I got one question for Big East basketball fans!

[Noonzy]

PLEASE! Let's get off of the UConn thing. They would not join the Big East-period. They tried everything to get out to another conference. Just go over to the boneyard.com and read what their fans say-they are a bunch of loons! Most of their good posters left that board. They want the ACC of the Big. Dmac or another Friar poster-if you guys want to dig up the post by the Godfather on the Scout board and post it here, it will give a good glimpse of the UCon fan base.

[Burrito]

I'm surprised any Providence fans would even want UConn in the Big East. If I was a major recruit living in say Massachusettes, would I prefer to play under a rising Providence program under Cooley or a downtrending UConn program and have to travel to Texas, Oklahoma and Louisianna for conference games. Seems like an easy decision to me. Having UConn in the Big East would negate some of those advantages (from a Providence perspective)

From my perspective, UConn plays football so they are out of the discussion.

[nathanhm]

The issue with Uconn is that they'll leave at the drop of a hat and realistically will eventually get an invite somewhere. Best case we get Uconn for 5 years.

I'd make any invite contingent that a school joins for minimum of 10 years. I'd also set it up so that leaving the BE is a huge cost to the school. I hope they;ve done that. We can't make getting out of the conference easy.

That brings us to what your point is, they'd bolt if they could get in a "better" conference, so they probably would never join in the first place. In that case I hope they rot in the AAC.

The reason this league works is because we are all basketball-centric schools. You can't be a basketball-centric school if you are playing D-1A football.

There is no point to adding UConn because they would have conflicting interests. This would be the best location for their basketball program, but they'd need a place to keep their football program. Right now the AAC is the best place for their football program. Eventually if those two interests get to far apart as we have seen time and time again, they will end up following the $$$$ of the football program over the $$ of the basketball program. Thus it makes no sense to add any school that plays D-1A football.

The reason the SEC, PAC-12, and B1G are considered superior conferences to the AAC, ACC, and Big12 is because the membership has only expanded, they haven't lost members. As great as the Big East brand for us has been it has been tarnished by so many schools jumping ship and wanting to bail on the Big East. To reverse that perception we need membership stability, the only changes in membership should be schools desiring to join the Big East.

UConn is not that program, if they joined us without dropping their football down a notch they would see us a stepping stone until a better offer came along. Even if didn't for a while, they would still have a wandering eye. No amount of punitive punishments are going to keep a school either. Maryland chanced $50M exit fee from the ACC to move up in prestige while the SEC doesn't even have an exit penalty because no one wants to leave. So we could put every rule in place up to keep UConn but what would end up happening is they would still leave and we would look weak but trying to bury them in litigation to leave.

As I said earlier in this thread UConn can join when they move back down to D1-AA.

[DumpsterFireA10]

UConn is a great basketball team, but football is still in play.

I don't think they're getting a Big East invite. I also don't think there are any more going out.

[MUSeashells&Balloons]

I would rather have Kansas, who really doesn't have a football team(Charlie Weiss pays for student tickets from time to time). That is a basketball first school and always will be Uconn is trying to be a football first school.

[DeltaV]

I know I'm a little late to the discussion, but I just wanted to make the point that right now we don't have "4 charter members, 1 long term team, 2 shorter term teams, and 3 newcomers". We have 10 charter members. It may be the same name, but without Syracuse, Pitt, UConn, et al, we are a new conference. Squabbling about who is bringing more to the conference is pointless...either this conference proves that a ball-centric conference can thrive, or, to paraphrase Billy Joel, "We will all go down together".

[Dave]

The issue with UConn is that they won't come.

Because of Football Phobia, they have not been courted.

If you want to ask a girl out, do you tell her how ugly she is, that she should be honored to go out with you, and then consider how interested she is?

We should be courting UConn. Telling her how beautiful she is. What a great fit she would be. Basketball. Non-rev sports. More money. AAC stays football, so best of both worlds. Be part of a Hoops FIRST conference. Sign-up to that, commit your rights, sign the exit clause, and we don't care what you do with football.

If UConn jumped at a later date for P5, so be it, God bless them. That does not threaten the First 10. 5 years, these days, is forever in the current landscape. 5 years of UConn would be a win-win. NYC. MSG. NCAA titles. Enhanced Major Status.

Court UConn. Tell her how pretty she is. Don't crap on her and then say she isn't interested.

Add UConn.

[SJUREDMEN85]

The issue with Uconn is that they'll leave at the drop of a hat and realistically will eventually get an invite somewhere. Best case we get Uconn for 5 years.

I'd make any invite contingent that a school joins for minimum of 10 years. I'd also set it up so that leaving the BE is a huge cost to the school. I hope they;ve done that. We can't make getting out of the conference easy.

That brings us to what your point is, they'd bolt if they could get in a "better" conference, so they probably would never join in the first place. In that case I hope they rot in the AAC.

lol if Yukon wanted in ok, but make the exit fee 15million. Yukon would bitch because they know as soon the ACC calls that they`re going.
But sure come in but when you leave hand over those funds and we`d say tyvm
They wouldn`t come

[dmac80]

I'm surprised any Providence fans would even want UConn in the Big East. If I was a major recruit living in say Massachusettes, would I prefer to play under a rising Providence program under Cooley or a downtrending UConn program and have to travel to Texas, Oklahoma and Louisianna for conference games. Seems like an easy decision to me. Having UConn in the Big East would negate some of those advantages (from a Providence perspective)

From my perspective, UConn plays football so they are out of the discussion.

This is a good point and I can't speak for the group but I have seen many on the PC boards saying screw UCONN. There is a feeling among the PC diehards that UCONN COULD be on the way down and PC certainly looks to be on the way up. If the recruiting trends continue its hard to see PC not being more competitive and getting back into relevance. UCONN's future remains to be seen as last year they had to sit out and it was Ollie's first year there, and even then he still won 20 games. I don't think we'll know the impact of the AAC and Big East moves for few years on recruiting. But I do think if UCONN ends up stuck there for an extended period it will probably hurt them.

[jayball]

The issue with UConn is that they won't come.

Because of Football Phobia, they have not been courted.

If you want to ask a girl out, do you tell her how ugly she is, that she should be honored to go out with you, and then consider how interested she is?

We should be courting UConn. Telling her how beautiful she is. What a great fit she would be. Basketball. Non-rev sports. More money. AAC stays football, so best of both worlds. Be part of a Hoops FIRST conference. Sign-up to that, commit your rights, sign the exit clause, and we don't care what you do with football.

If UConn jumped at a later date for P5, so be it, God bless them. That does not threaten the First 10. 5 years, these days, is forever in the current landscape. 5 years of UConn would be a win-win. NYC. MSG. NCAA titles. Enhanced Major Status.

Court UConn. Tell her how pretty she is. Don't crap on her and then say she isn't interested.

Add UConn.

Dave

If you want to go out with a dog, be our guest. I don't get the repeated harping on this issue. We aren't expanding immediately. They play football. We are basketball only. They would fall all over themselves to get into the ACC. I don't see it happening. Can we just enjoy the birth of the new league without hearing you moan about UCONN every other post? You want to add them. You love dogs. We get it.

Go picket in front of the Big East offices or something. The messageboard is not in charge of adding teams.