Conference realignment discussion - v. 2015

[UD FAN]

for the record and I don't really know the source of the Creighton is not deserving talk but it doesn't start with UD people. We had a great series with the Bluejays, they have a fine basketball tradition and solid fan base.

As far as UD is concerned, UD is a major player in Catholic higher education in USA so the Big East is naturally their interest and at some point it will come to fruition and I think it happens sooner rather than later. I just hope the Big East acts before the A10 because I believe the A10 will make more expansion moves and if successful try to push thru larger exit fees. Last go round on that front there was a big enough voting block to keep it from happening, not sure what some of the schools (UMASS,Richmond,VCU & SLU) are thinking now or what they would think if Wich St and NIowa were the adds.

+1

[UD FAN]

for the record and I don't really know the source of the Creighton is not deserving talk but it doesn't start with UD people. We had a great series with the Bluejays, they have a fine basketball tradition and solid fan base.

As far as UD is concerned, UD is a major player in Catholic higher education in USA so the Big East is naturally their interest and at some point it will come to fruition and I think it happens sooner rather than later. I just hope the Big East acts before the A10 because I believe the A10 will make more expansion moves and if successful try to push thru larger exit fees. Last go round on that front there was a big enough voting block to keep it from happening, not sure what some of the schools (UMASS,Richmond,VCU & SLU) are thinking now or what they would think if Wich St and NIowa were the adds.

Any "exit" fee will have 0 impact on the Flyers moving forward if given the opportunity to do so!

[GoldenWarrior11]

What's to stop the ACC from going after West Virginia? They would bring an excellent football program and really lock up the eastern seaboard.

[Fieldhouse Flyer]

Some specific points to make:

1. I believe their current AD was responsible for hiring Brian Gregory (not a good coach, but a good guy who was a great ambassador for UD, btw).
2. If I recall correctly, during the January of UD's E8 year, the fan base was ready to string up Archie alive. Then they caught fire. Good for Archie and UD.
3. Archie is trending in the right direction; he could be just as good as his brother, but he's clearly made some questionable recruiting/personnel calls already.
4. Jury is still out on Archie, but, if he continues to have success, he's gone from UD and soon at that. It's that simple.
5. Coaches leave everywhere - agree with that. But UD hasn't strung good coaching hires together. That's just a fact, and a risk with them.

1. Archie Miller was hired by present AD Tim Wabler. Brian Gregory was hired by former AD Ted Kissell.

2. You did not recall correctly. Posters from another university started 'fire Archie' threads on multiple college BB message boards.

3. True. Hopefully, Archie will learn from those mistakes.

4. Wrong on several accounts. What Archie accomplished the past two seasons (5-2 in NCAAT games) was truly remarkable, and the Flyers are in a good position to add to those successes. Archie's new contract extension through 2022 begins at north of € 2M per year with annual pay rises and bonuses for NCAAT appearances and wins, making him the highest-paid coach in the A10 by a considerable margin. WOTS is that the Millers are very happy with their situation at Dayton and intend to stay for good while, which is why Archie accepted a huge buy-out clause in his new contract.

5. Archie still has all of his original assistant coaches supporting him at Dayton, and they all got big pay raises as well. When Archie does finally depart Dayton for a Top 10 program head coaching position, one of his assistant coaches will likely be hired as Dayton's next coach. Archie's assistant coaches and players have bought into his system, and I believe that UD will want to keep that continuity going forward.

[myopicraiderfan]

What's to stop the ACC from going after West Virginia? They would bring an excellent football program and really lock up the eastern seaboard.

B12 as well as ACC have a GoR. Also, the B12 schools make significantly more in TV revenue than the ACC. The B12 makes more from tier 1 and 2 rights than the ACC does with tiers 1-3.

[JPSchmack]

.

Big 12 royally has misplayed their hand worse than any conference I think.

My friends in ACC country, (almost to the man), hate the new ACC, so while they accomplished breaking up the Big East they hurt their own brand. Brand is everything, B1G is the poster child for branding.

Well, they're serving two masters.

At some point, there's only so much expansion that can be done by power conferences The Big XII will talk about schools like Florida State and Miami, and those ACC schools would say "Well, as much as we'd like to be with Texas, Oklahoma... we're better off with BC, Syracuse, Pitt and Virginia than the Kansas State, Iowa State, and Texas Tech." And that's probably when the light goes on in someone's head that the top half the Big XII, and "top third" of ACC football is a better conference than the ACC or Big XII. After they all expand, the only way to consolidate more power is to split and leave the bottom of the league behind.

