Is Homogeneity Of Membership Good Or Bad?

[stever20]

The most interesting aspect with regards to Big East expansion, in my view, is that our current contract stipulates that our contract gets bumped up by $100 million if we go to 12 members. The total payout per team would not change, but the total amount that Fox pays would. Bottom line, we have had and still have the opportunity to add teams at no cost until the end of our deal. These are our wild cards. We can wait until our contract is nearing a conclusion in order to cash-in, but you don't waste your hand on Wichita State or VCU -sorry.

Bottom line, from the actions of the conference since realignment, our league clearly values its current set-up, as well as the ability to have a round-robin set-up. They did not believe that adding a Wichita State or a VCU or a Dayton was worth it - financially or competitively - to amend its current format. Some may not like that, but that is what reality and the market dictate.

If I had to guess the current line of thinking with the Big East Presidents/Val/Fox, it's that they are patiently waiting to see the Power 5 sort itself out with their next TV deals. There could very well be another shift on the horizon, allowing certain programs that you would not think to be available today to be available at that point. You also have the UConn situation - which will never be fully resolved until they join a power conference. There is nothing today that is available that is more valuable than our current membership and round-robin format. Towards the end of the deal, and there are no big time programs available, then I think we will go ahead and add Saint Louis and Dayton, as their added revenue from conference membership (and potential for strong programs in their areas) will be a solid long-term investment for the conference and its membership.

I just do not see SLU as an automatic addition the way you do. SLU would have to go on a run here like what VCU or Wichita has had these next 5-6 years to have any shot.

Also your statement about the contract getting bumped up by 100 million if we went to 12. That would have been if it had been done day 1. It would have gone from 500 million over 12 years over 10 teams- to 600 million over 12 years over 12 teams. The base amount would still be EXACTLY the same. The base amount would be exactly the same(though the Big East I'm sure could put something in like the 2 new teams get 33% year 1, 50% year 2, 67% year 3, before 100% year 4).

[gtmoBlue]

My mind has gone a few ways about this.

Pro Expansion
1) The JPSmack argument. The round-robin does cause cannibalization of seeds. (I do not believe at all that SBU should be considered)
2) Competition level. I do believe that the pool of mid-majors are favorable. And it is very likely that any of VCU, UD and SLU would only elevate their status similar to how X, Butler and Creighton have.
3) Excitement. 2 more schools is 2 more sets of interesting fan-bases, teams, play styles and more.

Anti-Expansion
1) Branding. The basketball zeitgeist is just now beginning to accept the NBE and its place among the power 5. If we add UD & VCU and they tank (which is possible) this would be an immediate blow to the brand.
2) Spite: Fieldhouse Flyer, SactownDog, dwon and many more do not deserve it lol.


Edit: To GoldenWarrior's point about the guaranteed pay bump. Its very possible FOX is telling us not to expand because of this the same way ESPN told the Big 12 not to expand.

Excellent post DudeAnon, Outstanding.


As for my 'friends' Friar J, GoldenWarrior, and IH. How's the view down there, with your heads in the sand or other locale where the sun don't shine? Youse guys are a real 'piece o' work'. Making broad assumptions and guesses, then attempting to label such as BE gospel.

The "Do Nothing" crowd, not expansion itself, will be the death of this conference. Your guesses and assumptions are just that. To suggest, promote, and preach your brand of progress, the BE should have remained with their former football brethren - as such the C7 would be no worse off than they were 4+ years ago.

Apparently, in your esteemed opinions - whistling, with your hands in your pockets, and kicking a bit of dust - all is well. Your shortsighted views, lack of initiative, and underwhelming utilization of your resources is appalling (that's what She said.)




or

[Fieldhouse Flyer]

Geography & Expansion: When Creighton was invited... – HLOH thread started on Thu Mar 30, 2017 by CrawfishBucket (Georgetown fan)

Is Homogeneity Of Membership Good Or Bad? – HLOH thread started on Fri Apr 07, 2017 by CrawfishBucket (Georgetown fan)

Would Miller Have Left Dayton If They Were In The BE? – HLOH thread started on Wed Apr 12, 2017 by CrawfishBucket (Georgetown fan)

. . . the last three on your list is from a UD troll posing as a Georgetown fan.

CrawfishBucket - are you a Georgetown fan, or are you a UD troll posing as a Georgetown fan?

Your most recent post suggests that you are a genuine and knowlegeable Georgetown fan, but only you can clarify _lh's unsubstantiated accusation.

[FriarJ]

My mind has gone a few ways about this.

