Conference realignment discussion - v. 2015

[stever20]

You've never watched the NFL on Fox? They were part of the deal:

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/15 ... s-20111215

And yeah, Arby's sez "we have the meats" Same deal.

And that was re-upping the deals. Leagues often do that before the properties expire(and networks are loathe to let it get to open bidding after what Fox did back in '94)..

There's absolutely no guarantee that for instance ESPN's Monday Night Football will be available for bidding for FS1.

[DudeAnon]

Fox TV stuff aside, how anyone can say we haven't met expectations is ridiculous. Do they realize we had the 2nd best conference rpi in the country?

[stever20]

Fox TV stuff aside, how anyone can say we haven't met expectations is ridiculous. Do they realize we had the 2nd best conference rpi in the country?

I think the only thing you could say is the postseason. To have 4 sweet 16 seeds the last 2 years and get no sweet 16 teams out of those isn't good. But that was almost more deflating last year having Nova and Creighton IMO. At some point that has got to change for the conference to be really taken seriously. Regular season is great- but given how college basketball is so heavy thought of by March- to get the respect we want- we have to perform in March.

[myopicraiderfan]

Remember in 10 years when the contract is up it won't just be ESPN vs Fox. You have Comcast, a likely time warner\charter company, ATT\DirectV, Amazon, Netflix, and who knows how many over the top companies that will offer programming and will compete for TV inventory. It was mentioned Fox wouldn't have patience. Well, there are 10 years left in the contract so they are going to be.

75 pages in and it's still the same. Unless UConn wants in, there isn't a team that can move the needle and give the conference more money. No extra money, then no extra teams. Time is the BE's friend. See what happens in the next 8 years, then if things need to change before the end of the contract then they will.

2023 Worse case scenario:
Fox one BE ratings are terrible.
BE turns into a 2-3 bid conference.
A10 becomes best non P5 basketball conference with 5-6 teams every year.

Do you think one of the P5 will invite the BE teams in? Nope, Not going to happen.
Would a top basketball school over the last decade jump from A10\MVC if asked. Absolutely, there would be fight to see who could get in the door first(first 75 pages of this thread).

So worse case is BE gets to keep its money and not have to share and no matter what happens still have the best\most profitable non football conference.

[Xudash]

Remember in 10 years when the contract is up it won't just be ESPN vs Fox. You have Comcast, a likely time warner\charter company, ATT\DirectV, Amazon, Netflix, and who knows how many over the top companies that will offer programming and will compete for TV inventory. It was mentioned Fox wouldn't have patience. Well, there are 10 years left in the contract so they are going to be.

75 pages in and it's still the same. Unless UConn wants in, there isn't a team that can move the needle and give the conference more money. No extra money, then no extra teams. Time is the BE's friend. See what happens in the next 8 years, then if things need to change before the end of the contract then they will.

2023 Worse case scenario:
Fox one BE ratings are terrible.
BE turns into a 2-3 bid conference.
A10 becomes best non P5 basketball conference with 5-6 teams every year.

Do you think one of the P5 will invite the BE teams in? Nope, Not going to happen.
Would a top basketball school over the last decade jump from A10\MVC if asked. Absolutely, there would be fight to see who could get in the door first(first 75 pages of this thread).

So worse case is BE gets to keep its money and not have to share and no matter what happens still have the best\most profitable non football conference.

Your worst case scenario actually ended up focusing me on the Big East versus the A10. Roughly speaking, each Big East member makes in one year the same amount of television related revenue that an A10 member makes in a decade! I believe most people would agree that the A-10 is in no position whatsoever to surpass the Big East. The Big East has the better brands. Obviously, the Big East has a better television agreement. And the Big East has the Big East Tournament in Madison Square Garden.

Why would a fan of a school that belongs to the A-10 conference take shots at the Big East conference or at any school in the Big East?

[stever20]

where the A10 could get interesting- the A10's deal opens back up in I think 5 more years. If ESPN wanted to throw some money at them they could really close the money difference there....

[BEX]

The fallacy with Fox though is that they're going to get a chance to bid on things as they expire. As we saw with the NBA- that isn't always the case. The incumbents can go to the leagues before the deal expires and re-up.

I'm confused. Why was Fox involved in the early "re-upping" by the NFL? Do you really think these massive sports leagues wouldn't check with Fox? The "incumbents" wouldn't get their deal shopped around? I'm sure the leagues say "sounds good to us', thanks for the bid, where do we sign?

[stever20]

The fallacy with Fox though is that they're going to get a chance to bid on things as they expire. As we saw with the NBA- that isn't always the case. The incumbents can go to the leagues before the deal expires and re-up.