[Frank the Tank]

Entertaining thread, albeit much of it is a rehash of what has been stated before (with the exception of the out-of-left-field St. Bonnie's fetish).

My observations over the past couple of years on this board (and these are obviously generalizations):

THINGS THAT BIG EAST FANS OVERRATE:

(1) Recent on-the-court results - They matter, but they aren't outcome determinative. I've seen a number of references to fans being concerned about what "pundits" will think if the Big East adds a weaker on-the-court team, which is something that's completely irrelevant to conference realignment.

(2) Interest in public schools - VCU and Wichita State are the epitome of the discord between what fans want versus what university presidents want. They are great on-the-court, but are terrible institutional fits (particularly Wichita State). I'll grant that VCU at least has a chance because their geographic location is desirable for the Big East and you can argue that they're simply the public school urban equivalent in Richmond of what DePaul is to Chicago or St. John's is to New York, but Wichita State is completely far off base. The desire to not have public schools by the university presidents isn't just random or a mere preference - it's about as strong as any bright line rule that a conference might have in realignment (including the Big Ten with respect to academic standards).

(3) Interest in Gonzaga - It's a shame that they are so far away geographically because they're an excellent institutional fit with a great brand name program, but there's "bad geography" (i.e. stretching from Nebraska to the NYC market like the current Big Ten and Big East), and then there's BAD GEOGRAPHY (which is what occurs by adding Spokane as an appendage). We can sit here and make justifications that the travel wouldn't be a big deal, the burden would be on Gonzaga, no one cares about travel costs and times, etc., but this is still underestimating how radical it is for a league that is in a power position (which is what the Big East is in relation to the rest of non-FBS Division I leagues) to make such a far-flung geographic expansion move. As much as the media bemoans how large the new power conferences are, they were all fairly conservative expansions geographically with the exception of West Virginia to the Big 12 (which was done when the Big 12 was backfilling and fighting for its life). University presidents still have a mental picture of geographic proximity for conferences - they might push the boundaries, but that doesn't mean that they'll eradicate boundaries completely.

(4) Interest in FBS schools - This crosses over with the interest in public schools. If the Big East wanted a hybrid league, they could have stayed with the AAC schools and had several excellent basketball members (i.e. UConn, Cincinnati, Memphis, SMU, etc.). There's a reason why that didn't happen - ANY school with FBS football has to put *football* first, and the Big East schools (having lived through it with the old Big East) are sick of dealing with it. It doesn't matter how much UConn would draw to MSG or FS1 by joining the Big East again - they are a football-first school by virtue of having a FBS program. At the same time, it is completely unrealistic to think that any school that currently has a FBS program (particularly the ones that still have a smidgen of dreams of joining a power conference) will drop FBS football in the near future.

THINGS THAT BIG EAST FANS UNDERRATE:

(1) SLU - They are the flip side of VCU/Wichita State: SLU is the epitome of the discord between what university presidents want versus what fans want. People keep bringing up on-the-court records for SLU, but they are irrelevant with respect to that school. They are school #11 for the Big East. Period. I know the on-the-court-focused fans that would rather watch games against VCU don't want to hear it and refuse to believe it, but it's true. The reason why they aren't in the Big East right now is because they can't decide on school #12. That's it. Think of SLU to the Big East as Rutgers was to the Big Ten, where they needed the right partner to make sense, but the location, market and institutional fit means that they could go winless on-the-field/court and still make the university presidents happy. As a general rule, a school still needs to bring value to a league even when they're terrible on-the-court (as opposed to only focusing on their on-the-court peak, which will inevitably fall).

(2) Davidson - ELITE academics - they would be the top-ranked undergrad academic school in the Big East (including above Georgetown). They might have a small enrollment, but ELITE academics (I can't say that enough) combined with consistent on-the-court success and a desirable market location in the Charlotte area means that they're rising up the expansion candidate list much faster than fans are giving them credit for.

