The Holy Land of Hoops

People like to speculate on teams #11 and #12, sticking close to the Big East footprint, trying to find institutions with cultural fit. But very rarely do we see outside-the-box ideas, and when we do, the ideas are often not presented in a very structured way. Ideas in this thread should be posted in the following format:

What teams were added?
Team A, Team B

What do they bring to the table?
Huge new markets

What circumstances led to their inclusion?
The south rose again

What, if anything, would change about the league with these teams?
Zilch

To start things off, I'll add my own idea.

What teams were added?
St. Louis, Gonzaga, BYU, Loyola (Los Angeles)

What do they bring to the table?
3 of 4 have large fan bases, all bring new potential TV markets. Loyola-Los Angeles is a large Jesuit university in a great city; it's a "project" school that currently does not compete at the same level as the other institutions. All Big East schools remain private institutions of high academic caliber.

What circumstances led to their inclusion?
Fox Sports 1 worked with the Big East to sweeten the deal with more teams for more TV inventory. Fox likes stealing Gonzaga and BYU's basketball games from ESPN.

What, if anything, would change about the league with these teams?
A preseason conference tournament would be played in Los Angeles at the Staples Center. All Big East teams would play 2 games that count toward the conference standings. The 2-day event would feature back-to-back-to-back games all day long (7 each day). The Big East preseason tournament becomes a heavily promoted event on the west coast akin to the tourney at MSG.

Outside the box? I think you just blew up the box...

Yeah, that's looking like a mushroom cloud there with absolutely no survivors. What a disaster that plan would be. Yikes!

So I take it nobody wants a warm weather tournament to kick off the Big East season? It's cold in Omaha right now and I want an excuse to get out!

Can I play? BYU, meh, how about St. Mary's in CA. They have some fun teams with Aussie imports. And why not change the name to the Big East-West?

GreatDaneAttorney wrote:So I take it nobody wants a warm weather tournament to kick off the Big East season? It's cold in Omaha right now and I want an excuse to get out!

Well I know geography means nothing in college sports anymore, but I really doubt big east games would draw in LA. I also doubt Loyola-LA has the following to change that.

For your Creighton road trip to SoCal, I recommend talking your coach into scheduling a road trip to a couple of UCLA, USC, SDSU, USD, LBSU, etc... At least they'll all give you a quality game unlike Loyola-LA.

GreatDaneAttorney wrote:People like to speculate on teams #11 and #12, sticking close to the Big East footprint, trying to find institutions with cultural fit. But very rarely do we see outside-the-box ideas, and when we do, the ideas are often not presented in a very structured way. Ideas in this thread should be posted in the following format:

What teams were added?
Team A, Team B

What do they bring to the table?
Huge new markets

What circumstances led to their inclusion?
The south rose again

What, if anything, would change about the league with these teams?
Zilch

To start things off, I'll add my own idea.

What teams were added?
St. Louis, Gonzaga, BYU, Loyola (Los Angeles)

What do they bring to the table?
3 of 4 have large fan bases, all bring new potential TV markets. Loyola-Los Angeles is a large Jesuit university in a great city; it's a "project" school that currently does not compete at the same level as the other institutions. All Big East schools remain private institutions of high academic caliber.

What circumstances led to their inclusion?
Fox Sports 1 worked with the Big East to sweeten the deal with more teams for more TV inventory. Fox likes stealing Gonzaga and BYU's basketball games from ESPN.

What, if anything, would change about the league with these teams?
A preseason conference tournament would be played in Los Angeles at the Staples Center. All Big East teams would play 2 games that count toward the conference standings. The 2-day event would feature back-to-back-to-back games all day long (7 each day). The Big East preseason tournament becomes a heavily promoted event on the west coast akin to the tourney at MSG.

I think it's agreat idea. One of the things it has going for it is that LA has no pro football. So, once the colege football is season is over, there wouldn't be much competition for fan interest in LA at that point - as long as the tournament avoided the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day. In fact, if it were scheduled right before the Rose Bowl, it might actually become an attraction since there are so many extra people in LA at that time and some of them might buy tickets to see some good college basketball.

BTW, I assume you're talking about Loyola-Marymount? They would definitely be a project, but so was Seton Hall when the Bog East was first formed. Having a commitment from them to upgrade the program would be a "must". At least they have a huge market. Imagining a conference with teams in NY, LA, and Chicago would have to be very tempting.

On a side note, I think that too much is made of adding "new" markets. No team "delivers" it's home market. Each team has it's fan base as well as others who are fans of college basketball, but no one delivers the home market the way a pro team does. Adding another team within a market intensifies interest within that market and expands the penetration of that market. Thus, adding a St. Joe's, for example, in the Philly market would be a plus. Same thing with adding Dayton in southwest Ohio as another example.

but, since this is just for fun- here's my outside the box expansion idea.

Add 10 teams to double the size of the conference. The conference will then be split into 2 divisions as follows:

United States Division:
Butler
Creighton
DePaul
Georgetown
Marquette
Providence
Seton Hall
St. John's
Villanova
Xavier

European Division:

Fatih University (2013 and 2014 European Universities Basketball Championships Silver medalist, also brings the Istanbul TV market)
German Sport University Cologne (Germany seems like a good market and they were in the 2014 Euro championships so it seems like a good choice. Replace with a better German team if there is one)
Oxford University (Struggling in the Premier League at 1-5, but comes with a massive brand name. They're a project with a potential huge payoff, kind of like DePaul)
Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (if they have a basketball program, or whatever Spanish team in a major city has the best program)
Universite Paris Est Creteil (I'd happily replace them with the French University League Champion but until we know who that is, I'll choose the team from that amazing Paris TV market)
University College Dublin (performed well at the Ireland College basketball championships and location, size, and brand name give it more potential than the champion, University of Ulster Jordanstown)
University of Bologna (best basketball school in Italy as far as I can tell without being able to read Italian, replace with another Italian school or 2 if I'm wrong)
University of East London (currently 6-0 in the British University Basketball Premier League with a +257 point differential, also brings the huge London TV market)
University of Split (Croatian University that regularly performs well in the European Championships, 2013 gold medalist and 2012 silver medalist)
Vytautas Magnus University (2012, 2011, 2010, 2008, 2007, 2006 European Universities Basketball Championship Gold Medalist)

I can't believe I just wasted my time with that, but I guess it actually was kind of fun and interesting to learn a bit about college hoops in Europe.

Anyway, all non-revenue sports will only compete within their divisions, with the exception of the conference tournament/championship, which will be contested by the qualifying teams from each division. In basketball, each team will face every other conference opponent once. This means each team will play 5 overseas games a year and for the sake of travel expenses, they will be condensed into a single 5-game road trip.

This brings a bunch of new large European media markets to sell the Big East name to, and the opportunity to sell European broadcasting rights. Just imagine the money we'll be raking in when we combine our Fox Sports TV deal over here with a Sky Sports TV over there (because we'll obviously tell ESPN UK to get lost)! We'll give our fans some fantastic vacation opportunities and turn the Big East into a global brand that will rule college sports!

Personally, I like being at ten teams and having a true double round robin. My only ideas are things like not giving a team a share of the NCAA tournament money if their RPI is outside of the top 150 and they didn't compete in the NCAA tournament, or getting a worse seed in the conference tournament if your team failed to be at least .500 out of conference.

The Big East is rebuilding a brand. There will be no movement whatsoever in adding teams for at least 5 years and then they will pounding on our midtown door.