Conference realignment discussion - v. 2015

[DudeAnon]

There's so much hyperbole on here that it's positively entertaining. You don't like a certain team's fans? Who cares (because the decision makers don't)? So here's some facts.

Assume for a minute that the decision makers put you in charge of expansion. They tell you that two members will be added in 2016-7 no matter what. You have no other information to go on than a 5-year Kenpom ranking average. They tell you with certainty that the new members MUST be private and in the footprint.


(5 year Kenpom averages. STDEV is a measure of consistency, a lower number means more consistent. You have no other information to go on. Existing BE programs provided for comparison purposes.)

Pick two:

Georgetown 31 STDEV 33
Villanova 37 STDEV 23
Xavier 49 STDEV 23
Creighton 51 STDEV 29
Marquette 52 STDEV 35
Butler 61 STDEV 44
Team E 62 STDEV 34
Providence 72 STDEV 26
Team B 78 STDEV 71
St. John's 81 STDEV 44
Seton Hall 88 STDEV 28
Team D 91 STDEV 48
Team A 99 STDEV 68
Team F 106 STDEV 82
DePaul 175 STDEV 59
Team C 230 STDEV 77

I'll come back tomorrow with the names of the anonymous teams so you don't have to look them up.

If its "Private schools in the footprint" then its basically just UD AND SLU right? I mean, I don't know how much debate there would be to that. The debate is about schools who are outside the "private/geography" standard and how important that standard even is.

[Bill Marsh]

There's so much hyperbole on here that it's positively entertaining. You don't like a certain team's fans? Who cares (because the decision makers don't)? So here's some facts.

Assume for a minute that the decision makers put you in charge of expansion. They tell you that two members will be added in 2016-7 no matter what. You have no other information to go on than a 5-year Kenpom ranking average. They tell you with certainty that the new members MUST be private and in the footprint.


(5 year Kenpom averages. STDEV is a measure of consistency, a lower number means more consistent. You have no other information to go on. Existing BE programs provided for comparison purposes.)

Pick two:

Georgetown 31 STDEV 33
Villanova 37 STDEV 23
Xavier 49 STDEV 23
Creighton 51 STDEV 29
Marquette 52 STDEV 35
Butler 61 STDEV 44
Team E 62 STDEV 34
Providence 72 STDEV 26
Team B 78 STDEV 71
St. John's 81 STDEV 44
Seton Hall 88 STDEV 28
Team D 91 STDEV 48
Team A 99 STDEV 68
Team F 106 STDEV 82
DePaul 175 STDEV 59
Team C 230 STDEV 77

I'll come back tomorrow with the names of the anonymous teams so you don't have to look them up.

If its "Private schools in the footprint" then its basically just UD AND SLU right? I mean, I don't know how much debate there would be to that. The debate is about schools who are outside the "private/geography" standard and how important that standard even is.

Excellent point.

I think the other question is, how important is regional balance to schools in the East?

[Bill Marsh]

Out of curiosity I looked up the following using New York City as the Big East HQ/"center" and used Creighton as a comparable in terms of time and travel distance:

NY to Spokane= 2566 miles/37.5 hrs

NY to Omaha= 1256 miles/19.5 hrs

I played a college sport (tennis) where it could work I believe, but I have no idea about the other olympic sports. I'm sure the powers that be have crunched the numbers endlessly to try and make this work somehow, as the Zags are far and away the best fit. Except for that whole Spokane thing. I could see why Gonzaga would jump at the chance to be in the Big East as it would be considerably more money, better exposure in and around the media capital, open up fertile recruiting grounds in the east, and they would retain their native recruiting grounds (so far away from other conference members) and become that much more attractive to area talent due to their new conference affiliation. I would love to have them in the league, I just don't know how feasible it is.

JA X Alum, here's another way of looking at it:

NY to Omaha = 1160 air miles
NY to Spokane = 2190 air miles.

Modern jets fly at 500-600 mph. So, let's assume 550 mph for this calculation.

NY to Omaha = 2.1 hours
NY to Spokane = 3.9 hours

Charter is the only way that travel to Spokane makes any sense. So, that have to spring for a charter once a year per team of they don't use charters already. Gonzaga on a mid major budget uses charters for all their teams.

Omaha is about half way between NY and Spokane. A NY team that schedules Creighton and Gonzaga Thursday/Saturday would make their normal flight to Creighton on Wednesday. Instead of returning home after the game, they fly approximately the same distance and the same amount of time to Spokane on Friday as they would have spent on the return trip. No added travel. The team then makes the 4 hour flight back home on Sunday. That one-way, 4 hour flight is the only extra travel that's been added for the entire season for that team.

[CURx]

While that makes some sense from a travel perspective individually, I don't think that you would be able to have every East Coast team make that weekend trip from an overall scheduling perspective. Seton Hall, Providence, Nova, G'Town, St. John's, would be included and so that requires Creighton to play at minimum 5 Thursday night games with Gonzaga benefiting from the quick turn around/travel time frame for the Saturday game. Creighton would also be locked into 5 weeknight Big East home games thus losing the potential for weekend home games against some of the higher profile Big East Teams (which is a big deal for the Top 5 crowd attended school). Now if you were to flip that and make Gonzaga a Thursday game with the stop in Omaha on Saturday then maybe you could do it; but then you have the 4 hour all day trip on Wednesday thus the crux of the argument surfaces again. But you also have to consider that if Gonzaga were added, they would likely be the 12th team, thus creating the classic two divisions of 6 with home and away games with the other 5 in your division and 3 at home and 3 away (alternating each year) with those in the other division which means of those likely 6 true East Coast teams at that point (assuming 11th team added is an East Coast team), few if any will likely be at both Creighton AND Gonzaga the same year. Thus again making the travel argument a moot point.

