Bill Marsh wrote:This is such a bad article on so many levels by a really poorly informed writer. Just for fun, I'm going to take it apart piece by piece:
1. ". . . the inaugural AAC . . . will have AT LEAST 5 of its 10 (50%) in the tourney." This is incredibly misleading in that it implies that someone outside the top 5 has a legitimate chance of winning the conference tournament.
2. "One could argue that the AAC has the best group of 5 teams of any conference as 4 . . . are ranked in the top 25 . . ." One could argue that, but in so doing would just be proving themselves to be an ass. Right now the AAC isn't positioned to have a single member seeded in the top 4 in any bracket. If they do get one, it will likely be a 4-seed. He seems to thank that being ranked in the top 25 actually means something. We can see how little when SMU dropped to #37 in RPI after losing to Temple and it took a road win over UConn to keep them that high. Further, last night's loss to Houston is a devastating blow to Memphis, dropping them to #40. Any more losses like those by either SMU or Memphis could quickly see them on the wrong side of the bubble.
3. "The American has performed better than the Big East . . ." He states that as a fact rather than his opinion. It's obviously only his opinion and a bad opinion at that. By any objective measure, the Big East is ranked as one of the 4 top performing conferences in the country. The AAC is somewhere around #8.
4. "The Big East may only get 3 teams this year . . ." Yeah, and they MAY get 6. And the AAC MAY only get 3. What does a statement like that even mean in comparing the 2 conferences. What MIGHT happen isn't a basis for drawing any comparisons.
5. "Aresco . . . is especially proud of having every conference game on an ESPN platform or CBS Sports. . . Conversely the Big East signed with the nascent Fox Sports 1 network without the anchor of the Big Monday stable it enjoyed for years at ESPN. Without that anchor and the support of BCS football, it could be a major challenge for Big East schools to compete in recruiting and on the court with the power conferences in the future." I agree with him that Big Monday is a loss. However, the conference had gotten so big that most teams in the conference weren't benefitting from it any more, compared to when the conference only had 8-10 members. If anything it was increasing the divide between the haves and have-nots of the conference. But more important, he acts lie being on CBS Sports is helpful. Not in my experience. I live in CT and DirecTV is my provider. I added a sports package so I could get Fox Sports 1. In spite of that, for the first time ever, I can't get many UConn games because they are carried on CBS Sports and I would have needed to do a further upgrade to get them. I didn't go for it. Just my experience, but for me, CBS Sports is a worse platform than Fox Sports 1. Finally, he is clearly biased toward football. He seems to think that having football on campus actually matters to basketball recruits. I would suggest that it's just the opposite. Recruits would rather play for a program in which basketball is #1 on campus regardless of whether the campus has football or not. That's why they go to football non-entities like Kentucky, Kansas, North Carolina, and Duke.
The thing is, BOTH AAC and Big East have CBSSN- with about equal number of conference games shown on it. For Conference games, FS1 has about equal number of games as is on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, and ESPN News. For the life of me, I don't know why everyone wants to compare their CBSSN games to our FS1 games, but ignore the fact that we have some games on CBSSN or even worse, FS2 or FSN.
It would be nearly impossible for the AAC to get only 3 now. You say SMU or Memphis could get out. SMU and Memphis both lose out regular season. SMU 22-8 Memphis 21-9. However- They play each other last regular season game and then QF of conference tourney. If they split, BOTH are going to the tourney. If one loses both they could be out, but the other would definitely be in. Also, SMU has 1 possible bad loss left, Memphis 0. So I'm sorry but 3 teams to me seems like a near impossible feat for them now.
Right now Bracketmatrix has Cincy as a 4 seed. Very possible if Cincy or Louisville wins that they get a 3 seed, with an outside shot of a 2 seed. If either of them wins out from here- they have a top 10 RPI.
Lastly, to a lot of people, conference 1 with 5 teams in tourney conference 2 with 4 teams in tourney- conference 1 would be viewed as the stronger conference. May not be right, but it is what it is. And, yes, that is an objective measure.
Posted: Fri Feb 28, 2014 11:15 am