I'm confused. Why was Fox involved in the early "re-upping" by the NFL? Do you really think these massive sports leagues wouldn't check with Fox? The "incumbents" wouldn't get their deal shopped around? I'm sure the leagues say "sounds good to us', thanks for the bid, where do we sign?

Fox was involved in the early re-upping by the NFL because it made sense for them to keep their #1 property. ESPN re-upped their deal to keep MNF before it went on the open market.

As the NBA showed they didn't check with Fox. ESPN/Turner made it worth their while to not do it. I would say the NBA is a pretty damn massive sports league, wouldn't you?

I think NBC did the same thing with the NHL to keep it away from ESPN(I could be wrong about that). Same with Fox and Turner with MLB.

[myopicraiderfan]

Xudash,
I wasn't attacking the BE. What I was saying was that no matter what happens over the next ten years the BE will be at an advantage over the a10.

[Xudash]

Xudash,
I wasn't attacking the BE. What I was saying was that no matter what happens over the next ten years the BE will be at an advantage over the a10.

myop,

I understand. I didn't think you were attacking the Big East. In fact, I completely agree with your conclusion.

When I read "A10 becomes best non P5 basketball conference with 5-6 teams every year" under your 2023 Worse Case Scenario, it made me think of how utterly improbable that outcome would be, given all the advantages the Big East holds over the A10. In turn, that made me think of how pathetic it is to have fans of A10 schools taking shots at the Big East at this point.

On the one hand, we're only two years into the mission with a lot of time remaining on "the clock" for the conference. Besides, Year Two proved to be pretty solid with the BE coming in at the #2 RPI rated conference, with a #1 Seed and 6 bids overall, not to mention multiple teams being ranked along the way. Though some of the initial match-ups seem curious to some of us, the Big East is respected to the degree of being able to establish a legitimate conference challenge (i.e. not what the ACC did with the A10 to negotiate it out of the way to gain access to the Barclay Center) with the B1G. We certainly are positioned to trend in a positive direction moving forward. As has already been noted a number of times, recruiting across the board in the Big East indicates that the conference continues to recruit at the P5 level. We have at least 7 solid programs at this point: Nova, Georgetown, Xavier, Marquette, Providence, Butler and Creighton. I personally believe its about to get very interesting and fun with the Johnnies; I love that Mullin has returned home. So, that leaves us with Williard as a question mark at Seton Hall and the never ending sand storm that appears to take place between the ears of the DePaul AD. Nonetheless, DePaul is about to be sitting there with a state-of-the-art facility in Chicago. Not bad at all. As conferences go, we're proving that a basketball-centric league seems to understand the importance of basketball (duh!).

It's possible that one of the outcomes that skewed some of the early thinking around here and in other places had to do with how the BE ended up after its inaugural year versus how the A10 faired that season. The A10 ended up with 6 bids to the NCAA Tournament (good for them). The problem for the A10 was that it got a little drunk from that outcome, failing to realize that success was an anomaly and not the norm. The A10 had a lot of experienced rosters that year. At any rate, it came back down to earth this past season - although it came closer to crashing and burning - had it only ended up with 2 bids, instead of squeaking one of its teams in as the last one in.

Overall, most of us associated with the Big East see an opportunity for a bright future for the conference. We understand we're a "start-up." The Presidents are focused on building the brand they've created. Everyone understands our broadcast partner is a start-up, though one of the most deep pocketed start-ups ever. Fox stumbled out of the gate and faces strong challenges moving forward, but it has a commitment to the space, a long-term view, and an absolute ton of money.* Nothing has been proven or disproven yet with respect to a basketball-centric conference model that involves 10 private universities. Importantly, as has also been pointed out here repeatedly, there isn't a program available today that would help fix television related issues, were television issues deemed to exist today.

People who argue that the panic button needs pressed now probably don't have much experience with startups; they don't understand entrepreneurism. New businesses typically establish themselves with an expectation for cash burn for a period of time (i.e. (cumulative) negative EBITDA); they structure their initial financing accordingly. They typically have to make adjustments as they go, regardless of how well they visioned a deal or developed a comprehensive business plan. They know to expect growth pains (i.e. if they establish initial success).

So, the plan all along was to establish the Big East 10, run a few years at the most, and then add 2 mid-major programs that could not possibly solve for the existing BE Fox media agreement, regardless of their respective program attributes?

* - Did anyone happen to catch the FS1 special on the upcoming US Open and the amount of technology and investment Fox is putting into that broadcast?