Pro Expansion
1) The JPSmack argument. The round-robin does cause cannibalization of seeds. (I do not believe at all that SBU should be considered)
2) Competition level. I do believe that the pool of mid-majors are favorable. And it is very likely that any of VCU, UD and SLU would only elevate their status similar to how X, Butler and Creighton have.
3) Excitement. 2 more schools is 2 more sets of interesting fan-bases, teams, play styles and more.

Anti-Expansion
1) Branding. The basketball zeitgeist is just now beginning to accept the NBE and its place among the power 5. If we add UD & VCU and they tank (which is possible) this would be an immediate blow to the brand.
2) Spite: Fieldhouse Flyer, SactownDog, dwon and many more do not deserve it lol.


Edit: To GoldenWarrior's point about the guaranteed pay bump. Its very possible FOX is telling us not to expand because of this the same way ESPN told the Big 12 not to expand.

Excellent post DudeAnon, Outstanding.


As for my 'friends' Friar J, GoldenWarrior, and IH. How's the view down there, with your heads in the sand or other locale where the sun don't shine? Youse guys are a real 'piece o' work'. Making broad assumptions and guesses, then attempting to label such as BE gospel.

The "Do Nothing" crowd, not expansion itself, will be the death of this conference. Your guesses and assumptions are just that. To suggest, promote, and preach your brand of progress, the BE should have remained with their former football brethren - as such the C7 would be no worse off than they were 4+ years ago.

Apparently, in your esteemed opinions - whistling, with your hands in your pockets, and kicking a bit of dust - all is well. Your shortsighted views, lack of initiative, and underwhelming utilization of your resources is appalling (that's what She said.)




or

Yep all of us that watched a conference expand itself right out of existence know nothing... All you johnny come lately geniuses have it all figured out. Numbnuts.

[scoscox]

My mind has gone a few ways about this.

Pro Expansion
1) The JPSmack argument. The round-robin does cause cannibalization of seeds. (I do not believe at all that SBU should be considered)
2) Competition level. I do believe that the pool of mid-majors are favorable. And it is very likely that any of VCU, UD and SLU would only elevate their status similar to how X, Butler and Creighton have.
3) Excitement. 2 more schools is 2 more sets of interesting fan-bases, teams, play styles and more.

Anti-Expansion
1) Branding. The basketball zeitgeist is just now beginning to accept the NBE and its place among the power 5. If we add UD & VCU and they tank (which is possible) this would be an immediate blow to the brand.
2) Spite: Fieldhouse Flyer, SactownDog, dwon and many more do not deserve it lol.


Edit: To GoldenWarrior's point about the guaranteed pay bump. Its very possible FOX is telling us not to expand because of this the same way ESPN told the Big 12 not to expand.

Excellent post DudeAnon, Outstanding.


As for my 'friends' Friar J, GoldenWarrior, and IH. How's the view down there, with your heads in the sand or other locale where the sun don't shine? Youse guys are a real 'piece o' work'. Making broad assumptions and guesses, then attempting to label such as BE gospel.

The "Do Nothing" crowd, not expansion itself, will be the death of this conference. Your guesses and assumptions are just that. To suggest, promote, and preach your brand of progress, the BE should have remained with their former football brethren - as such the C7 would be no worse off than they were 4+ years ago.

Apparently, in your esteemed opinions - whistling, with your hands in your pockets, and kicking a bit of dust - all is well. Your shortsighted views, lack of initiative, and underwhelming utilization of your resources is appalling (that's what She said.)




or

Your brand of progress is exactly what lead to the OBE's collapse in the first place. Strange that you would try to flip it on its head.

[sciencejay]

Yep all of us that watched a conference expand itself right out of existence know nothing... All you johnny come lately geniuses have it all figured out. Numbnuts.

Your brand of progress is exactly what lead to the OBE's collapse in the first place. Strange that you would try to flip it on its head.

I am grateful to know that the ONLY reason the OBE collapsed is that it added teams. There was no conflict with football vs. non-football schools. Sounds like revisionist history. Unfortunately for the B1G, ACC, SEC and Pac, they are all destined to a ruinous end like the OBE was. They've all expanded in the past few years. Earlier I said there was a paradigm shift going on in college athletics, but it's even bigger than I feared--the whole system is about to collapse!

GTMO-Take heart that we have these experienced stewards of conference success in our corner, protecting us from ourselves. And we're the numbnuts. (Mic drop)

[_lh]

My mind has gone a few ways about this.

