Ackerman - BE - TV Contracts, Expansion, Gonzaga - Oct 2021

[ArmyVet]

The more confident an expansion troll is, the more they’re wrong.

Quick search of user posts indicates that he is a Dayton fan.

[butlerguy03]

Honestly, adding Dayton seems bush-league right now. Ackerman is hinting at Gonzaga.

[Omaha1]

Don’t want anyone to break any copyright rules, so please don’t post the entirety of an article here. But I wondered what the athletic wrote in their piece today about Big East expansion and who we should consider. I’m sure it’s the usual suspects.

[billyjack]

Gonzaga, Notre Dame or Syracuse are the only good options at this time.

Gonzaga : I've supported adding them for years.

Notre Dame : completely different situation compared to November 2012, when loudmouths at ESPN convinced Notre Dame, etc, that we were cooked. ACC football blows. The Big East is the natural home for the Irish, so maybe they'd consider rejoining us.

Syracuse: very unlikely, unless in several years, both (1) their football continues to suck elephant stones, and (2) UConn flourishes in the Big East.

Outside of that group, no one else *at this time* is realistic nor worth inviting.

Also, forget about adding Boston College, Wake Forest, Vanderbilt or other dregs from other conferences. Why would we ever do that? "Hey people, give a big welcome to Wake Forest, which has finished 14th in ACC hoops the last 17 years; and our old friends BC which has gone 3 and 84 in the last 10 ACC years". I mean, c'mon... no... the ACC and SEC wpuld dump all of these dumpster fires immediately if they had a chance.

The UConn addition was such a home run, both in real life and in perception to the average fan, that any other program of lower quality and status would be a complete downer.

[kayako]

So going back to the 3 man weave's basketball budget research, Gonzaga's budget would rank only behind Marquette, Georgetown, and Nova. Why don't they play more games at the Spokane Arena?

[kayako]

Don’t want anyone to break any copyright rules, so please don’t post the entirety of an article here. But I wondered what the athletic wrote in their piece today about Big East expansion and who we should consider. I’m sure it’s the usual suspects.

A review of the usual suspects, and what I believe is Dana's own idea of pairing Gonzaga up with some crazy names out west.

[Omaha1]

People act like funding travel for Olympic sports is a deal breaker, but how many of those sports are making regular trips already? Gonzaga has to fly their teams to most or all of their league events already already, right? A lot of people thought that the travel would be an issue for Creighton as we are on an island, but it doesn’t seem have to been one.

[DeltaV]

I'm wonder if this is just vague talk by Ackerman to be non-committal but remain open if something does fall into our lap.

I mean, what has really changed recently, as far as we're concerned? I've been off work this week, but I don't think Boeing has announced the launch of a supersonic airliner. Non of the mid-major candidates have done anything that would make them all of the sudden more attractive. Kansas isn't coming; you can probably argue that with the addition of Houston and Cincinnati, that the Big 12 will become a better basketball conference, and even with reduced football payouts they'll still likely get more in the Big 12 than with us and an independent football team. Neither is Notre Dame; don't they have a contract that states if they join a conference, it has to be the ACC? The ACC isn't going to shed teams, and Syracuse is going to need that money to pay someone of stature to replace Boeheim in the hell forsaken wasteland that is upstate NY.

And if there really was some monumental shift coming in the football world, I'd be a little surprised if our little basketball conference was involved in the discussions. Yes, we punch above our level, and we have history, but power and money are consolidating, without respect for history.

[butlerguy03]

People act like funding travel for Olympic sports is a deal breaker, but how many of those sports are making regular trips already? Gonzaga has to fly their teams to most or all of their league events already already, right? A lot of people thought that the travel would be an issue for Creighton as we are on an island, but it doesn’t seem have to been one.

This is a great point. A close trip is much different on the west coast than the east coast or Midwest. Right now, if Gonzaga does a round trip for each game, they are roughly doing 20,000 miles just for league play.

If they were to agree to multiple road games per trip, you can cut down on mileage pretty easily. Bare with me, these are "as the crow flies" to simulate a flight as much as possible.

If you group these together, total mileage is about 39,000:
Creighton
Marquette & Providence
DePaul & Connecticut
Butler & St. John's
Xavier & Seton Hall
Georgetown & Villanova

If you group these together, total mileage is about 35,000:
Creighton
Marquette & DePaul
Butler & Xavier
Seton Hall & St. John's
Connecticut & Providence
Georgetown & Villanova

If you group these together, total mileage is about 25,000:
Creighton, Marquette & DePaul
Butler & Xavier
Georgetown, Seton Hall & St. John's
Villanova, Uconn & Providence

Very easy to accommodate, but Gonzaga would have to be on board with multiple 3-game road trips.

[jfan]

Our retired AD Bruce Rasmussen just said we should take Gonzaga in basketball only. That would eliminate the travel costs for all the other sports and make the possibility of adding the Zags even more attractive! Just his take, but it seems like a good one.