Imagine the Big East, Coast to Coast NYTimes Article

[admin]

I can imagine a secanrio where Gonzaga could be added. It would require GU to commit serious money to travel, however, and they'd probably need to find a different home for their other sports which doesn't sound very likely. An 11 team Big East playing round robin would still be doable. Each current team traveling to Spokane once a year isn't much to ask and the travel for GU could be worked out in blocks equating to an NBA team making an eastern road swing playing several times over the course of a week.

Now, if you're talking about adding anyone else - SMC, BYU, Santa Clara - I can all but assure you every league president would scoff at the idea.

You can't send your basketball to another conference. Where your BBall resides is your home conference. All of their other sports would have to come along unless we don't sponsor that sport. There is no BBall only in D1 NCAA.

I'd forgotten about that minor detail. Thank you.

So just like the hundreds of other pages of realignment chatter, this is fun to discuss but much ado about nothing.

Carry on.

[xusandy]

Just because we all like the Gonzaga (and St. Mary's?) basketball programs and would love to see them playing our teams regularly does not mean that this idea makes sense from anything other than a bball fan perspective. The reality is that travel costs across 10-15 sports and the impact on the lives of the athletes (particularly the Zag and Gael students who'd be living half a week at their schools and half a week several time zones away for most of their seasons), make this idea totally impractical. If there's a lesson about expansion we should have all learned by now, it's that the recent waves of expansion driven by football media markets has destroyed many fine rivalries and once-proud conferences, with no particular benefit to anyone other than to a very few schools who have managed to "trade up" -- including Butler, Xavier, and Creighton. We're in a great place at present - the Big East is stable with 5 mid-western and 5 east coast schools who share a common educational and athletics orientation. We're in a great collection of media markets and recruiting areas, and there's a nice framework of new rivalries developing. Why mess with that? Three years ago I wondered why we stopped at 10 members and when we'd go to 12. But now I hope we either stay at 10 or grudgingly go to 12 - St. Louis and Boston College being the best "fits" out there - but do that ONLY IF Fox or some other network wants to throw silly money at us to do so. If it ain't broke..., indeed!

[NJRedman]

It's really simple. You (The Big East) let it leak through the pipeline that you are looking at adding GU and 3 other western schools in 3 years. You also let it be known that you want schools that are willing to invest in their programs and infrastructure. You sit back and see who announces upgrades. Those who decide to upgrade get a look at. If they, with their upgrades, look attractive to the presidents and TV partners then we add them. If we don't decide to add them then they get brand new facilities anyway and the conference gets better.

Schools like USF, Pepperdine, Loyola are all in big markets and fit our profile of Catholic schools in large TV markets which would help offset the smaller market of Gonzaga.

More than likely it wont happen but it could be done since we have a small # of teams in the league.

[NJRedman]

Just because we all like the Gonzaga (and St. Mary's?) basketball programs and would love to see them playing our teams regularly does not mean that this idea makes sense from anything other than a bball fan perspective. The reality is that travel costs across 10-15 sports and the impact on the lives of the athletes (particularly the Zag and Gael students who'd be living half a week at their schools and half a week several time zones away for most of their seasons), make this idea totally impractical. If there's a lesson about expansion we should have all learned by now, it's that the recent waves of expansion driven by football media markets has destroyed many fine rivalries and once-proud conferences, with no particular benefit to anyone other than to a very few schools who have managed to "trade up" -- including Butler, Xavier, and Creighton. We're in a great place at present - the Big East is stable with 5 mid-western and 5 east coast schools who share a common educational and athletics orientation. We're in a great collection of media markets and recruiting areas, and there's a nice framework of new rivalries developing. Why mess with that? Three years ago I wondered why we stopped at 10 members and when we'd go to 12. But now I hope we either stay at 10 or grudgingly go to 12 - St. Louis and Boston College being the best "fits" out there - but do that ONLY IF Fox or some other network wants to throw silly money at us to do so. If it ain't broke..., indeed!

You add 5 western schools. That helps with the travel for other sports, you play everyone in your region twice thats 8 games then everyone else once rotating each year home and away for an 18 game conference schedule.

[Jet915]

If UCONN aint coming, Gonzaga and BYU would be the best options imo.

[JohnW22]

If UCONN aint coming, Gonzaga and BYU would be the best options imo.

For sure

[xusandy]

NJRedman,
I agree that your 5-5-5 format would greatly reduce total travel costs and somewhat lesson the disruption to student athlete's lives. It would also include reasonably balanced scheduling and possibly make an attractive nationwide media market for Fox to throw silly amounts of money at. I can also believe that Gonzaga, St. Mary's, and three other western schools (private, good academics, and either no football or independent football -BYU) might well go for your idea, since it would enable them to get out of their mediocre conferences and bring much more attractive opponents to town for basketball and other sports.

But a 15 team conference doesn't work terribly well for a lot of sports, and I doubt there would be any recruiting advantage to the east coast schools to halving their conference games in the midwest (losing 2-3 of Chicago, Indy, Milwaukee, Cincy, Ohama each year) in favor of going to places where they currently have little or no recruiting base. And I'd be really surprised if the mid-west schools would want to swap visits to 2-3 of New York, northern NJ, Phlly, DC, or Providence for 2-3 visits to anywhere west. I know we all could maybe develop some recruiting ties on the left coast, but that's expensive, and would not be obviously more productive in the long term than going to every existing conference city for one game a year. I also doubt that any current conference member has enough students or alumni in whatever cities the 5 left coast teams are located to make either the Admissions Office or the Alumni office very excited about going way out there to recruit Freshmen or to raise $$ from wealthy alums.

