ESPN: Big East sets up basketball revolution
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ESPN: Big East sets up basketball revolution
by admin » Tue Apr 04, 2023 6:17 am
Read and enjoy.
https://www.espn.com/mens-college-baske ... ch-madness
HOUSTON -- The echoes of the past accompanied UConn's fifth men's basketball national title on Monday night, as it improved to 5-0 in NCAA championship games and further validated the school's move back into the Big East three years ago.
As UConn brought back a wave of nostalgia, it also came at an opportune time for a league attempting to channel its rich history to help secure the long-term future.
The Huskies' national title comes amid a confluence of events for the Big East that has the league surging toward the trappings of another era of prominence. UConn's title win delivers the Big East three of the past seven national titles in men's basketball.
https://www.espn.com/mens-college-baske ... ch-madness
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Re: ESPN: Big East sets up basketball revolution
by ArmyVet » Tue Apr 04, 2023 11:53 am
National media heaping praise on the 'ol Big East this morning:
National title validates Connecticut's choice to embrace basketball in Big East at football's expense
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/c ... 597562002/
National title validates Connecticut's choice to embrace basketball in Big East at football's expense
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/c ... 597562002/
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Re: ESPN: Big East sets up basketball revolution
by Django » Tue Apr 04, 2023 6:51 pm
Another good article from the Athletic by Eamonn Brennan:
UConn’s national championship validates the Big East’s basketball-first plan
HOUSTON — It looks obvious in retrospect. At the time it was anything but. College athletics had entered a collective delirium. There was a panic in the herd. The conventional wisdom was simple: Football would dominate everything. Traditional geographic rivalries woven into the culture of the sport, into the very fiber of lifelong fans’ lives, were less important than the strange sudden need to scramble around for TV dollars, those of which would be accorded to whomever could offer broadcasters the most attractive, widespread slate of college football inventory.
A years-long run on the bank had begun in 2009, when Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany realized he could ask for more money per Big Ten Network subscriber if the league could bundle itself into cable packages in major markets on the East Coast. This was not a particularly romantic reason to shake the foundations of collegiate sport, but he wasn’t wrong. Shortly thereafter, the B1G poached football-obsessed Nebraska from the Big 12. The Pac-10 agreed to offer membership to a host of Big 12 teams, including Texas schools as big as the University of Texas itself, existentially threatening no less a basketball blue blood than Kansas, where the inventor of the sport was also the very first coach. In 2012, the Big Ten took Maryland — a charter member of the ACC whose athletics department had been financially bereft, which leaped at the chance to make that sweet BTN cash — and ripped it out of the league it had helped found, where its fans felt culturally at home.
The anxiety soon spread to the Big East, a 16-team league with an identity crisis. Big East schools that played Division I football were drunk on dreams of playing football on bigger, larger stages. In 2012, West Virginia decamped to the Big 12. In 2013, Syracuse, Notre Dame and Pittsburgh announced they would leave for the ACC. “There was a tension between football schools and basketball schools,” Big East commissioner Val Ackerman said, standing on the NRG Stadium floor after Monday night’s national title game. “There was a sense of greener pastures with football.”
What happened next was kind of amazing, and remains the best thing to come out of any wave of conference realignment in recent history: The seven Catholic Big East schools took their ball and went home. Or, rather, they took their ball, went across the street, and built a whole new gym for themselves to play in, more or less from scratch. “They made a very courageous move,” Ackerman said.
And look at them now.
UConn’s fifth national title, sealed with another dominant performance in a tournament full of them, was the Big East’s third since the great schism of 2013. UConn won another in 2014, while it was a member of the American Athletic Conference, so we won’t officially count that — someone in the AAC league office’s head would probably explode — but it is undeniably true that programs which are now Big East members have won four of the last 10 national championships. The first two New Big East titles were won by Villanova, one of the relatively small, brave Catholic schools that decided to be true to itself and prioritize basketball, where a brilliant coach had turned one of history’s great underdogs into an annual powerhouse. The most recent was achieved by a program that chased the football dragon, lost itself culturally, and had to come home to fully restore its once-and-future glory.
