Conference realignment discussion - v. 2015

[GumbyDamnit!]

What's hilarious is going back and looking at the early HLOH threads from right before the league was formed. People were saying that programs like Providence should be booted and Marq. was lauded as one of the pillars of the league (rightfully so because of their previous decade of excellence). Now Prov has a BE championship, a top 10 team and soon to be 3 straight years in the tourney. Meanwhile, Marq has struggled (that's not to say they will moving forward, but just that they have had a couple down years).

Creighton is a terrific addition to this league. No one here knows for sure what programs will look like 3, 5 10 years from now. But with their fan support, facilities and commitment to basketball, I can't see them staying down for long.

It's easy to puff out your chest with short terms success. Just be careful which fan bases you kick on the way up, as you might just see them do the same a year or two down the road. What I'd say to (some) X fans...act like you've been there (had success) before.

[gtmoBlue]

My disgust wasn't directed at all X fans, just one! I love what your team is doing this year and think they have great potential for a deep run. X v Nova 2 should be fun to watch!

+1 Xavier has a great program and teams. One of my favs to watch and root for, since back in the West vs Korver days.

[JPSchmack]

So a 6th place team in a 12-team conference averages fewer conference losses than a 6th place team in a 10-team conference? That right there is gold. I wonder if a 6th place team in a 14-team conference would average even fewer losses?

Also true. Ignoring your sarcasm, the difference is that the Big East has 7-8 teams that would get NCAA bids in a 12-team league before adding someone. But it would be really, really difficult getting 10 teams in a 14-bid league, even if your four additions included Dayton. The odds of finding four teams to go 9-3 or 10-2 in conference play and then going 0-18, 1-17, 2-16, 3-15 are ridiculously slim. The 10th teams would probably have to be 12-0 OOC with a couple marquee wins to get into the dance with a 5-13 BE record.

Plus, you’d be leaving too many good match-ups off the schedule to accommodate 14. When you have 12 teams playing 18 games, it’s only four teams you DON’T play home and away. With 14 teams and 18 games, you’re only playing five home & home.

The point of diminishing returns would be a 13th team. 11 or 12 benefits you, 13 starts to hurt.

You are an idiot. NCAA bids isn't the be all-end all.

So do you understand yet? We are a true conference of equals here.

I understand completely, and thanks for backing up many of my points:
- You benefit sentimentally, and not economically.
- By being so ridiculously similar, you’re devaluing four top 60, NCAA caliber programs by making them finish 7th to 10th in the league.

sorry but just getting to .500 doesn't guarantee a NCAA spot. Marquette, Creighton, Georgetown- and of course DePaul/St John's- finish 9-9- and they aren't in the tourney. Seton Hall isn't even a lock at 9-9.

That’s totally true. But part of the reason for that is because if you’re 9-9 in the current 10-team Big East, you’re probably about 2-8 vs the top five, all Top 50 RPI teams, in conference play. Which makes you a WEAK bubble team.

The goal of expansion would be that with more of the top 10 teams in the Big East winning more conference games and having higher win percentages, the 6th and 7th place teams are also top 50 RPI teams as well.

So that 9-9 team would be 4-0 vs the bottom three, 2-6 vs the top five, 3-3 vs the middle four, and that’s 4-9 vs the Top 50 in conference, instead of 2-8.

[NJRedman]

For everyone saying the Big East "must" expand, what is the potential danger in not expanding? For the football conferences, the danger is there for 2 conferences, the ACC and the Big 12 which are always the ones rumored to be targets for raiding. If they do get raided, than their status as a major conference and ability to keep everyone together is in question. The Big East is not a likely target to be raided. Sure, a conference could raid a school from the Big East, but that would be a stretch given the lack of major football. So, as it stands, the Big East is one of the most secure conferences out there. There is no need to expand for survival. At the moment, everyone involved with the Big East (which are the only opinions that matter) is happy with the way things are. For the Big East expansion could be seen as a luxury, not a necessity. I personally don't see expansion happening until it becomes a necessity.

Expansion makes sense when our TV contract is about to come up for negotiation. Adding more content can add value to a TV deal.

[NJRedman]

Add 4 teams! Dayton, SLU, Richmond and UConn.

[JPSchmack]

Good post JPSchmack.

a) a conference is defined by the number of NCAA bids received.

There is no magic in a 10 team league. Dbl round robin is not an ideal. A 10 team league is leaving NCAA money - a minimum of $2-3 Million annually (another $100-300K per school), on the table for the other leagues to snatch up.

