So What Does This Mean for the Big East?

[Michael in Raleigh]

Again. I ask. how do they regulate these rules? and how will they enforce them? you can set the max and come up with any reasonable payout scales, but in the end it's about winning and often times winning at all cost. someone will start to abuse the system.

<b>this whole thing started with BIG5 thinking 'why should we play by the same rules?'</b>

it won't be long before schools like Texas asks the same question about their conference association.

Well, if you ask me, it started with them thinking, "Oh crap, we might not win this O'Bannon case. We better start doing something to show we're doing what's best (and legal) in the eyes of the courts." Then the NCAA, and Big Five leagues specifically, started getting rapidly increased heat form the media and the public for making such enormous amounts of money more than they had in the past without increasing the benefits to athletes, aside from just better facilities. Then they got sued by more people. Then the Northwestern unionization case came along, with the NLRB deeming that NW athletes are indeed employees.

They're trying to cover their own butts and show the courts, "See, we're doing what's right for 'student'-athletes." They're scapegoating the lesser revenue leagues for not being willing to vote for stipends, so they're saying, "Give us autonomy, or else."

IMO, their opinion, their motive is not to squash competition from G5 leagues, from low-majors, mid-majors, or high-majors like the Big East who don't happen to be Power Five. Their motive is to fend off litigation from current and former players, and to prevent teams from trying to unionize. In their eyes, if squashing competition is a byproduct, so be it, but they're going to do what they want.

[robinreed]

My greatest fear in the upcoming quagmire is will the Big 5/Power 5 etc. increase the number of grants in aid for basketball. If the full cost of attendance increases student cost by $6,000 to $12,000 per player per year it will be acceptable for many of the BE schools. However if the Big 5 increase the number of scholarships from 13 to 20 many of us will be in trouble. I would also expect them to increase scholarships for football however that will not effect the BE. I also have questions concerning agents being given almost free reign with the players. It is bad enough now with players leaving early for the NBA. Should a player leave after his second year for the NBA draft, then fail to make the team why should the university be on the hook to pay for his remaining educational costs should he return to get his degree?

Of course there is also the NLRB ruling that the athlete is an employee of the university. The part about unions is of secondary import in my opinion for if the student is an employee then he must not only be paid but the university must provide unemployment comp, SSI and medicare payments and a wide variety of other services including paid sick days and paid vacation. In right to work states the student-employee could be terminated without cause and at any time.

This is a potential disaster however all will feel the adverse effects but the football schools more than others.

[JOPO]

My greatest fear in the upcoming quagmire is will the Big 5/Power 5 etc. increase the number of grants in aid for basketball. If the full cost of attendance increases student cost by $6,000 to $12,000 per player per year it will be acceptable for many of the BE schools. However if the Big 5 increase the number of scholarships from 13 to 20 many of us will be in trouble. I would also expect them to increase scholarships for football however that will not effect the BE. I also have questions concerning agents being given almost free reign with the players. It is bad enough now with players leaving early for the NBA. Should a player leave after his second year for the NBA draft, then fail to make the team why should the university be on the hook to pay for his remaining educational costs should he return to get his degree?

Of course there is also the NLRB ruling that the athlete is an employee of the university. The part about unions is of secondary import in my opinion for if the student is an employee then he must not only be paid but the university must provide unemployment comp, SSI and medicare payments and a wide variety of other services including paid sick days and paid vacation. In right to work states the student-employee could be terminated without cause and at any time.

This is a potential disaster however all will feel the adverse effects but the football schools more than others.

Something that may keep the number of scholarships given in check (ie - raising the number of football and basketball scholarships granted) will be Title XI. There will be some schools, even in the P5, that won't be able to afford that. It will also hurt men's sports that are not basketball and football.

[SJHooper]

Football really did ruin college sports. If the Big East was torn apart for football, you know the power 5 will separate for football from everyone else. Pretty soon the only teams on TV will be from the power 5. It will be like Division I vs. Division II. The power 5 will be division I and everyone else division II. Viewership will greatly decrease for those outside of them, hype will decrease, memories of the good old days of major hoops will slowly fade. I really hate to say this and hope I'm wrong, but the level of greed and corruption these days in college athletics almost assures that this will happen. It's when, not if IMO.