[Burrito]

I prefer a 10 member Big East. But if DePaul strikes out with a 3rd coach, in a few years I wouldn't mind swapping them out for someone else.

[sheg]

If its "Private schools in the footprint" then its basically just UD AND SLU right? I mean, I don't know how much debate there would be to that. The debate is about schools who are outside the "private/geography" standard and how important that standard even is.

I agree. We don't know the criteria, even if there is expansion. I have more though that I'll put up this afternoon.

[DudeAnon]

I prefer a 10 member Big East. But if DePaul strikes out with a 3rd coach, in a few years I wouldn't mind swapping them out for someone else.

What, no faith in Dave Leitao?

[muskienick]

The Big East (both past and current versions) have already shown a willingness to go "outside their footprint" with the additions of Marquette, DePaul, Louisville, and Cincinnati in the earlier version and the C7 going west in selecting Butler, Creighton, and Xavier to form the current Big East. In this "small world" of supersonic air travel, why would our current Presidents sacrifice the possibility of attracting the best available new member(s) simply for geographic reasons, especially if getting there would be less than 4 hours in the air from NYC? Therefore, one might logically assume that "footprint" isn't going to be a deciding factor.

We've already established the fact that "Catholic" isn't a deciding factor either since the past version of the Big East included Syracuse and the current version includes Butler.

The earlier version of the Big East (which included 70% of our current members) also did not consider "Public" to be a deciding factor for membership. I have not read any reports from the C7 schools in which any of them complained about any invasion of their financial (or other) privacy as a result of having been affiliated with public institutions through their membership in the Big East. Instead, I have simply read the speculations of a few posters here and elsewhere that such a factor would possibly be a detracting aspect in extending such an invitation. Only the football programs of their former partners were the drawback to a continued partnership with the C7 in the old Big East.

With the above history in mind, one could logically conclude that, if any expansion to the present Big East were to be pursued, that at least the C7 members would not use "footprint," "private" and "Catholic" as required criteria. However, "BCS-Level Football Programs" would likely be grounds for exclusion.

All that being said, I hope we remain at 10 at least until the current TV contract expires.

[Bill Marsh]

While that makes some sense from a travel perspective individually, I don't think that you would be able to have every East Coast team make that weekend trip from an overall scheduling perspective. Seton Hall, Providence, Nova, G'Town, St. John's, would be included and so that requires Creighton to play at minimum 5 Thursday night games with Gonzaga benefiting from the quick turn around/travel time frame for the Saturday game. Creighton would also be locked into 5 weeknight Big East home games thus losing the potential for weekend home games against some of the higher profile Big East Teams (which is a big deal for the Top 5 crowd attended school). Now if you were to flip that and make Gonzaga a Thursday game with the stop in Omaha on Saturday then maybe you could do it; but then you have the 4 hour all day trip on Wednesday thus the crux of the argument surfaces again. But you also have to consider that if Gonzaga were added, they would likely be the 12th team, thus creating the classic two divisions of 6 with home and away games with the other 5 in your division and 3 at home and 3 away (alternating each year) with those in the other division which means of those likely 6 true East Coast teams at that point (assuming 11th team added is an East Coast team), few if any will likely be at both Creighton AND Gonzaga the same year. Thus again making the travel argument a moot point.

Yes, expansion to 12 teams means that East Coast teams would not be making the western trip annually regardless of whether there are divisions, making travel a moot point.

Yes, the Thursday/Saturday games can be swapped. I was only giving an example. Games can also be scheduled on Saturday/Monday or Friday/Sunday. Traveling to Gonzaga first for the Thursday game would require travel on Wednesday but teams often travel the day before on road trips of any length. Time zone differences actually help with the trip to Gonzaga on the front end of a weekend swing out west because the time is 3 hours earlier. The Ivy League uses the Friday/Sunday scheduling model. The PAC-12 uses the Thursday/Saturday model.

Any advantage to Gonzaga for home games due to the quick turnaround for visiting teams is more than made up by the disadvantages to Gonzaga when they're on the road.

There is really nothing different in all this than what conferences like the Ivy League, Big Ten, and the old PAC-8 faced forever on long bus trips for away games. Consider a 360 mile road trip from Phllly to Hanover, NH for a Penn-Dartmouth game That's a minimum 6 hours without traffic and without rest stops on modern highways in a cramped bus. Consider what that trip was like before the interstate highway system was completed. There was a time when they made those trips by train which traveled at slower speeds and made frequent stops. How did they ever manage all that.

Imagine what a road trip was like before airplane travel going 750 miles from Minneapolis to Columbus, Ohio. Or worse yet, to go 1130 miles from LA to Pullman, Washington.

A flight on a modern charter jet actually takes less time than those old bus and train trips did between the extreme ends of the old conferences. It just looks worse on a map.

We read all the time how much easier travel is for major league baseball players flying in jet planes than the bus trips they faced on back roads in the minor leagues.

[Bill Marsh]

I prefer a 10 member Big East. But if DePaul strikes out with a 3rd coach, in a few years I wouldn't mind swapping them out for someone else.

Can't be done unless a conference member chooses to leave voluntarily.