Both Butler and X were invited into this league based on their NCAA resumes. How little creighton got in is still a mystery, lol.

Thanks. No mystery to me how Creighton got in: Creighton IS a “Big East school.” I think Dayton is too, and if they were in Cleveland, there’s zero doubt in my mind, they’d have been invited from the outset, (probably with Saint Louis, but maybe Richmond if they wanted East-West).

Yea, but if we had St. Bonaventure, Boston College and Holy Cross we probably send 8 teams to the tourney this year! -gtmoBlue

If you had St. Bonaventure last year and this year, you absolutely would have sent one more team to the dance, probably two depending on whom team #12 was. It would have to be someone who wins OOC (Or schedules to win OOC).

I use Bonaventure because they’ve been in “Help the A-10 RPI” mode with their OOC scheduling the last few years. They’ve played one ACC school per year the last three seasons and gone .757 OOC vs the others. The .750 is important, because your additions MUST be in that ballpark OOC to help the overall RPIs of the league.

Of course, with nine Big East schools on the schedule, Bona wouldn’t need to play road OOC games vs ACC schools, and could hit that 9-3 mark OOC pretty easily.

[admin]

Awww, Mr. Admin... you removed those 2 posts - for good board decorum and civility, no less. Shucks. I was merely acknowledging the compliment given me by a fellow board member.

I shall strive to my utmost to be civil and polite in my postings on this venerable site - gtmoBlue

Actually, I didn't but one of the mods did. Directly calling another poster a profane name doesn't seem to further the conversation so obviously I'd prefer such behavior be kept off the board as I mentioned in the PM's I sent to you both. Carry on.

[pki1998]

Add 4 teams! Dayton, SLU, Richmond and UConn.

Personally I like the double round robin format of a ten league team. With that being said, I am sure that at some point in the future expansion will happen. Not saying we will necessarily go up to 14 teams, but within ten years (possibly earlier) we will probably be up to at least 12 teams. I am in the group that feels we don't have to rush to expand. Below is my personal evaluation of your four teams

1) UConn - This is a no-brainer, if they want to join the league, we should invite the immediately. While its unlikely they would come back to the Big East, it is still a reasonable possibility. They are the only team that I don't care about them having a FBS football team. I have a preference for remaining an all private school league, but again UConn is such a good fit that I don't care. No team that we have a legitimate chance with is a better option than UConn. UConn has a lot of positives, National Recognition, large enrollment, great fan support, ability to bring fans to the gardens, unmatched women's basketball program, brings the state of Connecticut and probably more things that are not coming to my head right now.

2) Dayton - As a Muskie fan it pains me to say this, but Dayton is currently the second best realistic expansion option (behind UConn). Lets be honest Dayton doesn't move the needle like UCONN, but they would move it as much or better than any of the other normal realistic expansion targets. They have great fan sport, reasonable levels of basketball success, they own their city (its a small city, but they are by far the number game in town), they have strong academics, taking them would weaken the A-10, and cultural fit. With that being said, they have a few problems as an expansion candidate. 1) They don't bring an additional recruiting area, due to their proximity to Xavier and Butler. This isn't an issue in the northeast corridor, as the population is much larger there. 2) This applies to any realistic expansion candidate, except UConn, but there is no urgency to add them, because we could go up to them anytime in the next ten years and ask them to join us, and they would gladly except. 3) The final strike against Dayton that really only applies to Dayton is who do you add with them? You don't have to have an even number of teams, the Big Ten and the Big East both played with an odd number of teams for many years. But I think most people agree that an even number of teams is best. Outside of UConn, the next best options are SLU (See discussion below) and VCU if the league is willing to abandon cultural fit and add a public school. If UCONN joins the discussion for team 12 probably is limited to Dayton and VCU. I would be fine with either in a package deal with UConn.

3) Saint Louis - In the long run Saint Louis might be the best expansion candidate. Saint Louis has some things going for them, namely large media market, opening new recruiting areas, cultural fit, strong academics, nice arena, reduces the footprint of the A-10, etc. They have shown the ability to be a good program when headed by the right person (Spoon, or Rick M). But they are dreadful right now. I don't think you have to pull a Butler and make back to back finals to get into the league, but how can you bring a team as bad as SLU is right now into the league, and not seem Mid Major. Maybe if we have an crazy good year in the tourney and sent three teams to the final four, we could be forgiven for bringing in a project school like SLU. Right now I just can't see any other way to pull the trigger on SLU until they get better

4) Richmond - Richmond is a fine academic school, and they would expand the conferences footprint into the south. But I just don't see a lot of upside with this one, this would be expansion for the sake of expansion. I know I never got excited for the XU-Richmond game when they were both in the A-10, they just always seemed like a middle of the A-10 team. Not sure that is the team that really helps the conference. But the fact that they are a legitimate option if we had to expand to 14 shows exactly why we shouldn't go to 14.

