Conference realignment discussion - v. 2015

[gtmoBlue]

Red letter date: 08 Jan 2016
An anonymous Jays poster stated I am part of the Jays Family.
Where did that come from?
Should be grateful for 1 day a year?
Next thing you know will be the invite to speak at Commencement, lol.

Thanks HDMD-it must have been difficult to type that post.

[gosports1]

as long as there is even the slightest chance of UConn joining the ACC, they will not abandon FB.
even if years from now, if its decided you dont need 12 for a conference championship and there is a chance that schools want to go back to smaller leagues that are more geographically compact, UConn will not drop FB

[Noonzy]

UConn is hoping for any invite to any FBS conference. Right now they think that the Big 12 is going to expand and they may be invited and Rutgers needs a travel partner. College football does not move the needle in the northeast. The northeast is not exactly a hot bed of football recruiting. Some of their fans would rather be in the BE for basketball and let the football join a lower football conference.
While it may sound appealing for the BE to add UConn, it does not fit the profile of the BE schools. UConn is a public institution with public funding. The BE schools cannot compete with their money.

[JPSchmack]

Sheg,

I never considered a 13-team model, but it actually might work relatively “perfectly” for the Big East.

In a 13-team league, it might be possible to get 9 bids if you picked the right teams, it also puts more options on the table.

I think using geography would be a better way to set the “extra six games” though. There’s two problems with using RPI averages:

#1 - your additions are coming from other league(s) and RPIs are totally schedule dependent, and you’re changing 19+ games of their schedule by switching leagues.

#2 - You don’t want the “extra games” to be All East one year and All west the next. You’d want to balance it for each team a little bit.
You’d want to make the six “extra” opponents for the 10 teams in the Big East “two west, two east, one new, one other.”

You could set that “chart” based on overall strength, and maximize your potential (for example, you give the teams projected 7-8-9 an extra game against a team projected 10-13 to try and bunch the middle and get you a 9th or 10th NCAA bid)


(I’d also say you should swap year 2 and year 3, so you’d play the everyone 3 times in two years, not half 4 times and half twice in a two-year span).


But 13 definitely gives you the right blend of “thirds” in the league: Top third (the ranked teams), the middle third (NCAA contenders), and bottom third (absorbing conference losses and enabling that middle third to get in).

Exactly. This board has a challenge coming up with two teams that make sense as expansion candidates. Sometimes we have trouble even coming up with one. Three seems a bridge too far.

That being said this scheduling model is far superior to the 12-team scheduling model that the old Big 12 used to use (Two divisions of 6, play division opponents twice for 10 games, play the other division once; home one season, away the next, for the remaining 6 games).

Set geographic divisions won't fly in this Big East. There's a very clear geographic divide in the conference between the five I-95 teams and the five Midwest teams. The Midwest teams want the big market exposure in NY, Philly, and DC, so halving their East Coast trips isn't desirable and would inevitably make the "Big East West Division". If the Midwest teams aren't going to go East, then the Big East west becomes just a fancier version of the Horizon League or Valley with a biannual trip to Georgetown thrown in.

I absolutely agree on the geographic part. LOTS of people are obsessed with symmetrical divisions (Mainly because it's much harder to make a schedule model by hand than to let the geography do the lifting), but setting TV games and giving your 7-8-9 teams the "softer" unbalanced games is the much smarter move. -- I'd actually be tempted to say "screw the 'make sure you play everyone 3 times in 2 years or 6 times in 4 years' and go ahead and make the schedule inequities the best scenario for how you project the league to finish and how to maximize bids.

As for candidates, I think a 13-team league is the perfect scenario in which the Big East could address the REAL NEED (having a bottom of the league!) and "justify" expansion from a PR/fan side. The Big East can't really come out and say "we need a bottom of the league, we're so good that we have a top and middle and no bottom" without looking like egotistical jerks, insulting their new members (not that they'd care THAT much) and everyone nationwide would be all "WTF are they doing?" (Even though I'd be proven right in March the next few years). But with 13, they could take Dayton (middle) and two bottom teams (Richmond & Bona) and say "Well, in reviewing the candidates, we liked them both and thought 13 would work just as well as 12." And people would buy it as long as they do a good job of explaining there's 2.6 million people in Western New York.