“What we have,” Ackerman said, “is pretty special.”
It would be hard for even the most entrenched of partisans to argue. Dan Hurley called it the best league in the country from the dais Monday night, and while coaches always say that about their conferences, he did at least present a reasonable case: “We were the most successful in the NCAA Tournament, and we have the national championship,” Hurley said. “So we were the best league in the country this year.” Agree with that or not — the Big 12 was extremely good, after all, aspects of its postseason performance notwithstanding — the Big East was very high on any list of the most fun. Any time any two of the top five teams in the league played, it was a television event worth tuning into, featuring high-level, flowing offensive basketball. Shaka Smart’s retooled Marquette was a revelation. Xavier, in its first year under Sean Miller, played top-10 offense at an appealingly high pace. Creighton was a fourth top-15 team in adjusted efficiency, one that came a bucket away from playing in the Final Four.
Fox Sports broadcaster Gus Johnson elevates most calls he’s on, the perfect complement to the rowdy (and at, for example, Providence, especially drunken) environments in professional gyms in the Northeast. The conference tournament at Madison Square Garden is the most goosebump-inducing postseason event outside of the NCAA Tournament, the perfect cultural coda to every finished season of Big East ball.
It is hard to imagine this stuff not existing in its current form, but the reality is hardly farfetched. Indeed, the timing in 2013 was particularly fortuitous. “The Big East needing a new TV home, and Fox just so happening to be launching Fox Sports 1, this new cable network and needing the programming, that was the marriage,” Ackerman said. “The schools were fortified by that.” Still, it wasn’t initially clear which half of the schism would be called the Big East. The cultural cachet that comes with the name could have wound up with the American Athletic Conference, which instead had to be branded from nothing — probably befitting its hodgepodge (and extremely football-oriented) composition.
The current wave of league supremacy is a far cry from the early years after the move, when administrators at schools worried about the profile of their programs. Would the Big East remain competitive? Would it drift toward the status of a non-power league, an only slightly beefier Atlantic 10?
Nowhere was the preoccupation with football felt more acutely, or more strangely, than at Connecticut. There, an athletics department that had essentially not meaningfully existed until the original Big East was formed — and the Big East dragged a little Yankee Conference hoops program into the big boys a few years before Jim Calhoun showed up — decided to throw in with the American instead. This arrangement, borne out of a desire to play football against Cincinnati and Tulane, was never a particularly snug fit.
Yes, UConn won that men’s basketball national title in 2014, but everything about that title was a bit strange, up to and including the fact that the Huskies were a No. 7 seed with the worst adjusted efficiency margin of any title team in the KenPom.com era, and that it was won by Kevin Ollie, Calhoun’s hand-picked replacement, who would only qualify for one more NCAA Tournament (as a No. 9 seed) before being fired by the school four years later. The national title was confirmation of UConn’s status as a blue blood program and habitual winners, but it didn’t say a lot about the American as a league — a league that has put just two teams in the tournament in each of the past three years.
Now, UConn is undeniably back in its element. These Huskies were a classic, dominant UConn title team, a team that reminded you of nothing else so much as the Emeka Okafor heyday. Hurley looked at the job opening as one of the few places he was sure he could eventually win a national title, and that fact was only enhanced when the school decided to make its moribund football team an independent and move to the Big East, where its flagship basketball program could fully thrive.
“Listen, this has been a very mutually beneficial relationship,” Hurley said Monday night. “The narrative that the Big East saved UConn is a very false one. This has been one of those things where I think we both needed each other in equal measures. We’ve helped elevate this conference by bringing in a blue blood, big brand, huge fan base. All of this helps everyone’s recruiting. We’ll all be strengthened by all of it.”
