Welcome to The Holy Land of Hoops

WINNER - all caps
UConn. By all accounts, the Huskies were spiraling in terms of fan apathy and financial distress. Acknowledging that they are a basketball school and rejoining the Big East will be an enormous boost to their sagging attendance in hoops. Recruiting will improve and rivalry games against northeast teams will help in many ways.

Winner
Big East. It’s the best 11th option. UConn doesn’t match the profile of the other 10 in size and the public/private piece could be an issue at some point. Nevertheless, history matters and UConn belongs with us.

Losers
UConn football fans. Attendance indicates there aren’t many to begin with, but this is a death sentence.

St. John’s & Providence
As an outsider, I feel like PC especially improved the past 7 years as the absence of UConn allowed Cooley to elevate the Friars. St. John’s has the potential and the market size, but how much will they suffer now with another powerhouse in the neighborhood.

I’m sure that I am missing some but these are my initial thoughts. Interested in your opinions.

On the whole, I don't consider adding UConn to be a problem for Providence. To me, it's a huge net positive, and a huge boost to New England hoops.

billyjack wrote:On the whole, I don't consider adding UConn to be a problem for Providence. To me, it's a huge net positive, and a huge boost to New England hoops.

I don't see them as a problem for St. John's, either. Hurley has recruited well the past couple years in the AAC. St. John's hasn't gotten a 4 star NY recruit since Ponds.

If UConn helps us earn a higher TV contract, then that is one way they'll help.

Plus, I much rather play one more game at MSG each year rather than a low level OOC game at CA.

Biggest Loser: the AAC. Aside from losing its biggest basketball brand, and now having to go to a round-robin in basketball (where everyone plays Tulane/ECU twice), it is now locked into a deal until 2032 for the exact same amount of payouts ($7 million) when the P5 will all be negotiating/signing new TV deals in the next few years. There are no clear-cut candidates to expand with for football, and the league lost the best women's basketball program in the country. Aresco's comments a few weeks ago about division-less conferences make much more sense now (the league foresaw this coming). There is absolutely no way that ESPN will pay more money for a replacement, and I wouldn't doubt that they would simply eliminate UConn's shares under the deal and just pay all the other schools the same value (which allegedly ESPN has the option of doing via Dodds). Aresco wanted to get to that magical $1 billion figure for the next TV deal; in order to do so, he signed away the conference's rights for another twelve years. Rough.

So glad we ended up with Val after the divorce. If we sided with Aresco and the football schools, we are likely looking at expansion candidates like Southern Mississippi, UAB or Marshall -

LMS wrote:WINNER - all caps
UConn. By all accounts, the Huskies were spiraling in terms of fan apathy and financial distress. Acknowledging that they are a basketball school and rejoining the Big East will be an enormous boost to their sagging attendance in hoops. Recruiting will improve and rivalry games against northeast teams will help in many ways.

Winner
Big East. It’s the best 11th option. UConn doesn’t match the profile of the other 10 in size and the public/private piece could be an issue at some point. Nevertheless, history matters and UConn belongs with us.

Losers
UConn football fans. Attendance indicates there aren’t many to begin with, but this is a death sentence.

St. John’s & Providence
As an outsider, I feel like PC especially improved the past 7 years as the absence of UConn allowed Cooley to elevate the Friars. St. John’s has the potential and the market size, but how much will they suffer now with another powerhouse in the neighborhood.

I’m sure that I am missing some but these are my initial thoughts. Interested in your opinions.

Meh, Seton Hall and Nova are closer to MSG than UConn. Not really worried about UConn coming to town.

Loser - Temple basketball? Talk about being in an island. There's also the increased chance of reduced games vs. Nova if BE goes 20 conference games. I believe only Nova comes close to selling out the Liacouras center.

Winner - Maybe Big East WBB? According to Borzello Uconn ladies went 120-0 in the aac with only 1 close game in 6 years. Hopefully we can do a little better than that, which should help both uconn stay awake during the regular season and also the likes of DePaul and Marquette perform better in the WNCAAT.

Many of you won’t care, but Big East baseball is a winner here. UConn is a pretty darn good program and a good add for Big East baseball.

GoldenWarrior11 wrote:Biggest Loser: the AAC. Aside from losing its biggest basketball brand, and now having to go to a round-robin in basketball (where everyone plays Tulane/ECU twice), it is now locked into a deal until 2032 for the exact same amount of payouts ($7 million) when the P5 will all be negotiating/signing new TV deals in the next few years. There are no clear-cut candidates to expand with for football, and the league lost the best women's basketball program in the country. Aresco's comments a few weeks ago about division-less conferences make much more sense now (the league foresaw this coming). There is absolutely no way that ESPN will pay more money for a replacement, and I wouldn't doubt that they would simply eliminate UConn's shares under the deal and just pay all the other schools the same value (which allegedly ESPN has the option of doing via Dodds). Aresco wanted to get to that magical $1 billion figure for the next TV deal; in order to do so, he signed away the conference's rights for another twelve years. Rough.

So glad we ended up with Val after the divorce. If we sided with Aresco and the football schools, we are likely looking at expansion candidates like Southern Mississippi, UAB or Marshall -

why would the AAC be forced to go round robin? When they had 11 before, they didn't have round robin. Also, very possible that the AAC gets a VCU to replace UConn.

This could be a situation where frankly everyone wins. Big East will improve in basketball(though going 20 conference games I think is really foolish, all it does is make the overall records worse). AAC will if they can add VCU be at least as good on the floor as they have been in basketball, and I don't think anyone can question this, will improve a lot in football.

For anyone who thought Stever was a UCONN fan... He's having a blast trashing UCONN on that other board.

Husky_U wrote:For anyone who thought Stever was a UCONN fan... He's having a blast trashing UCONN on that other board.

I'm pretty sure we had confirmed he was an AAC fan (VCU maybe), which sort of fits.