ecasadoSBU wrote:Bill Marsh wrote:ecasadoSBU wrote:I wouldn't add teams from the West Coast... Period.
Creighton already stretches the league wide enough (don't get me wrong. Creighton was a fantastic addition. No regrets) . The league needs to add Connecticut as the 11th and final program to join the league. Connecticut will always be a positive move for the conference, no matter the current conditions of their program. Hopefully Connecticut can sort out it's FBS football and land it into a decent conference so that it can rejoin the Big East for all sports. It will keep the round robin intact and give us 20 league games. For the BET, someone could get a bye (odd #)
Forget Gonzaga, forget San Francisco... Wait, did we really just mention SF? No freaking way man
I don't even understand how you guys are okay with flying non-revenue sports programs across the country. It's nuts. It's already tough to fly out to Omaha. Why would you do that to student-athletes?
That’s not the way it works. The fact is that most non-revenue sports wouldn’t be affected.
That flight is easily 5-6 hrs.
Kinda makes you wonder how they did it in the old days when travel was by bus before air travel was routine. Trips of 5-6 hours and more were common.
If that's not the way it works would you at least share how it works. I would truly would like to know. Because I had the understanding that non-revenue sports would compete under the same league...
This has been explained here a number of times before, so I’m not going into detail. Suffice it to say that the conference competition in most sports comes down to a conference tournament at a single site, not head-to-head meets against individual conference members.
and even for revenue sports its a pain to be flying out coast to coast or to the plains.
I would assume that back in the day before the jet era conferences were much more regional than they were today which kept bus trips under 4-6 hours. The Big East was basically a northeast league for much of its initial history.
Being more regional doesn’t matter. Buses travel at 60mph on expressways while planes travel at 600 mph in the air, covering 10 times the distance in the same time.
50-60 years ago, the Ivy League stretched from Philly to Hanover, NH and from Ithaca, NY to Cambridge, MA before all parts of the interstate highway system were completed. Try that in a bus. The Big Ten stretched from Minneapolis to Columbus, OH, The SEC from Baton Rouge, LA to Gainesville, FL, and the PAC 8 from LA to Pullman, WA on the Idaho border. Washington State had replaced Idaho, which had been at an even greater distance. These trips were in winter with delays from weather and traffic. In the old Yankee Conference, UConn and URI were making trips to Orono, ME and Burlington, VT. Try it some time and then imagine doing it on highways as they were in the 1950s and ‘60s.
Before there were buses and interstate highways, travel was by train, which was even slower. The Big Ten is a conference that goes back to the 19th century for goodness sakes.
I have no problem with some people not wanting a member from Eastern Washington. But the claims that the distance makes it impossible ignores the fact that college sports teams always included some long road trips during the season. It’s the time, not the distance that matters. Modern travel with charter planes has shrunk the distances.
Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2018 4:45 pm