Winners / Losers if UConn joins the Big East

[Husky_U]

For anyone who thought Stever was a UCONN fan... He's having a blast trashing UCONN on that other board.

I'm pretty sure we had confirmed he was an AAC fan (VCU maybe), which sort of fits.

I'm going with ECU.

[Hoya]

Welcome. Glad to have you.

FWIW, this board will look nothing like the other league boards. With one notable exception who is only allowed to post on a moderator approved status, we don’t have a bunch of flame throwers here trying to incite people. If you are looking for passionate and knowledgeable fans who enjoy talking about college basketball, you’ll enjoy being here.

[Husky_U]

Welcome. Glad to have you.

FWIW, this board will look nothing like the other league boards. With one notable exception who is only allowed to post on a moderator approved status, we don’t have a bunch of flame throwers here trying to incite people. If you are looking for passionate and knowledgeable fans who enjoy talking about college basketball, you’ll enjoy being here.

Oh I'm a flame thrower, but now I'll just be aiming at AAC/P5 schools.

[MUPanther]

I do believe with Pitt now in the ACC has helped out PC and SH. Big time!

[Hall2012]

For anyone who thought Stever was a UCONN fan... He's having a blast trashing UCONN on that other board.

Wow. This post caused me to take a peek at the AAC board and the delusion there about the quality of their basketball league vs ours is astounding. I guess last year (their best and our worst) was almost comparable, but aside from that the gap has been the Grand Canyon and UConn's move is only going to make it grow.

[Xudash]

Welcome. Glad to have you.

FWIW, this board will look nothing like the other league boards. With one notable exception who is only allowed to post on a moderator approved status, we don’t have a bunch of flame throwers here trying to incite people. If you are looking for passionate and knowledgeable fans who enjoy talking about college basketball, you’ll enjoy being here.

Oh I'm a flame thrower, but now I'll just be aiming at AAC/P5 schools.

Welcome to the board Husky.

I believe I speak for most Xavier fans when I tell you that we've been a little down and out lately, knowing that the Yellow Toothed Gnome (YTG) - little Micky Cronin - left Clifton for a town in which he will fit in so well, or not, leaving us without our favorite punching bag. But all is good again with the news of UConn joining the BE. This past weekend's events have cheered us up immensely.

As a Xavier fan, I'll enjoy any warm thoughts you may have about UConn's experience with the Bearkittens and YTG as you take aim at the AAC moving forward. We enjoyed beating up on that sorry tool - - I believe we were 8 out of 12 against him. I have to believe you guys shook your heads at some his antics as well.

Anyway, beyond that attempt at fun pettiness, welcome aboard.

The bottomline with UConn's decision is that UConn will make the BE stronger, but the BE is going to make UConn strong in basketball again as well. It's not about joining up with "small Catholic schools (and Butler). It's about joining up with strong programs. You're already familiar with most of the Big East members. I believe you'll be in for a pleasant surprise - at least with respect to level of competition - as UConn begins to visit the Cintas Center, Butler's Hinkle Hall and your new set of 18,000 friends at Creighton's place in Omaha. Conversely, we know visiting Storrs will lead to some religious experiences for us.

It's about to get truly crazy. Our friend from St. Bonaventure and a few others put up noble arguments about stuffing the conference with easier programs to game up NCAAT bids. I don't believe anyone here ever really saw that strategy as being the optimal way to go; most here wanted UConn if expansion opportunities surfaced in order to make the conference even stronger.

So, we got - - are about to get - - our wish and your basketball program is about to fire on all cylinders again. And MSG is truly going to be batsh!t crazy once the Huskies dive back in.

Finally, there is no question or concern when it comes to alignment and focus within the Big East. IT'S ABOUT BASKETBALL. Good luck to UConn as it navigates its football program to a place that works for it within the FBS domain.

[GumbyDamnit!]

Winners - The college BB fan. We'll see how Hurley makes out long term but make no mistake about it UConn is a BB school. And that makes 11 institutions all focused on the one sport that we all love. And give me 20 more highly competitive games on FS1, in crystal clear HD national broadcasts, instead of 20 cupcakes. Add in the old rivalries and I'm good to go.

It's not a conference of schools who are looking to be somewhere else. We know who we are, we embrace it and all of our resources are pointed in the same direction. You Husky BB fans will enjoy the hoops discussion on the board. There will be occasional spats (mostly the in-fighting between various St. John's fans with each other ) but we mostly pull for each other because we recognize that the BE is the last non FB power BB conference out there.