“It’s a great fit because there’s so many regional rivalries, the history of the Big East, our recruiting footprint is in New York, New Jersey, New England, Philly, D.C.,” UConn assistant Kimani Young said. “And you have the history of the program — the kids might not know, but their families know. And the relationships we all have from our time in grassroots, it’s just the perfect fit.”
There was a sense, from Hurley in particular, that the league with UConn is just getting started. He cited the “coaches moving in,” undoubtedly referring to St. John’s hire of Rick Pitino, which given Pitino’s track record — he is arguably the best tactical coach in modern college hoops history, and current rules allow him to rebuild with transfers immediately — seems likely to result in nearly instant success. Meanwhile, Georgetown, which let its beloved basketball program go dormant under Patrick Ewing, made one of the power plays of the offseason in luring Providence coach Ed Cooley to the Hilltop. Cooley is a proven winner in the league; he may or may not transform the Hoyas into a title team, but he will undoubtedly make them competitive in the Big East sooner rather than later.
At Seton Hall, Shaheen Holloway nearly qualified for the tournament in his first season. Villanova had the rare down year as Kyle Neptune adjusted to the job, and it will be interesting to see where it goes from here — but Justin Moore’s return after a dalliance with the portal is a good sign. Marquette is an early candidate for 2023-2024 preseason No. 1. And UConn is a bona fide blue blood.
The league’s TV deal with Fox expires in two seasons, but the network has already put out initial feelers on a new deal. Another national title win from a massively popular national brand program will hardly hurt the league’s bargaining position in those negotiations.
From top to bottom, in its 10th year, the Big East is getting better. From humble, insecure origins — one of the great structural swerves in college hoops history, in the face of a belief that football would rule exclusively — three national titles have resulted. In a new world of mishmash conferences with questionable cultural fit, a world where Maryland and UCLA will inhabit the same space very soon, the Big East remains the most culturally coherent, romantic league in college sports.
“All of that emphasis and support from fans, it makes a huge difference in the league’s DNA,” NCAA senior vice president Dan Gavitt, whose father, Dave Gavitt, founded the original league, said.
“We are all on in basketball,” Ackerman said.
The Big East may not always be the best, but it always makes the most sense. And it did it by sticking to, and believing in, what it knew best. Seven Catholic basketball schools bet on themselves. The bet is still paying off.
Eamonn Brennan covers college basketball for The Athletic. He previously covered college basketball at ESPN for eight years, where his work was recognized multiple times by the U.S. Basketball Writers Association. Follow Eamonn on Twitter @eamonnbrennan
UConn’s national championship validates the Big East’s basketball-first plan
HOUSTON — It looks obvious in retrospect. At the time it was anything but. College athletics had entered a collective delirium. There was a panic in the herd. The conventional wisdom was simple: Football would dominate everything. Traditional geographic rivalries woven into the culture of the sport, into the very fiber of lifelong fans’ lives, were less important than the strange sudden need to scramble around for TV dollars, those of which would be accorded to whomever could offer broadcasters the most attractive, widespread slate of college football inventory.
A years-long run on the bank had begun in 2009, when Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany realized he could ask for more money per Big Ten Network subscriber if the league could bundle itself into cable packages in major markets on the East Coast. This was not a particularly romantic reason to shake the foundations of collegiate sport, but he wasn’t wrong. Shortly thereafter, the B1G poached football-obsessed Nebraska from the Big 12. The Pac-10 agreed to offer membership to a host of Big 12 teams, including Texas schools as big as the University of Texas itself, existentially threatening no less a basketball blue blood than Kansas, where the inventor of the sport was also the very first coach. In 2012, the Big Ten took Maryland — a charter member of the ACC whose athletics department had been financially bereft, which leaped at the chance to make that sweet BTN cash — and ripped it out of the league it had helped found, where its fans felt culturally at home.