Now if we had to go to 14, here is my one in a billion chance of actually happening top four expansion candidates

1) UConn - In a perfect would they drop/downgrade football or somehow get aced out of 4x16 football power conference model, and park their football team in a smaller conference.
2) Notre Dame - The most catholic university of all the large catholic universities should be in the Big East. If they could find a way to be in the national title picture, get bowl game tie-ins with another conference, this could happen. Unfortunately this will almost certainly not happen otherwise they would have stuck with the C7 instead of going to the ACC
3) Boston College - Before leaving for the ACC, Boston College showed they could build a good program in the Big East. They haven't been able to do that in the ACC, but they still have name recognition that wouldn't make it seem like a Mid Major move to add them. The would be a lot of worst things the league could do then add a project program in Boston. However the only way this happens is if they too somehow get squeezed out of a 4x16 model, or they could get some sweetheart deal similar to the one discussed for Notre Dame above. Let's face BC could never get a sweetheart deal like that.
4) Saint Louis - I like the long-term possibilities of SLU over Dayton

Honorable mentions/alternatives to Saint Louis
Dayton (See above)
Holy Cross - Probably not a real strong case to be made for them, but it just seems like having Providence, UConn, BC, and Holy Cross means you absolutely own New England when it comes to College Basketball. Also through in ND and you have a pretty solid start to a Hockey Conference.
VCU - In many ways this is a better pick that Saint Louis, but I just prefer SLU.

[stever20]

here's the thing. If UConn joins, there would be absolutely no reason for the Big East to take Richmond instead of VCU. The public/private seal would be gone.

[sheg]

Hey guys, been a while. Here's a post that you may find refreshing because it has nothing to do with candidates.

I was recently reminded of something I heard about a few years ago and had forgot about until now, and it regards conference makeups. I was always intrigued by the idea (not mine), and I wonder what you think of it.

Regarding the number of teams in a conference. It used to be that the perfect conference size in the days of 16 league games was either 9 or 12 (with divisions). Nine made for a perfect double round robin, and 12 with divisions allowed for some nice divisional rivalries while facing everybody at least once. The biggest drawback to 9 was that somebody had to be idle each weekend (or schedule a non-con game).

These days, 18 conference games and no divisional play seem to be the norm. That makes 10 (which you obviously have now) the number if you want the double round robin. But it makes every other number awkward if you elect unbalanced schedules (with one exception). Do you have protected rivalries? How do you rotate through which teams you play twice every year? It seems that no matter how you do it, you never get balanced schedules.

I know a lot of you advocate for the double round robin, and I appreciate the reasons, from a fan's standpoint, that you would want it. Nothing is as elegant as a double round robin, no doubt. Assume for a minute that that's going away and there's nothing you can do about it.

There is a solution for an 18-game schedule with more than 10 teams that is fair. It's to go to thirteen teams. It kinda blew my mind when I first heard of it, but it makes a ton of sense. In such a scenario, scheduling would be like this - you play everybody else at least once, for 12 games. You play six of the teams twice. Then you play the same six teams twice the next year in the opposite location. In years 3 and 4, you do the same thing with the other six teams. Every four years, the cycle restarts. The bottom line is this:

- you play every team at least once every year.
- you play every team at home at least once every other year.
- you play every team six times every four years.
- you play every team at home three times every four years.

The biggest drawback, with the odd number of teams, is the fact that one will have to be idle for each round of games. But right now, you're playing 18 games over 10 weeks anyway, so you're not playing two games each and every week now.

If you did that type of schedule with no protected rivalries, you'd have the fair balanced schedule you get from the round robin while getting the benefits of a bigger conference. If you carefully match up the teams, you should be able to get pretty good balance where nobody draws double games against the whole top half or bottom half of the conference in a given year.

What I'd do is rank the teams by 5-year RPI averages. Then. for example, team #1's double games in years one and two would be against team 2, team 4, team 6, team 8, team 10, and team 12. In years 3 and 4, they would double up against team 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13. Then, after the four-year cycle is complete, you re-rank everybody and start over. Yes, teams would move up and down over the years some, but it should average out fairly well.

A 13 team conference may never work for some of the football conferences, but if the Big East ever does make the move off of 10, I'd give serious consideration to 13 rather than 12 or 14. It would work beautifully for basketball.