Expansion: UAB to reunite with Marquette and DePaul in NBE?

[R Jay]

JC, it's our second year as a league and we're already talking about needing to expand to stay relevant! Heck, we were talking about this last year! I'm so glad our presidents are more visionary and patient than a lot of posters on this board.

[DudeAnon]

Why in God's name would we add UAB? Am I missing something, isn't this a basketball conference? Jesus guys, if we allow a public school in I can think of tons better than UAB. Someone needs their head checked.

[handdownmandown]

I think the most important thing in this thread is that Edrick is back.

Kill the fatted calf!

[BEwannabe]

I stopped at BW3's for carry out tonight which for me always includes siting down at the bar and having a beverage while our carry out comes up. Quickly scanning the bar tv's I notice Johhnies playing someone in a small empty arena and when I say empty the seats next to and behind both benches EMPTY and St. John's across center court and Big East in the lanes. The game was not on a big screen so I'm sure not many people paid attention but this has to be troubling for Fox...if there is no one in the stands then there is no one sitting in front of tv watching this game. Any way you slice it, bad night for the Big East- empty arena.

[Boyee]

UAB announced football, bowling, and rifle would be dropped after the current season. UAB's Men's Basketball Team hasn't been to the NCAA Tournament since the 2000-2001 college basketball season. I cannot picture the current Big East Conference, which has 5 Midwestern schools & 5 Northeastern schools being interested in a public school from the Deep South that has severe financial issues. It isn't a guarantee that that Conference USA will drop UAB. As that would still give them 13 football schools, especially if they could find a school interested in being football only in a new conference, like UMass is. UAB does not fit the mold of the new Big East. If C-USA does drop UAB, I'm sure their Olympic sports could find another league willing to take them. The Southland Conference lost Oral Roberts last year to the Summit League, so they could replace them. The WAC is pretty starved for schools, also. Division I FCS is always an option for UAB. DePaul and Marquette are nothing like UAB, and are both private Catholic universities.

[Xudash]

Wow...I haven't had the chance to log on for a while, and when I do, I see another expansion thread.

New thread, but the same old posts that I honestly love and never get tired of reading. Here are some of my favorites:

1). Anything posted about Xavier (i.e. whatever that finance stuff was about) is a troll from Dayton. Anything posted about Dayton is a troll from Dayton.
2). Gonzaga is a legit candidate
3). UAB is a candidate to join the NBE.
4). Holding out hope that UCONN drops football and joins the NBE.

Those are just some of my favorites and why I love expansion threads. I agree with an earlier poster that it is a safe topic to speculate on because of how popular this topic was when this conference formed. I understand that this is just a message board of a bunch of fans that really do not have any inside information, which is really what makes it fun because I have come read posts from some really intelligent people that seem to know basketball.

My opinion, and I know a lot of people disagree with me, is that what I said last year at this time. The conference will expand within its first three years and numbers 11 and 12 will be St. Louis and Dayton. I may be wrong, but that is just a gut feeling. Ten teams may be an ideal number, but if what is reported is true about Fox Sports shelling out more money for the conference to go to 12, I just don't see the BE standing pat at 10 too much longer, especially when you have a St. Louis market and a Dayton teams that travels about as well as any team around. I know Xavier and other posters on here dislike Dayton, but facts are facts; they put butts in seats which is why ESPN has Dayton in a lot of tournaments at the beginning of the season and why the NCAA is keeping the first 4 at UD. Who else will get 12,000 fans to a game no one really cares about. Admit it, if Xavier wasn't playing in the first four last year, how many fans on here would have a vested interested in those games? Not me, but the city of Dayton does. While those reasons may not be rational toward conference affiliation, that is just my opinion that I'm sure will be bashed on here. I remember last year this time that St. Louis was a lock and the last spot was between Dayton and Richmond; I haven't heard Richmond on this board in months because they were not good last year.

Ideally everyone wants the league to stay at 10 and if they do, that is great. I like 10 team leagues, but the reality is everything is driven by money. So, IF there is expansion, I see Dayton and St. Louis.

On a side note, the BE has had a great start to the season; 7 teams are receiving votes for the top 25. Hopefully the momentum keeps rolling through conference play and the league can have a multi-bid year in the NCAA.

Just so that you can be made clear about the UD troll spreading false rumors about Xavier, the guy who was spreading the rumors about Xavier uses the name "UD FAN" here. Is he actually a UD fan? What else do we have to go by?

It is highly unlikely that the conference will expand next year - the Conference's 3rd year, so I wouldn't get my hopes up. This conference was put together based upon strong branding. UD does not have a strong brand. UD is only relevant to people in the Dayton area. Nobody cares about how well UD thinks it travels, Fox does not give a shit about the play-in games. This is first and foremost about branding and television. The last viable school that will make it into this conference is UD, given that it is less than 50 miles up the road from Xavier. The C7 will want an addition from the East when an addition is wanted by the Big East and Fox. They will not go to 12 for the sake of going to 12, regardless of whether or not Fox is willing to bump its payout deal. It's really very simple, especially if the Fox money deal is legitimate: if 12 were the obvious number when this was getting put together - if SLU and UD were regarded as obvious peers at that point - they would have been included up front.