The anxiety soon spread to the Big East, a 16-team league with an identity crisis. Big East schools that played Division I football were drunk on dreams of playing football on bigger, larger stages. In 2012, West Virginia decamped to the Big 12. In 2013, Syracuse, Notre Dame and Pittsburgh announced they would leave for the ACC. “There was a tension between football schools and basketball schools,” Big East commissioner Val Ackerman said, standing on the NRG Stadium floor after Monday night’s national title game. “There was a sense of greener pastures with football.”
What happened next was kind of amazing, and remains the best thing to come out of any wave of conference realignment in recent history: The seven Catholic Big East schools took their ball and went home. Or, rather, they took their ball, went across the street, and built a whole new gym for themselves to play in, more or less from scratch. “They made a very courageous move,” Ackerman said.
And look at them now.
UConn’s fifth national title, sealed with another dominant performance in a tournament full of them, was the Big East’s third since the great schism of 2013. UConn won another in 2014, while it was a member of the American Athletic Conference, so we won’t officially count that — someone in the AAC league office’s head would probably explode — but it is undeniably true that programs which are now Big East members have won four of the last 10 national championships. The first two New Big East titles were won by Villanova, one of the relatively small, brave Catholic schools that decided to be true to itself and prioritize basketball, where a brilliant coach had turned one of history’s great underdogs into an annual powerhouse. The most recent was achieved by a program that chased the football dragon, lost itself culturally, and had to come home to fully restore its once-and-future glory.
“What we have,” Ackerman said, “is pretty special.”
It would be hard for even the most entrenched of partisans to argue. Dan Hurley called it the best league in the country from the dais Monday night, and while coaches always say that about their conferences, he did at least present a reasonable case: “We were the most successful in the NCAA Tournament, and we have the national championship,” Hurley said. “So we were the best league in the country this year.” Agree with that or not — the Big 12 was extremely good, after all, aspects of its postseason performance notwithstanding — the Big East was very high on any list of the most fun. Any time any two of the top five teams in the league played, it was a television event worth tuning into, featuring high-level, flowing offensive basketball. Shaka Smart’s retooled Marquette was a revelation. Xavier, in its first year under Sean Miller, played top-10 offense at an appealingly high pace. Creighton was a fourth top-15 team in adjusted efficiency, one that came a bucket away from playing in the Final Four.
Fox Sports broadcaster Gus Johnson elevates most calls he’s on, the perfect complement to the rowdy (and at, for example, Providence, especially drunken) environments in professional gyms in the Northeast. The conference tournament at Madison Square Garden is the most goosebump-inducing postseason event outside of the NCAA Tournament, the perfect cultural coda to every finished season of Big East ball.
It is hard to imagine this stuff not existing in its current form, but the reality is hardly farfetched. Indeed, the timing in 2013 was particularly fortuitous. “The Big East needing a new TV home, and Fox just so happening to be launching Fox Sports 1, this new cable network and needing the programming, that was the marriage,” Ackerman said. “The schools were fortified by that.” Still, it wasn’t initially clear which half of the schism would be called the Big East. The cultural cachet that comes with the name could have wound up with the American Athletic Conference, which instead had to be branded from nothing — probably befitting its hodgepodge (and extremely football-oriented) composition.
The current wave of league supremacy is a far cry from the early years after the move, when administrators at schools worried about the profile of their programs. Would the Big East remain competitive? Would it drift toward the status of a non-power league, an only slightly beefier Atlantic 10?
Nowhere was the preoccupation with football felt more acutely, or more strangely, than at Connecticut. There, an athletics department that had essentially not meaningfully existed until the original Big East was formed — and the Big East dragged a little Yankee Conference hoops program into the big boys a few years before Jim Calhoun showed up — decided to throw in with the American instead. This arrangement, borne out of a desire to play football against Cincinnati and Tulane, was never a particularly snug fit.