[JPSchmack]

as long as there is even the slightest chance of UConn joining the ACC, they will not abandon FB.
even if years from now, if its decided you dont need 12 for a conference championship and there is a chance that schools want to go back to smaller leagues that are more geographically compact, UConn will not drop FB

I actually think that, long term, if conferences cannot do the cable subscription channel model (like the Big Ten), the very large sized power conferences will realize that they hit diminishing returns: They can't "grow the pie" bigger with more schools and markets, and doing so harms their inventory. Their only way to get bigger shares of TV revenue would be splitting the same sized pie fewer ways...

And that's when you could conceivably see the "top half" of a power conference leave and take a few others from a lesser conference.... (For example: LSU, Alabama, Texas A&M, Auburn, Missouri, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee... invite North Carolina, Duke, & Virginia for 12; leave Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Vanderbilt, South Carolina, Arkansas behind. Their TV market size would be 8 million larger and they'd share that pie 12 ways instead of 14).

[trephin]

i think it's been great to see other posters dislike any notions of dismissing any school (not that it would happen). i heartily agree with and applaud everyone who posted.

i agree with gosports and anyone else on UConn. It's like fans saying "wait till next year!" There will always be "next year" for UConn football joining the "haves"

i don't think the Big East ever regains UConn or the state of CT, nor the Boston market. I just don't see the schools.

this probably isnt the thread to discuss but after reading notkirkcameron's post on SLU, i would say the demographics sound discouraging although hasn't the only region gaining in population for the last several years been the South? Also, how many available markets are good without on court success?

i've read that SLU draws most of its (general student population) students from the East and that was a main reason why the administration didn't want to return to the MVC. And if the student demographics are wrong, then students from the East were what the school was targeting. So while from a basketball stand point, Majerus might have been right, it might not have been right for the school as a whole. Of course this was under Fr Biondi so perhaps there is a different focus now.

Having Majerus 5 years earlier (and of course not having his untimely passing) and assumed 5 years further along turning things around would have impacted SLU for Big East inclusion. I doubt A10 v MVC would have except perhaps only insofar as BE presidents have been quoted as wanting to minimize disruption to any single conference as much as possible (thus not completely from A10)

[JPSchmack]

as BE presidents have been quoted as wanting to minimize disruption to any single conference as much as possible (thus not completely from A10)

I think that's, for the most part, more of an "excuse" as to why they stopped at 10 and didn't include others than any type of rationale...

#1 - It's a dog-eat-dog world, and the Big East isn't going to pass a chance to improve themselves JUST because it wouldn't be nice to the A-10 to take their teams. It takes two One to invite, one to accept. It's not like the Big East tossed a burlap sack over Xavier's head and threw them in the back of a van.

#2 - Going forward, there's really NO ONE ELSE to take from.
Conference expansion has essentially killed "mid-major" basketball. Mid-Majors are "One bid if the favorite wins the tourney, 2 if someone knocks off: Butler (Horizon), Memphis (C-USA), Gonzaga (WCC), VCU/George Mason (CAA), Nevada/Utah State/New Mex St (WAC). The WCC added BYU and has sent multiple teams in 9 of 10 years. Butler, Memphis, VCU, GMU, Nevada and USU moved up to multi-bid leagues. UNI and Wichita State have made the MVC a two-bid league. 20 years ago, there were 6 conferences going .600+ OOC, 6 more over .550 OOC, 6 more over .500 , and 14 under .500. Now there's 8 conferences total over .550+, 4 more over .500 and 20 under .500. The power is consolidated.

If the Big East remains "privates only," the A-10 is really the only league for them to steal from. While it's POSSIBLE that someone from another conference suddenly goes Gonzaga-style all over their league, A. there's only about six candidates not in a duplicate/tiny & over-saturated market (Siena, Detroit/Oakland, Belmont, Holy Cross/Northeastern). B. The A-10 will decide those schools are worthy of invitation before the Big East does, because the Big East will say "Yeah, but it's only the MAAC/Horizon/OVC" longer than the A-10 will and the A-10 knows the Big East can take UD/SLU/Rich/Bona/Duquesne at any moment you decide to.

