Flyer75 wrote:SLU hires Travis Ford.
gtmoBlue wrote:Travis Ford is a lousy coach for a lousy team. But let's take SLU now-based on Faith. In the meanwhile whilst we wait for them to improve the BE gains a regular 6th bid in the dance. Let's also take the Zags - now, in order to placate those who don't want to diminish league quality and potentially get that 7th bid (in some years). We can save 2 spots for ACC leftovers IF that league gets raided again.
adoraz wrote:gtmoBlue wrote:Travis Ford is a lousy coach for a lousy team. But let's take SLU now-based on Faith. In the meanwhile whilst we wait for them to improve the BE gains a regular 6th bid in the dance. Let's also take the Zags - now, in order to placate those who don't want to diminish league quality and potentially get that 7th bid (in some years). We can save 2 spots for ACC leftovers IF that league gets raided again.
What? How do we gain a bid by adding a bottom feeder? Even assuming best case scenario, that they go 0-18 in conference, that would still not help the conference if their RPI is around 200. You can have a great OOC record, like Marquette this year, but if you're playing poor opponents it hurts more than helps.
Take this year for example. If we had SLU it obviously wouldn't have resulted in an additional bid. If anything it would've hurt the bubble teams.
billyjack wrote:Michael in Raleigh wrote:Xudash wrote:There actually is ZERO incentive to add new members now. Nova delivered a badly needed and key piece: strengthened conference credibility by punching through to the Final Four. This year's conference tournament at MSG was a truly smashing success. Multiple ranked teams, a #1 ranked team, 2 Top 5/10 ranked teams and all that provided perception-wise throughout the regular season. Viewership is trending up. Loving the ten teams and the Round Robin format. It's all working, and very nicely.
We are in a buyers market, but with nothing worth buying presently. We certainly aren't going to do something amazingly stupid like dilute the conference with sub-par teams. Thank God for the Presidents and Val Ackerman. Nothing is a given anyway, especially when it comes to the notion of adding teams to attempt to increase NCAA bids.
The only program that has any kind of cache is Gonzaga, and it's just too far away.
I agree with this very much.
The incentives to expand are mostly about increasing revenue, specifically from media-related sources. Other leagues have expanded and gotten new money from (1) a new football conference championship game, (2) a re-negotiated TV contract that pays more, (3) a new conference network, or one that is expanded into new markets (most notably, this is why the Big Ten took Rutgers and Maryland).
The Big East doesn't have any of those options. Adding Saint Louis or Dayton or VCU or Gonzaga or even UConn isn't going to get them a conference network, period. Even the 16-team Big East of 2005-13 had little chance of making that happen. The TV contract would only go up at a pro-rate basis. No disrespect intended, but it can be argued that Fox paid above market rate for the Big East because it needed content. Adding ANY new team wouldn't give Fox the incentive to increase beyond pro-rata. Even adding UConn, which, for all its success, isn't the absolute ratings bonanza that a football team would be. And obviously the Big East will not be adding a football championship game.
Really, the only new revenue source might be the possibility of increasing NCAA tournament credits, but that is a bit of a gamble. As others pointed out, for all the ACC's tournament credits this year, that league HAD to do as well as it did in the tournament in order to get $2M/team because the money is divided among 15 schools. Meanwhile, the Big East, with two fewer teams in the tournament and only one team making it past the first weekend (albeit, at least all the way to the Final Four), gets to share $1.9M/team because there are only 10 teams in the league. In other words, the Big East is doing about as well as the ACC is for per-team NCAA revenue, and it could have done even better with one or two different plays in the Xavier/Wisconsin game.
At best, a few more tickets might get sold at the Big East Tournament, which would have to happen since there would be "one more mouth to feed."
Outside of financial motivations for expansion, what else is there? Perception? That can be improved by having more seasons like the one the league just had. Dominant out of conference. Several top 25 teams. Winning records going deep into the standings. And, of course, a deep run into the tournament.
Truthfully, as time passes, I think people around the country are going to be envious of what the Big East has, which other leagues have lost. When I hear my in-laws, who have lived in NC for over 40 years, talk about the ACC of the 70's, 80's, and 90's, they really miss the smaller league. Everyone played everyone once for football, twice in basketball. Geography was tightly knit. People knew fans/graduates from just about every other school. More or less, there was plenty of commonality among institutions. There was definitely more conference camaraderie. It can be argued that money and keeping up with the joneses demanded expansion, but some things were lost with that. I think the same goes for the Big Ten. Many fans didn't even like Penn State. They definitely don't like playing Rutgers and Maryland instead of Wisconsin and Iowa.
The Big East of today, though more spread out than it was during its nostalgic years in the 80's, really matches what Dave Gavitt put together in the first place. It has exactly the qualities which many fans of schools in other conferences once had and today wish their teams' conferences had. There's conference camaraderie. There's rivalries coupled with mutual respect. There's commonality among institutions. There are shared goals. And, significantly, there isn't any desire by schools to look elsewhere. Even for a league like the Big Ten, where almost certainly no one would ever leave voluntarily, there are some who wish that other schools would get "kicked out" (knowing that won't ever happen). With the Big East, no one wants other schools kicked out, nor does anyone want to leave.
Congrats to fans of Big East teams, most especially Villanova. Even as a longtime ACC fan, I find myself rooting for the Wildcats to pull it off in six days just because I like the whole story of your conference.
All the best!
Thanks Michael for a great post.
I think we all always enjoy getting your take on things.
GoldenWarrior11 wrote: It would have been very interested to see how they would have handled things differently had they known about the monumental realignment shift of 2013. Had they known, they could have possibly put a stronger full court press on the basketball program, in hopes of getting into the Big East.
notkirkcameron wrote:GoldenWarrior11 wrote:Mind you, this is in February 2010...before Nebraska, Missouri, Texas A&M, Colorado, et. al. moved conferences. Before talk of 16-team superconferences. At the time, the Big East was a BCS football conference, and arguably the greatest basketball conference ever assembled. Majerus' prediction proved prescient.
The foreseeable future is about 1-2 years...until the SEC and/or B1G raid again. Doesn't really matter who they raid, B12 or ACC, but there will be fallout-panic-and leftover teams - ripe for the picking. Leftover ACC teams present a better option, as there are former BE schools and a couple of private schools with middlin' football. None are good cultural/institutional fits, but several are teams we know and would be amenable to joining the BE.The foreseeable future
Most here and on my home boards don't favor padding the bottom to boost the top scenarios laid out by JPSchmack and the other guy. Most fail to perceive the benefit of gaming the system for additional NCAA bids. Most don't see the BE as leaving NCAA bucks on the table. I am not surprised.Financial Incentives
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