Yes, UConn won that men’s basketball national title in 2014, but everything about that title was a bit strange, up to and including the fact that the Huskies were a No. 7 seed with the worst adjusted efficiency margin of any title team in the KenPom.com era, and that it was won by Kevin Ollie, Calhoun’s hand-picked replacement, who would only qualify for one more NCAA Tournament (as a No. 9 seed) before being fired by the school four years later. The national title was confirmation of UConn’s status as a blue blood program and habitual winners, but it didn’t say a lot about the American as a league — a league that has put just two teams in the tournament in each of the past three years.
Now, UConn is undeniably back in its element. These Huskies were a classic, dominant UConn title team, a team that reminded you of nothing else so much as the Emeka Okafor heyday. Hurley looked at the job opening as one of the few places he was sure he could eventually win a national title, and that fact was only enhanced when the school decided to make its moribund football team an independent and move to the Big East, where its flagship basketball program could fully thrive.
“Listen, this has been a very mutually beneficial relationship,” Hurley said Monday night. “The narrative that the Big East saved UConn is a very false one. This has been one of those things where I think we both needed each other in equal measures. We’ve helped elevate this conference by bringing in a blue blood, big brand, huge fan base. All of this helps everyone’s recruiting. We’ll all be strengthened by all of it.”
“It’s a great fit because there’s so many regional rivalries, the history of the Big East, our recruiting footprint is in New York, New Jersey, New England, Philly, D.C.,” UConn assistant Kimani Young said. “And you have the history of the program — the kids might not know, but their families know. And the relationships we all have from our time in grassroots, it’s just the perfect fit.”
There was a sense, from Hurley in particular, that the league with UConn is just getting started. He cited the “coaches moving in,” undoubtedly referring to St. John’s hire of Rick Pitino, which given Pitino’s track record — he is arguably the best tactical coach in modern college hoops history, and current rules allow him to rebuild with transfers immediately — seems likely to result in nearly instant success. Meanwhile, Georgetown, which let its beloved basketball program go dormant under Patrick Ewing, made one of the power plays of the offseason in luring Providence coach Ed Cooley to the Hilltop. Cooley is a proven winner in the league; he may or may not transform the Hoyas into a title team, but he will undoubtedly make them competitive in the Big East sooner rather than later.
At Seton Hall, Shaheen Holloway nearly qualified for the tournament in his first season. Villanova had the rare down year as Kyle Neptune adjusted to the job, and it will be interesting to see where it goes from here — but Justin Moore’s return after a dalliance with the portal is a good sign. Marquette is an early candidate for 2023-2024 preseason No. 1. And UConn is a bona fide blue blood.
The league’s TV deal with Fox expires in two seasons, but the network has already put out initial feelers on a new deal. Another national title win from a massively popular national brand program will hardly hurt the league’s bargaining position in those negotiations.
From top to bottom, in its 10th year, the Big East is getting better. From humble, insecure origins — one of the great structural swerves in college hoops history, in the face of a belief that football would rule exclusively — three national titles have resulted. In a new world of mishmash conferences with questionable cultural fit, a world where Maryland and UCLA will inhabit the same space very soon, the Big East remains the most culturally coherent, romantic league in college sports.
“All of that emphasis and support from fans, it makes a huge difference in the league’s DNA,” NCAA senior vice president Dan Gavitt, whose father, Dave Gavitt, founded the original league, said.
“We are all on in basketball,” Ackerman said.
The Big East may not always be the best, but it always makes the most sense. And it did it by sticking to, and believing in, what it knew best. Seven Catholic basketball schools bet on themselves. The bet is still paying off.