Loser - Stever. Anyone trying to peddle that this is actually "fine" for a conference like the AAC to lose it's historically top program is laughable.

[stever20]

Winners - The college BB fan. We'll see how Hurley makes out long term but make no mistake about it UConn is a BB school. And that makes 11 institutions all focused on the one sport that we all love. And give me 20 more highly competitive games on FS1, in crystal clear HD national broadcasts, instead of 20 cupcakes. Add in the old rivalries and I'm good to go.

It's not a conference of schools who are looking to be somewhere else. We know who we are, we embrace it and all of our resources are pointed in the same direction. You Husky BB fans will enjoy the hoops discussion on the board. There will be occasional spats (mostly the in-fighting between various St. John's fans with each other ) but we mostly pull for each other because we recognize that the BE is the last non FB power BB conference out there.

Loser - Stever. Anyone trying to peddle that this is actually "fine" for a conference like the AAC to lose it's historically top program is laughable.

The problem is that they haven't performed like a top program....

Here's the list of programs in the last 3 years with 3 straight losing years in the top 7 confereces...
East Carolina
UConn
Washington St
Pittsburgh
Rutgers

I'm not saying that it won't hurt, but rather that it could have hurt a whole lot more than it could have. I think you can make a pretty fair case the loss the AAC took this year that will hurt far more than this is Cronin leaving Cincy.

[adoraz]

Biggest Loser: the AAC. Aside from losing its biggest basketball brand, and now having to go to a round-robin in basketball (where everyone plays Tulane/ECU twice), it is now locked into a deal until 2032 for the exact same amount of payouts ($7 million) when the P5 will all be negotiating/signing new TV deals in the next few years. There are no clear-cut candidates to expand with for football, and the league lost the best women's basketball program in the country. Aresco's comments a few weeks ago about division-less conferences make much more sense now (the league foresaw this coming). There is absolutely no way that ESPN will pay more money for a replacement, and I wouldn't doubt that they would simply eliminate UConn's shares under the deal and just pay all the other schools the same value (which allegedly ESPN has the option of doing via Dodds). Aresco wanted to get to that magical $1 billion figure for the next TV deal; in order to do so, he signed away the conference's rights for another twelve years. Rough.

So glad we ended up with Val after the divorce. If we sided with Aresco and the football schools, we are likely looking at expansion candidates like Southern Mississippi, UAB or Marshall -

why would the AAC be forced to go round robin? When they had 11 before, they didn't have round robin. Also, very possible that the AAC gets a VCU to replace UConn.

This could be a situation where frankly everyone wins. Big East will improve in basketball(though going 20 conference games I think is really foolish, all it does is make the overall records worse). AAC will if they can add VCU be at least as good on the floor as they have been in basketball, and I don't think anyone can question this, will improve a lot in football.

"Everyone wins"? What about AAC basketball fans like yourself? The football fans might not care too much (aside from the embarrassment of this news), but the basketball fans sure do. Just be honest and admit this is brutal for the AAC. It's amazing how so many AAC fans now are completely disregarding their #1 basketball property just because they've been mediocre during a very short stretch. It's as if their 2014 National Title never happened, despite no other AAC teams coming close to that since. If Nova becomes mediocre the next 4 years and then gets poached, that'd still be a MASSIVE loss for the Big East. If Georgetown got poached today that'd still be a MASSIVE loss for the Big East, despite them not winning a National Title in decades.

All these AAC fans, yourself included, have been hyping up UConn (along with Memphis) as being critical to the resurgence of the AAC. UConn has the #21 2019 class in the nation, which is easily second in the AAC.

Acting as if VCU would be a fine replacement is ludicrous. I actually think VCU would be a good add for the AAC, but context matters and they are no UConn. You're trying way too hard to excuse what just happened.

Ask yourself this: if Georgetown or Nova were poached and we replaced them with VCU, would you still say "everyone wins"?

[Xudash]

Acting as if VCU would be a fine replacement is ludicrous. I actually think VCU would be a good add for the AAC, but context matters and they are no UConn. You're trying way too hard to excuse what just happened.

Ask yourself this: if Georgetown or Nova were poached and we replaced them with VCU, would you still say "everyone wins"?

Perfect. Well done. And checkmate stever.