[JOPO]

Football really did ruin college sports. If the Big East was torn apart for football, you know the power 5 will separate for football from everyone else. Pretty soon the only teams on TV will be from the power 5. It will be like Division I vs. Division II. The power 5 will be division I and everyone else division II. Viewership will greatly decrease for those outside of them, hype will decrease, memories of the good old days of major hoops will slowly fade. I really hate to say this and hope I'm wrong, but the level of greed and corruption these days in college athletics almost assures that this will happen. It's when, not if IMO.

You are right. Football should not dictate all other sports. I never understood why football didn't form their own football specific conferences without basketball or any other sport attached as well. They do this for hockey, why not football?

Honestly, I think something that would help would be to cut the number of football scholarships from 85 to 63 (in line with 1AA limits). A professional team in the NFL can only have 53 so I don't see the need for 85 in college. It would not only spread the wealth but help with Title IX issues as well.

[Michael in Raleigh]

Football really did ruin college sports. If the Big East was torn apart for football, you know the power 5 will separate for football from everyone else. Pretty soon the only teams on TV will be from the power 5. It will be like Division I vs. Division II. The power 5 will be division I and everyone else division II. Viewership will greatly decrease for those outside of them, hype will decrease, memories of the good old days of major hoops will slowly fade. I really hate to say this and hope I'm wrong, but the level of greed and corruption these days in college athletics almost assures that this will happen. It's when, not if IMO.

You are right. Football should not dictate all other sports. I never understood why football didn't form their own football specific conferences without basketball or any other sport attached as well. They do this for hockey, why not football?

Honestly, I think something that would help would be to cut the number of football scholarships from 85 to 63 (in line with 1AA limits). A professional team in the NFL can only have 53 so I don't see the need for 85 in college. It would not only spread the wealth but help with Title IX issues as well.

Football doesn't sponsor football specific conferences because many of them have been in existence for decades upon decades, sometimes having played football for longer than any other sport. The Big Ten has sponsored football since the early 1900's. They've had all their sports together basically forever. Why would they change that? The ACC has had its football and basketball in the same league since its 1953 formation. Same for the SEC since 1933. The Pac-12 has only had its current charter for 50+ years, but that group of schools (Pacific Northwest schools and California schools, specifically) have been affiliated together for much longer. They always had all their football together. Why would they change? I'll grant that the Big 12, with outlier West Virginia, might make some sense separating football and hoops, but they've only had such an outlier for two seasons.

There is only one exception I can think of where major college football has had a conference specifically for football that was more or less separate from the ones its schools participated in for other sports. It was the early 90's Big East.

From 1991 to 1995, Big East football was exactly a subset of the larger, full-time Big East conference; rather, Big East football consisted of only 4 of the 10 full-time Big East members. The other four football members were full-time in other conferences. All eight were previously football independents and had a common need for a conference. Syracuse, Boston College, and Pitt played basketball in the Big East. West Virginia, Temple, and Rutgers played in the A-10. Virginia Tech played in the Metro, then later in the 90's in the A-10. Lacking Penn State as an option, for the football league to get a signature program, the other schools badly needed Miami to join the football league. (I wonder, BTW, whether they courted then-independent Florida State as well.) Only thing was that Miami insisted on joining the Big East football conference only on the condition that it also could become a basketball/Olympics sports member. Miami had leverage and were unwilling to settle for the Metro or A-10 for non-football sports. Without Miami, the football conference may never have happened. Syracuse, BC, and Pitt likely would have taken their chances on continued independence or sought out ACC membership much sooner. (Cuse, as I recall, even looked into joining the ACC for football-only.) Still, with Miami in the league, the full conference had just 10 members for a while, small enough for a double round robin on an 18 game schedule if they chose to do so. In effect, for a few years at least, the Big East football conference was a unique, separate league from the main, Big East basketball conference.