(And half those teams are assuming you never see the light on market saturation. I'm still right on that and St. Bonaventure: they'd give you far more than any private addition but Dayton. No matter how good Detroit, Belmont, Duquesne, Saint Louis, Davidson, Holy Cross ever are, if Bona had the same success they deliver more because they will always be overshadowed by the big BCS programs with bigger followings: Michigan/Mich St, Tennessee/Vandy, Mizzou/Illinois, UNC/NCSU/Charlotte/Duke, BC/UConn... compared to Buffalo, Niagara, Canisius).

The Big East won't fret about taking from the A-10 again if they realize how it benefits them financially. The A-10 went to 14 (SLU/CHAR), then 16 (Butler/VCU) and 14 (GMU/Davidson) because WE KNEW we'd be raided, and needed to be big enough to absorb it. Our OOC scheduling was terrible under Linda Bruno because she didn't understand RPI, but she doesn't get nearly enough credit for padding ourselves to absorb the blow.

The A-10 probably stands amazed you didn't take Dayton & Saint Louis at the outset. I think passing on SLU was wise. I think you're costing yourself money/bids/growth every year you don't take Dayton & Bona, and Richmond for Sheg's brilliant 13-team structure. That actually would be THE OPTIMUM scenario for you guys.

[notkirkcameron]

this probably isnt the thread to discuss but after reading notkirkcameron's post on SLU, i would say the demographics sound discouraging although hasn't the only region gaining in population for the last several years been the South? Also, how many available markets are good without on court success?

i've read that SLU draws most of its (general student population) students from the East and that was a main reason why the administration didn't want to return to the MVC. And if the student demographics are wrong, then students from the East were what the school was targeting. So while from a basketball stand point, Majerus might have been right, it might not have been right for the school as a whole. Of course this was under Fr Biondi so perhaps there is a different focus now.

Having Majerus 5 years earlier (and of course not having his untimely passing) and assumed 5 years further along turning things around would have impacted SLU for Big East inclusion. I doubt A10 v MVC would have except perhaps only insofar as BE presidents have been quoted as wanting to minimize disruption to any single conference as much as possible (thus not completely from A10)

SLU absolutely does not draw most of its general student population from the East Coast. When I was there it was half-jokingly referred to as "SLU High" (not to be confused with the actual Saint Louis University High School) because of the large number of locals attending. The only numbers I was able to find that broke SLU's population down by state was this fact sheet from a few years ago (2012-13).https://www.slu.edu/Documents/provost/o ... 0FINAL.pdf The relevant table is on page 16. With an entry class of approximately 1,618, nearly two thirds of the incoming freshmen (1,027) were from Illinois or Missouri.

Perhaps you are thinking of Washington University in St. Louis?

I also think Fr. Biondi is a major reason why SLU is not in the Big East. At the time of the Big East's reformation, Fr. Biondi was still the head honcho at SLU. Biondi had ruled over SLU like a mafia don for two decades. He'd made plenty of enemies along the way, and ultimately stepped down after the student and faculty senate had a vote of no confidence in him.

Remember, at the time of the conference's formation, you have Jesuit university Presidents (who are likely very familiar with Fr. Biondi) at Marquette, Georgetown, and Xavier (whose membership was basically a shoe-in.) With Butler was also highly likely given their recent success in the tournament, the league was determining whether it was going to go to 10 or 12. At this time, then-Creighton President Fr. Lannon was the Chairman of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. More importantly, he was also a member of the Marquette University Board of Trustees. Multiple reports have said that this association gave Creighton the ear of the movers and shakers in the reformed Big East, and may very well have secured Creighton's membership. I have to imagine SLU was discussed as a possible 10th or 11th member. It would have been silly not to. But with Fr. Lannon in the fold, you now had 4 university presidents in Marquette, Xavier, Georgetown, and Creighton, who all had extensive experiences with Fr. Biondi, and decided to pass on working with him.

[AACguy]

AAC breathing a sigh of relief as it appears the NCAA is going to allow 10 team conferences to have a championship football game so it appears that any Big 12 expansion just got nixed.

[BEX]

Small conference = Bigger Payout. Send 5/6 a year to the Dance plus huge TV package divided by 10 = wonderful deal for BE. Send 2/3 in A-10 and crummy TV deal of 5 million for the whole League divided by 14 = Sucks. No wonder everyone wants to join up. Stay at 10. Be greedy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics ... caa-money/