[Bill Marsh]

I don't know why we aren't looking at Duke. Once UNC gets the death penalty, the ACC is toast. No decent schools left in that conference. Duke also fits our profile; it's a private, basketball-centric school. We got the FS1 contract locked up, so its not like they'd miss ESPN. Huge alumni base in New York, so they'd turn up for the conference tournament. I mean, I know they have football, but it's kind of a joke. They'd drop it in a heartbeat to come join us. It just makes sense, right? Make it happen, Val.

NOTE: The scenario I laid out is equally as likely as expansion is in the next 5 years. Just keep beating everyone in sight (except for Creighton), and health of the conference will be just fine.

Of that's the case, why did the Xavier AD say a year ago that the conference would be expanding within the next 5 years? We're now in. Year 2 of that time frame.

[Bill Marsh]

I know a lot about RPI but I have no idea why a 20 game schedule would hurt the conference RPI. Nonetheless, the worst that would happen is that they retain the 18 game schedule and everyone matches up with a few teams only once each season. Rotate the singleton match ups and everyone still plays everyone H & H most of the time. The Big 10 worked with an 11 team league and an 18 game schedule for 20 years, so it's certainly doable. The advantages of adding Gonzaga are simply too great to turn down for a few scheduling challenges.

The reason it hurts the RPI is because it limits the W/L record for the conference. Every conference game ensures a W and a L for the conference. The fewer games you play against each other, the more opportunities for W there are. 2/4 less conference games gives you opportunities for 2/4 more W across the board. It's not a coincidence that the conferences that play 16 conference games edge out those that play 18 when they are similar in strength. Because as a conference they can go 17-3 in those games to the other being 10-10.

You don't think the committee is smart enough and well informed enough to understand that and make allowances for it?

BTW, who are the conferences that play 16 league games any more?

[Bill Marsh]

There is absolutely no chance the conference expands in the next three years and a miniscule chance of expanding in the next 10.

NO ONE wants expansion and there are no candidates. BYU and Gonzaga are the only two programs in the country that fit, but they are four time zones away. There is no one. There will not be expansion. Period.

"Hopefully can have a multibid year"

There will never be a year this league doesn't do that, it's set up for 5/6 now. And back to the original point, that's 60% of the conference earning NCAA credits to be distributed to 10 programs. More mouths to feed isn't what anyone is looking for.

I'd say slow down saying that this league is set up for 5/6 bids now. With as much parity as we have, our 5th and 6th place teams are going to be 9-9 or maybe if lucky 10-8 for the 5th place team. A 9-9 team has to have the right OOC record to have a chance to make the tourney. That's one thing that makes 10 teams so darn tricky. your 4/5 game especially and keven some years 3/6 in the tournament will most of the time be a game where the loser is dangling entering selection sunday. Even this year with us having a great start- only 2 undefeated teams and 3 teams already with 2+ losses. And that's with not even half of the toughest games played. We'll know a lot more in 4 weeks before the conference play starts.

There wasn't a conference with less parity last year than the AAC. If what you say is true, it should have helped them. Kt didn't. In the end, SMU got shut out of the tournament because it was upset by one of the conference's 2nd tier teams. It was the very lack of quality opponents that killed their chances.

Teams from a league with parity can still be selected because the loser in those 4/5 and 3/6 games is till a quality opponent. The committee can overlook that loss far more easily than losing to a garbage team in the conference tourney. Playing in a deep conference may bring more losses, but it will also bring stronger SOS, which factors into the RPI formula.

Every conference is a zero sum game. There's nothing different in that regard with a 10 team conference. Every hopeful for a tournament bid presents a portfolio with its body of work. The committee has enough staffers and expertise to know how to interpret each candidate's body of work.

[Bill Marsh]

http://m.omaha.com/creighton/commissioner-says-big-east-not-looking-at-expansion/article_7e026ec3-4c67-5a23-a6a6-a5aef9327335.html?mode=jqm

There's one. You could probably Google around if you'd like to read the dozens (hundreds) more. Everyone who cares to even mention it says it's not happening. And, of course, there's just the common sense of it. THERE ARE NO CANDIDATES. This is idiotic. The Big East isn't going to upset their preferred format for anyone who isn't incrementally adding to the conference in terms of prestige. Unless they can figure out how to relocate Spokane no such program exists.

If the league was going to be larger, it would be larger already. The phantom mystery candidates would've joined two years ago.

It's no happening.

And of course a conference commissioner is completely forthright about these kinds of things when asked by the press, right?