So I'm sticking with my original thesis; nationwide expansion by the Big East is an attractive bball fan's fantasy, but not very realistic when you consider other issues, and it's certainly nothing we really need to do, given the way things are going for us at present. There is always the "silly money" factor of course, which is what got Maryland to leave their great home in the ACC, West Virginia to join a conference where every other school is a 2 day drive away, and Syracuse and Boston College to dump long standing and great traditional rivalries for conference affiliations that otherwise make little sense.

[NJRedman]

NJRedman,
I agree that your 5-5-5 format would greatly reduce total travel costs and somewhat lesson the disruption to student athlete's lives. It would also include reasonably balanced scheduling and possibly make an attractive nationwide media market for Fox to throw silly amounts of money at. I can also believe that Gonzaga, St. Mary's, and three other western schools (private, good academics, and either no football or independent football -BYU) might well go for your idea, since it would enable them to get out of their mediocre conferences and bring much more attractive opponents to town for basketball and other sports.

But a 15 team conference doesn't work terribly well for a lot of sports, and I doubt there would be any recruiting advantage to the east coast schools to halving their conference games in the midwest (losing 2-3 of Chicago, Indy, Milwaukee, Cincy, Ohama each year) in favor of going to places where they currently have little or no recruiting base. And I'd be really surprised if the mid-west schools would want to swap visits to 2-3 of New York, northern NJ, Phlly, DC, or Providence for 2-3 visits to anywhere west. I know we all could maybe develop some recruiting ties on the left coast, but that's expensive, and would not be obviously more productive in the long term than going to every existing conference city for one game a year. I also doubt that any current conference member has enough students or alumni in whatever cities the 5 left coast teams are located to make either the Admissions Office or the Alumni office very excited about going way out there to recruit Freshmen or to raise $$ from wealthy alums.

So I'm sticking with my original thesis; nationwide expansion by the Big East is an attractive bball fan's fantasy, but not very realistic when you consider other issues, and it's certainly nothing we really need to do, given the way things are going for us at present. There is always the "silly money" factor of course, which is what got Maryland to leave their great home in the ACC, West Virginia to join a conference where every other school is a 2 day drive away, and Syracuse and Boston College to dump long standing and great traditional rivalries for conference affiliations that otherwise make little sense.

OR they think the opposite way, and see west coast expansion as a way to open the door to students on the west coast. No offense to our mid-western brethren but a trip to San Fran or LA is a bit more attractive than a trip to Omaha, Indianapolis or Cincinnati.

East- Nova, SJU, Hall, Providence, GTown

Mid-West- X, Marquette, DePaul, Creighton, Butler

West- Zags, Mary's, BYU, and either double up LA with 2 of these 3 Pepperdine/Long Beach State/Loyola or double up San Fran with SMU and San Fran U.

That conference would boast 7 of the top 10 media markets in the country. I'm sure Fox would like that.

http://www.nielsen.com/content/dam/corp ... -ranks.pdf

[HoosierPal]

If UCONN aint coming, Gonzaga and BYU would be the best options imo.

I don't think BYU plays any sports on Sundays.

[Gopher+RamFan]

It's really simple. You (The Big East) let it leak through the pipeline that you are looking at adding GU and 3 other western schools in 3 years. You also let it be known that you want schools that are willing to invest in their programs and infrastructure. You sit back and see who announces upgrades. Those who decide to upgrade get a look at. If they, with their upgrades, look attractive to the presidents and TV partners then we add them. If we don't decide to add them then they get brand new facilities anyway and the conference gets better.

Schools like USF, Pepperdine, Loyola are all in big markets and fit our profile of Catholic schools in large TV markets which would help offset the smaller market of Gonzaga.

More than likely it wont happen but it could be done since we have a small # of teams in the league.

The only two candidate schools (depending on who you ask) that has announced and improved their infrastructure are VCU andRichmond. Richmond redid their arena and VCU opened a $25 million practice facility. VCU will also be expanding their Arena in the near future.

Since I've been posting here for years, many said that VCU would bejudged based on the post Shaka era for inclusion (that's if the public school thing didn't scare them away). What hasVCU done since Shaka left?

1.Signed a $2 million/year multimedia rights deal with learfield.
2. Opened that practice facility.
3. New coach Will Wade signed a top 60 recruit (mention this only due to the number of posts I've seen saying recruiting would go down when Shaka left).
4. Continued its decade run of 24+ wins each season.
5. Reached its 6th straight NCAA tournament (first VA school ever to do so).
6. Surpassed the first round, going further than the last two years.
7. Took part in the 2nd highest watched game of the weekend (a full 2 million more viewers than UConn/Kansas).

You want a program with a proven track record of winning, NCAA tournaments, viewership, traveling fanbase, media rights deal and great leadership that has hired four successful coaches in a row - not to mention neighboring the current Big East footprint, VCU is right there.

Each candidate school has its flaws and for VCU it is the public school angle. However VCU barely has a club football team, and football was the reason the Big East separated from the publics in the first place. I'd love for Dayton and VCU to be included in The B.E. maybe along with SLU (provided they hire Valpos coach).

I'll