In '95, that's when things really started to change quite a bit. WVU and Rutgers left the A-10 for the Big East full-time, ND also joined for basketball, but had nothing to do with football, and VT moved from the Metro to the A-10. By 2000, VT joined the Big East as well. Of the original 8 Big East football members, only Temple never made it in full-time, and they got booted for football around 2004. I think what this illustrated was that football schools felt that being football-only was like being a second-class members of a conference. The Big East was one of the "Big Six" not just for football, but for basketball and other sports as well. (For basketball, of course, it was always one of the best two or three, often number one.) They wanted in, rather than to be in second-rate leagues (in their eyes) like the A-10.

I think what that whole thing illustrates is that conferences that exist only for football are no long-term solution.

The reason they have different conferences for hockey is that no full-time conference has had enough teams to make up for the minimum 6-team membership to create a hockey conference until the Big Ten over the past year or two.

As for reducing the number of scholarships, good luck convincing all those schools who can easily afford them to suddenly eliminate them.

[Michael in Raleigh]

Football really did ruin college sports. If the Big East was torn apart for football, you know the power 5 will separate for football from everyone else. Pretty soon the only teams on TV will be from the power 5. It will be like Division I vs. Division II. The power 5 will be division I and everyone else division II. Viewership will greatly decrease for those outside of them, hype will decrease, memories of the good old days of major hoops will slowly fade. I really hate to say this and hope I'm wrong, but the level of greed and corruption these days in college athletics almost assures that this will happen. It's when, not if IMO.

You are right. Football should not dictate all other sports. I never understood why football didn't form their own football specific conferences without basketball or any other sport attached as well. They do this for hockey, why not football?

Honestly, I think something that would help would be to cut the number of football scholarships from 85 to 63 (in line with 1AA limits). A professional team in the NFL can only have 53 so I don't see the need for 85 in college. It would not only spread the wealth but help with Title IX issues as well.

JOPO,

That football-only conference idea really is interesting.

I do think that widespread conferences like C-USA, the Sun Belt, and the American would make more sense if they were football only. But where do the rest of their sports go if those leagues don't exist except for football?

Would the Big East, in that hypothetical scenario, take back UConn? Would they take Memphis or Cincinnati? Or would they say, "No, we're not going back down that road again?" I'm betting they would not walk back into a world where they may have to again expand reluctantly and again see teams leave.

Where else could UConn and others go? Wouldn't Memphis, Temple, UConn, and Cincy try to start some new hoops league with A-10 schools? How would that work out?

Again, these leagues would make so much more sense if they were football only, but the politics of all these schools and conferences would never, ever allow that to happen.

[Bill Marsh]

This whole thing is a complete joke.

It includes a proposa that "student athletes" spend as much as 50 hours per week on their sport. Last time I looked, that's a full time job with 10 hour work days. Some jobs require that workers get paid overtime with days that long.

BUT these are STUDENT-athletes - full time students at that. They are supposed to be full time students who also work a full time job with long hours???

This entire proposal proceeds in this same hypocritical, contradictory vein. The fat cats who run college sports are making a fortune getting rich off these kids, while pretending that they're interested in amateurism and education. Let's call it what it is. They are running minor league sports and the colleges are rolling over and letting themselves be used.

This entire thing disgusts me.

[BillikensWin]

This whole thing is a complete joke.

It includes a proposa that "student athletes" spend as much as 50 hours per week on their sport. Last time I looked, that's a full time job with 10 hour work days. Some jobs require that workers get paid overtime with days that long.

BUT these are STUDENT-athletes - full time students at that. They are supposed to be full time students who also work a full time job with long hours???

This entire proposal proceeds in this same hypocritical, contradictory vein. The fat cats who run college sports are making a fortune getting rich off these kids, while pretending that they're interested in amateurism and education. Let's call it what it is. They are running minor league sports and the colleges are rolling over and letting themselves be used.

This entire thing disgusts me.

Right on Bill.

[DudeAnon]

Looks like it is going to be happening.

http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/med ... s-feedback

First instinct is that this will be a big blow to the Big East. We will literally be playing by a different set of rules.