(3) The desire to expand overall - The Big East would much rather have a 12-team league than a 10-team league. Don't let the reflexive "We're not interested in expansion right now" commissioner speak fool you. As noted above, the issue is more of not being able to agree who those 2 additions should be. The league sees the writing on the wall: conferences need to diversify themselves both market-wise off-the-court and strength-wise on-the-court. Now, coaches and fans might love the old school double round-robin, but that's going to be a temporary throwback. The modern world of college sports effectively demands that conferences need strength in numbers. (I'd say the exact same thing about the Big 12.)

THINGS THAT BIG EAST FANS APPROPRIATELY RATE:

(1) Dayton - By appropriately rating Dayton, I mean that we really have no idea. They're a great institutional fit with a fantastic fan base and excellent on-the-court program, yet they'd turn the league more Midwestern coupled with an expansion with SLU and they're in a small market that's adjacent to Xavier's market. Big East fans are all over the map with Dayton, and that seems to be how the Big East presidents view Dayton, too.

(2) Richmond - Pretty similar to Dayton in that we (and the university presidents) really have no idea. They provide a more attractive market and better academics than Dayton with a not-quite-as-good on-the-court program (albeit historically solid) and directly competes with VCU.

(3) Other expansion candidates besides the ones mentioned above - Notwithstanding some isolated calls like the one for St. Bonnie's in this thread (no, just no), it seems that Big East fans are in alignment with the presidents on other schools not mentioned up to this point. For example, there isn't any interest in Duquesne despite the institutional fit and favorable Pittsburgh market on paper because the on-the-court product has truly been terrible for far too long. The Big East presidents don't care about on-the-court success in the same way that fans do (where they aren't parsing out how schools perform year-to-year, but the presidents do need to see evidence that they aren't completely inept with no chance for competitiveness and/or a complete lack of history.

[Hoyas]

What program has been added in any conference that wasn't good at something like what SLU would be for the Big East though right now? SLU was on the verge of being in the 300's this year.

Also, the Big Ten and all the f5 conferences are a whole lot more Teflon on adds than the Big East would be. The pundits would be all over the Big East for adding such a putrid program. they would be saying- there's a mid major conference now. I don't think that's the press we want at this point.

As far as Davidson, they would in my mind have to be complimented by a school in Richmond to have any chance. I don't see the Big East wanting to have Davidson on just as much of an island as Creighton is right now. I think also they have the same kind of questions about coaching that Dayton/VCU have- if not even more.

[billyjack]

So, is this not the right time to say I want Holy Cross...?

[hoops22]

Some specific points to make:

1. I believe their current AD was responsible for hiring Brian Gregory (not a good coach, but a good guy who was a great ambassador for UD, btw).
2. If I recall correctly, during the January of UD's E8 year, the fan base was ready to string up Archie alive. Then they caught fire. Good for Archie and UD.
3. Archie is trending in the right direction; he could be just as good as his brother, but he's clearly made some questionable recruiting/personnel calls already.
4. Jury is still out on Archie, but, if he continues to have success, he's gone from UD and soon at that. It's that simple.
5. Coaches leave everywhere - agree with that. But UD hasn't strung good coaching hires together. That's just a fact, and a risk with them.

1. Archie Miller was hired by present AD Tim Wabler. Brian Gregory was hired by former AD Ted Kissell.

2. You did not recall correctly. Posters from another university started 'fire Archie' threads on multiple college BB message boards.

3. True. Hopefully, Archie will learn from those mistakes.

4. Wrong on several accounts. What Archie accomplished the past two seasons (5-2 in NCAAT games) was truly remarkable, and the Flyers are in a good position to add to those successes. Archie's new contract extension through 2022 begins at north of € 2M per year with annual pay rises and bonuses for NCAAT appearances and wins, making him the highest-paid coach in the A10 by a considerable margin. WOTS is that the Millers are very happy with their situation at Dayton and intend to stay for good while, which is why Archie accepted a huge buy-out clause in his new contract.

5. Archie still has all of his original assistant coaches supporting him at Dayton, and they all got big pay raises as well. When Archie does finally depart Dayton for a Top 10 program head coaching position, one of his assistant coaches will likely be hired as Dayton's next coach. Archie's assistant coaches and players have bought into his system, and I believe that UD will want to keep that continuity going forward.

One minor correction. While Wabler didn't hire Gregory, he did give him an extension at a huge salary bump, in what could have been a catastrophic decision. Had Georgia Tech not stepped in and bailed UD out of that ridiculous contract, it's debatable whether the Flyers would have experienced the recent on court success they have these past couple of years.