Val bursts into your office, WE HAVE TO CHOOSE TODAY!

[DudeAnon]

Choose 2.

[ivet]

Need more schools on the Eastern Seaboard. Tell Holy Cross to heavily invest in their BBall program again

[robinreed]

VCU first, Wichita second.....we need schools with larger student bodies and alumni numbers but without football. Unless UConn ever comes along.

[redmen9194]

None of the above...

[GumbyDamnit!]

If a gun to my head I say we go big. Would rather go to 14 than 12 if we are going to expand and would rather make it a true BB national conference. BYU, Gonzaga, SLU & UCONN.

Two divisions--EAST and WEST. Play RR in your division and alternate vs. West every other year. 19 total games. East becomes oBE + X. You want to talk about potential rivalries.

EAST
Nova
Gtwn
SHU
SJU
PC
UCONN
XU

WEST
Butler
DePaul
Marq.
Creighton
SLU
Zags
BYU

No gun to my head...what Redman said.

[GoldenWarrior11]

UConn, VCU, Dayton, SLU.

We would solidify the East coast with two public schools, that way there is not an isolated public in the conference, and we would also add to strong basketball-focused programs in the Midwest.

Gonzaga, however, is just too tempting... I'm consistently torn as to whether or not it is feasible for them to join (or even if they would want to). They would make the Big 12-WVU island look like nothing at all.

[marquette]

VCU first, Wichita second.....we need schools with larger student bodies and alumni numbers but without football. Unless UConn ever comes along.

Wichita only has 15,000 students. That's pretty much right in our average now.

[Edrick]

Val, my wife is tired of you showing up at my office.

It's not even a good excuse. You and I both know, there's 0% chance of expansion.

[Frank the Tank]

SLU is automatic.

#12 is a toss-up between VCU and a school that wasn't listed: Davidson. Short-term on-the-court factors favor VCU, but Davidson is more of a Big East-like institution with incredible academics and a better location while still having on-the-court bona fides. I'm a long-term thinker, so I'd go with Davidson.

I'm always perplexed by the suggestion of Wichita State (outside of understanding that fans often can't look past immediate or very recent on-the-court success). They obviously have a great basketball program today, but the standard for expansion should always be what a school brings to the table even when they're terrible on-the-court (because it eventually happens to *every* program, even the blue bloods). A public school that doesn't look like the rest of the Big East can be forgiven with the right location and fan base (i.e. VCU or, as much as the Big East should just forget about them, UConn), but Wichita State brings *nothing* to the Big East if it's not winning basketball games, which makes it the riskiest type of expansion move of them all. They bring no TV market of any value, no recruiting territory, no academic prestige, and no institutional fit whatsoever with the rest of the Big East schools. Wichita State is the essence of on-the-court short-term fan-based thinking as opposed to long-term off-the-court university president-based thinking.

[stever20]

SLU is far from automatic. They have to show the last few years wasn't a fluke on the court.