". It's more that at this point, they may realize that they're far and away the "best fit" addition that adds the most in ever other way. They might in fact have gotten to the point where they're willing to live with the logistics.

Frank's theory is that the presidents are more about building a conference of cocktail party alumni who cross paths in business, that they're using the conference as an affiliation to facilitate such relationship building. I hope I have that right, but I'm sure he'll correct me if I'm wrong. But Frank was also from the school of thought who were telling us that
Big Ten expansion was all about Notre Dame and Texas.

If in fact there are compelling reasons in the current landscape to move to 12, then they'll do so within the next 3 years as they've said they would. If the list of candidates is getting mixed reviews, then they'll have to make some compromises and take on someone who's not a perfect candidate, someone who has drawbacks. There will likely be a surprise in the final decision,

Anyone predicting the outcome with authority is likely to be wrong as the prognosticators have been in almost very case if expansion. No one saw West Virginia going to the Big XII. Rutgers and Maryland came as a complete surprise. Same with Notre Dame as a partial member of any P5 conference. Missouri wasn't the inside favorite to go to the SEC nor was TCU TO the Big XII. In fact the experts thought the Big XII was dead. The idea that the C7 would step up and form their own conference was laughed at. The thinking was that they were too dependent on the football schools.

If there's one thing that we should have learned by now, it's just when we think we know what's going to happen, something different happens. We know that ESPN played a significant role in the ACC decision to add Syracuse and Pitt. Would it shock anyone if Fox played an equally significant role in the Big East decision?

Finally there are new decision makers at the table. St. John's and Marquette both have new president since the last decision was made. Xavier, Butler, and Creighton all have votes now. We simply don't know what difference these 5 new players at the table will make, but we do know that it's a new decision making body. Therefore, we can only use precedents from the last round of expansion decisions cautiously.