ESPN bias against the Big East

[DudeAnon]

Get used to it people. ESPN is a business and I don't foresee their coverage changing. We do need to expand though so we can stop beating each other up with our conference schedule.

[milwaukeejedi1]

"Fraschilla said the new Big East has done pretty well under difficult circumstances, but he thinks that other than Creighton’s Doug McDermott and a few other players, there is little star power in the league.

“It looked like a league in transition, in terms of players,” Fraschilla said. “I think the potential is there to be a very solid league. Certainly never where it was. It can be a top seven or eight league, even a top six. But this year I thought it would be a transition because there are not many great players in the league. Ultimately that well be how the league is determined in the future. Can Marquette get back to where they have been? Can Georgetown? Can Xavier get back to a level they have been at for a decade and a half. There is opportunity for the league to grow and get better.”

So, according to Fran, the Big East is worse than (or will be not as good as)the SEC, AAC, and A-10. Ridiculous!


http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/sports/248911331.html

[XUFan09]

"Fraschilla said the new Big East has done pretty well under difficult circumstances, but he thinks that other than Creighton’s Doug McDermott and a few other players, there is little star power in the league.

“It looked like a league in transition, in terms of players,” Fraschilla said. “I think the potential is there to be a very solid league. Certainly never where it was. It can be a top seven or eight league, even a top six. But this year I thought it would be a transition because there are not many great players in the league. Ultimately that well be how the league is determined in the future. Can Marquette get back to where they have been? Can Georgetown? Can Xavier get back to a level they have been at for a decade and a half. There is opportunity for the league to grow and get better.”

So, according to Fran, the Big East is worse than (or will be not as good as)the SEC, AAC, and A-10. Ridiculous!


http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/sports/248911331.html

That's just laughable.

[BillikensWin]

ESPN is going to take a massive dump on competition they fear forever. The Big East will be fine with their FS1 partnership.

I shouldn't say much more though...the ESPN coverage for SLU has been a little better.

[xsteve1]

I really hope Nova can win it all and shove it right back in their faces.

[Bill Marsh]

At first I thought this would be another "chip-on-shoulder" thread, but that's actually legitimately BS what they are saying. I'm not surprised that they are saying it, but wow, way to stray from reality. The old Big East was better than the new, but the future of the AAC isn't looking nearly as good as the future of the Big East.

No it wasn't....

http://kenpom.com/blog/index.php/weblog ... he_numbers

Current Big East fans love to post this, while missing the point that Ken Pomeroy is trying to make: The Big East still deserves attention. And I agree with that. He says, "This isn’t the only way to evaluate conference strength, but it does shed some light on the relative merits of the new and old configurations." You know what's another way to judge conference strength? The number and quality of tournament teams, and that's how people really judge conferences. Syracuse vs. Creighton is a wash this year (though not historically). Louisville vs. Xavier isn't even close. Neither is Pitt vs. Butler. UConn and Cincinnati are good too.

It has to be nice not playing god-awful Rutgers and South Florida, but the top of the conference took a big hit. This is a much more well-rounded conference, but the old Big East never had to worry about the possibility of only sending 20% or 30% of its conference to the tournament.

How did the top of the conference take a big hit? With Villanova and Creighton! the top is as good as it's ever been. It's the middle that's had trouble measuring up to recent standards.

If the standard you want to use to measure is number and quality of tournament teams, then we don't know either of those yet. What happens this week actually matters. The decisions haven't been made yet. If 5 BE teams get in (50%) - which is still possible - that will be pretty much as good as it's ever been. If 4 get in (40%), then it won't be far off.

As for quality, we're even farther away from that being determined. It will all come down to tournament wins. Right now, all we have are guesses, which frankly aren't worth much.

[XUFan09]

Add Creighton, take away Syracuse, Pitt (regular season warriors), and Louisville. And this is Villanova's fourth Kenpom top 10 team of the past decade, so that's a wash. Overall, that's a collective hit.

And the quality of those tournament teams matters. Last year there were seven single-digit seeds from the Big East. Seven again the year before. Then ten, then eight, then seven, then seven, then six (and so on). Barring a conference tournament run, this year will have only two single-digit seeds.

[Bill Marsh]

Add Creighton, take away Syracuse, Pitt (regular season warriors), and Louisville. And this is Villanova's fourth Kenpom top 10 team of the past decade, so that's a wash. Overall, that's a collective hit.

And the quality of those tournament teams matters. Last year there were seven single-digit seeds from the Big East. Seven again the year before. Then ten, then eight, then seven, then seven, then six (and so on). Barring a conference tournament run, this year will have only two single-digit seeds.

Whoa, Nellie. My head hurts from what you just did. Which is it? This year or the past ten?

This year, Pitt is not at the top of anyone's conference this year. Louisville is down the list a little ways from the top of the conference, being outside the RPI top 20. And syracuse is falling apart as we speak. Let's wait until the endo f the season before we decide if they are what we've thought they were all year.

Second, you're rattling off raw numbers. Obviously there are fewer top teams because there are fewer teams. The conference was reduced in size by almost 40%.

Third, if we're going to talk past decade, then Marquette, Georgetown, Butler, and Xavier are back in the conversation.

Fourth, the quality of those tournament teams does matter. But quality is not determined by seeds. It's decided by actual games, by how teams perform on the court during the tournament. We don't know that yet.

[senditinjerome]

What does everyone expect?....

ESPN is a business out to make money, just like any other business. Therefore, they're going to push their product (AAC) over the competitor's product.

I'm sure the Big East and ESPN had negotiations, and I'm sure ESPN's offer was a lot less. That's the risk the Big East took when they signed up with Fox....take more money and go with an unproven upstart or take less money and have the backing, might and promotional machine that is ESPN.

[GoldenWarrior11]

The only entities that should be getting worried right now are UCONN and Cincinnati. In just two short years, they will have gone from playing Syracuse, Georgetown, Pittsburgh, Notre Dame, Louisville, Marquette, St. John's, West Virginia, etc. in basketball to Tulsa, Tulane, East Carolina, UCF, Houston and the rest of the gang from Conference USA 2.0.

Your conference doesn't dictate how competitive you can be, but it definitely affects the perception of your program and prestige with the schools you are associated with. In my opinion, both schools are currently treading water, hoping for a life-preserver to be thrown by either the ACC or Big XII (or, in UCONN's case, however big a long shot, the BIG 10). They will not be able to keep up their program prestige by playing these schools in basketball.

I have the utmost respect for these two schools, as we had some great memories competing in the previous incarnation of the Big East. I sincerely hope they get their ticket punched into the P5, as they truly cannot afford to be left behind.