Re: Big East Conference Realignment v2018
Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2018 7:12 am
Bill Marsh wrote:herodotus wrote:I really don't see what adding Gonzaga, and UConn really does for the league. No league can be all powerhouses. Someone has to suck. What happens if Gonzaga, and UConn come in and flex their muscles? What happens is that PC, SH, and another team or two, become non contenders. As they struggle to compete, their recruiting falls off, and they become what they were in the old BE, stuck in the second division. All of this is great for Nova, and X, who add a couple of marquee games to the schedule, but not so great for the others, and if by chance Gonzaga came in and struggled, all of a sudden, you're flying out to Spokane to play the equivalent of Dayton, or VCU. That would get old really quick. The league currently has good balance, and the middle benefits from the league not being too top heavy.
With all due respect, i’ll suggest that’s an oversimplification. By the same logic, the Big East never should have expanded beyond their original number of 7-8 teams. There’s no magic in the number 10.
I also don’t think there’s anything to fear from more local competition in conference. BC used the same logic to keep UConn out of the ACC so that they could dominate New England. The result has been that BC now sucks in both major sports and attendance is down because no one cares about the opponents they bring to town. They have no local rival which is a bad thing in the long run. Meanwhile the Carolina schools thrive in the same conference with beastly rivals literally just a few miles down the road.
Actually, there is magic in the number 10. 10 allows for a full round robin schedule, with each team playing 18 games. This allows each team to have a 13 game ooc schedule to earn wins that don't produce offsetting losses the way conference games do. 11 teams reduces the number of ooc games by 2, and adds 20 losses to the cumulative record; 12 teams pretty much forces divisional play. In the old 9 team BE, every team had a taste of some glory; once the football teams came in, a permanent underclass developed.