Eamonn Brennan covers college basketball for The Athletic. He previously covered college basketball at ESPN for eight years, where his work was recognized multiple times by the U.S. Basketball Writers Association. Follow Eamonn on Twitter @eamonnbrennan
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Re: ESPN: Big East sets up basketball revolution
by Jasper67 » Tue Apr 04, 2023 10:09 pm
As much as we all,love the championships, perhaps the best sign of consistency is getting teams to the Sweet 16. Consider the following:
Here are the BE schools who’ve made it to the Sweet 16 since 2015 and the year(s) they did it:
Villanova - 2016, 2018, 2021, 2022
UConn - 2023
Xavier - 2015, 2017, 2023
Creighton - 2021, 2023
Providence - 2022
Butler - 2017
- - Multiple teams to each of the past 3 Sweet 16’s
- At least I team to 7 of the last 8 Sweet 16’s
- A dozen teams to the past 8 Sweet 16’s in total
- Six different programs to the Sweet 16 since 2015
- Six teams to the Elite 8 in the past 7 tournaments
Here are the BE schools who’ve made it to the Sweet 16 since 2015 and the year(s) they did it:
Villanova - 2016, 2018, 2021, 2022
UConn - 2023
Xavier - 2015, 2017, 2023
Creighton - 2021, 2023
Providence - 2022
Butler - 2017
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Re: ESPN: Big East sets up basketball revolution
by mel ott » Wed Apr 05, 2023 10:02 pm
Jasper67 wrote:As much as we all,love the championships, perhaps the best sign of consistency is getting teams to the Sweet 16. Consider the following:- Multiple teams to each of the past 3 Sweet 16’s
- At least I team to 7 of the last 8 Sweet 16’s
- A dozen teams to the past 8 Sweet 16’s in total
- Six different programs to the Sweet 16 since 2015
- Six teams to the Elite 8 in the past 7 tournaments
Here are the BE schools who’ve made it to the Sweet 16 since 2015 and the year(s) they did it:
Villanova - 2016, 2018, 2021, 2022
UConn - 2023
Xavier - 2015, 2017, 2023
Creighton - 2021, 2023
Providence - 2022
Butler - 2017
Interesting that the 3 schools added to the Catholic 7: Butler, Creighton, Xavier made up 50% of those Sweet 16s. Not bad picking. High tide raises all boats ( it has worked out for the original schools and the newbies (including UCONN revisited).
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Re: ESPN: Big East sets up basketball revolution
by XUFan09 » Thu Apr 06, 2023 2:01 pm
mel ott wrote:Jasper67 wrote:As much as we all,love the championships, perhaps the best sign of consistency is getting teams to the Sweet 16. Consider the following:- Multiple teams to each of the past 3 Sweet 16’s
- At least I team to 7 of the last 8 Sweet 16’s
- A dozen teams to the past 8 Sweet 16’s in total
- Six different programs to the Sweet 16 since 2015
- Six teams to the Elite 8 in the past 7 tournaments
Here are the BE schools who’ve made it to the Sweet 16 since 2015 and the year(s) they did it:
Villanova - 2016, 2018, 2021, 2022
UConn - 2023
Xavier - 2015, 2017, 2023
Creighton - 2021, 2023
Providence - 2022
Butler - 2017
Interesting that the 3 schools added to the Catholic 7: Butler, Creighton, Xavier made up 50% of those Sweet 16s. Not bad picking. High tide raises all boats ( it has worked out for the original schools and the newbies (including UCONN revisited).
I'm pretty sure that Xavier up through last year still had the second highest conference win percentage and the second most tournament wins since realignment despite finishing at .500 or lower and not going to the tournament for the last four years. This season was a nice rebound.
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Re: ESPN: Big East sets up basketball revolution
by marquette » Thu Apr 06, 2023 4:09 pm
ArmyVet wrote:National media heaping praise on the 'ol Big East this morning:
National title validates Connecticut's choice to embrace basketball in Big East at football's expense
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/c ... 597562002/
I disagree that UConn sacrificed it's football team. They were getting buried in the AAC and didn't look able to recover. They made a bowl game this year for the first time since 2015 (granted a meaninglessone). Loading up.on cupcakes can help them slowly rebuild and maybe eventually be decent. It has been unquestionably a great move for their basketball.
This is my opinion. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
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Re: ESPN: Big East sets up basketball revolution
by kayako » Tue Apr 18, 2023 3:16 pm
marquette wrote:I disagree that UConn sacrificed it's football team. They were getting buried in the AAC and didn't look able to recover. They made a bowl game this year for the first time since 2015 (granted a meaninglessone). Loading up.on cupcakes can help them slowly rebuild and maybe eventually be decent. It has been unquestionably a great move for their basketball.
I honestly don't see a path for AAC teams to stay competitive in both football and basketball, so I agree that going independent wasn't much of a sacrifice for UConn. Temple's NIL collective for 2022 was reportedly less than $50K, for all sports. How do you compete with that against the likes of Memphis and SMU, nevermind Tennessee and Texas? Most of these schools don't have the alumni support to meaningfully fund both basketball and football. I think non-power conference teams will need to abandon football in order to compete in basketball... and perhaps B12, PAC, and ACC, too, after SEC and B10 take a handful of moneymakers still left in the ACC & PAC12.
Most BE teams should be in okay shape. I used to worry about Providence, Seton Hall, and Butler, but at least Providence has proven it can find a way to come up with enough resources to remain relevant. I think UConn has a decision to make in the next decade, because likely there will be an opportunity to join a watered down power conference...
supernova
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Re: ESPN: Big East sets up basketball revolution
by Xudash » Tue Apr 18, 2023 4:24 pm
kayako wrote:marquette wrote:I disagree that UConn sacrificed it's football team. They were getting buried in the AAC and didn't look able to recover. They made a bowl game this year for the first time since 2015 (granted a meaninglessone). Loading up.on cupcakes can help them slowly rebuild and maybe eventually be decent. It has been unquestionably a great move for their basketball.
I honestly don't see a path for AAC teams to stay competitive in both football and basketball, so I agree that going independent wasn't much of a sacrifice for UConn. Temple's NIL collective for 2022 was reportedly less than $50K, for all sports. How do you compete with that against the likes of Memphis and SMU, nevermind Tennessee and Texas? Most of these schools don't have the alumni support to meaningfully fund both basketball and football. I think non-power conference teams will need to abandon football in order to compete in basketball... and perhaps B12, PAC, and ACC, too, after SEC and B10 take a handful of moneymakers still left in the ACC & PAC12.
Most BE teams should be in okay shape. I used to worry about Providence, Seton Hall, and Butler, but at least Providence has proven it can find a way to come up with enough resources to remain relevant. I think UConn has a decision to make in the next decade, because likely there will be an opportunity to join a watered down power conference...
I think you're right. I was thinking the same thing a few days ago. Afterwards, I decided to visit the Boneyard to see what kind of collective thought process is taking place over there. Some see the value of their affiliation with the Big East. Others? Well, since they are a conference mate presently and I am glad of that, all I can say is OMG!
I'm biased here, having grown up in Ohio as a fan of Ohio State football, and now living in SEC country with Gators and Dawgs all around me, but I seriously don't know what they're thinking with respect to their relative position in college football. To each their own.
I can only hope their exit fee clause with the Big East is non-amortizing. IF/when they leave, may they pay the full freight. Of course, the flip side of all this is that things may break in such a fashion that they won't have to leave due to unforeseen developments in college sports.
Boy oh boy - - this next media agreement is going to be telling.
XAVIER
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Re: ESPN: Big East sets up basketball revolution
by Wizard of Westroads » Tue Apr 18, 2023 9:25 pm
XUFan09 wrote:I'm pretty sure that Xavier up through last year still had the second highest conference win percentage and the second most tournament wins since realignment despite finishing at .500 or lower and not going to the tournament for the last four years. This season was a nice rebound.
https://twitter.com/FriarFanatic93/status/1648329136224579584
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