Pro Expansion
1) The JPSmack argument. The round-robin does cause cannibalization of seeds. (I do not believe at all that SBU should be considered)
2) Competition level. I do believe that the pool of mid-majors are favorable. And it is very likely that any of VCU, UD and SLU would only elevate their status similar to how X, Butler and Creighton have.
3) Excitement. 2 more schools is 2 more sets of interesting fan-bases, teams, play styles and more.

Anti-Expansion
1) Branding. The basketball zeitgeist is just now beginning to accept the NBE and its place among the power 5. If we add UD & VCU and they tank (which is possible) this would be an immediate blow to the brand.
2) Spite: Fieldhouse Flyer, SactownDog, dwon and many more do not deserve it lol.



Edit: To GoldenWarrior's point about the guaranteed pay bump. Its very possible FOX is telling us not to expand because of this the same way ESPN told the Big 12 not to expand.

Excellent post DudeAnon, Outstanding.


As for my 'friends' Friar J, GoldenWarrior, and IH. How's the view down there, with your heads in the sand or other locale where the sun don't shine? Youse guys are a real 'piece o' work'. Making broad assumptions and guesses, then attempting to label such as BE gospel.

The "Do Nothing" crowd, not expansion itself, will be the death of this conference. Your guesses and assumptions are just that. To suggest, promote, and preach your brand of progress, the BE should have remained with their former football brethren - as such the C7 would be no worse off than they were 4+ years ago.

Apparently, in your esteemed opinions - whistling, with your hands in your pockets, and kicking a bit of dust - all is well. Your shortsighted views, lack of initiative, and underwhelming utilization of your resources is appalling (that's what She said.)




or

Your brand of progress is exactly what lead to the OBE's collapse in the first place. Strange that you would try to flip it on its head.

You are correct. Expansion is obviously not the answer. There are posters that think things are some how broken and that adding mid majors will magically fix it. Talk about heads in the sand.

Oh and Fryer. A troll is not going to admit to being a troll now back to the A10 board with you.

[Bill Marsh]

This is where, in my opinion, you are off track. Quality program is clearly a benefit when considering a school...but "quality school" comes first because, you know, academics is the mission, right? Athletics are secondary, even if it doesn't always seem like it.

I think we're in a complete paradigm shift with college athletics and conferences. And the massive amount of football money in the system is the cause of it. Historically conferences were comprised of similar universities (in terms of academics) that were reasonably close to each other geographically--the Ivy league and earlier versions of the the ACC, SEC, Big 8, the original 10 team Big 10 and the Pac 10. But I truly believe things are different now. Other than the Ivy league, none of the other conferences I mentioned still can say that they have maintained their original 'sense' of what that conference was built upon. They have all expanded to include new institutions that may not add something now (Rutgers, MD--heck, even Nebraska--in the B1G; Missouri in the SEC; Colorado in the Pac), but those institutions are committed to high level athletics and they expand the conference footprint.

I agree that our university presidents would be extremely interested in expanding with schools that are like-minded academically. But it's an interesting relationship between the schools, the conference and Fox, isn't it? Conference execs want to increase the presence of member schools, and the Media company wants to make as much money as it can. And when those two needs are satisfied, the university gets more money/exposure, so the presidents are happy. If we limit ourselves to schools with institutional similarity, we are limiting ourselves to whom? Gonzaga?
UD? SBU? Seems like that criterion basically precludes us from expanding. I think that's untenable in the long run. We will never garner a deal that brings in football money, but we need to do what we can to maximize our basketball money potential. And if things don't go well enough in Fox's eyes, then our next deal will be even worse per school, so we will be at a greater disadvantage relative to the FBS-5.

We are fighting an uphill battle on several fronts:

(1) The FBS conferences more or less act outside the control of NCAA policy, and they control the bulk of the TV revenue as a result (the bowl system is completely out of the NCAA's control). We will never have access to TV money that those schools get. We don't need equivalent media revenues since we don't have to pay for football at the highest levels, but we do need to maximize revenues from our media as much as possible.
(2) For the most part, FBS schools have large(r) student populations, so they produce more alumni who become fans of their schools. This means that they produce more consumers of their athletic programs' events. I know GT and DePaul have larger (>20K) student populations, but the rest of us are pretty small. So there will always be fewer eyeballs watching our games, unless the games are compelling and nationally relevant.
(3) FBS schools have football to keep the fan base fired up in the fall. Our schools fall from national attention until November. Creighton and other BEast schools have made the soccer FF, the college cup, and CU's VB team made the elite 8 last fall, but those just don't move the needle like football does. I don't see this changing either for our member schools.

Because of these obvious obstacles and unchangeable circumstances, I feel like we need to be aggressive (not desperate) in maximizing the terrific start the NBE has made. To me, expansion is a critical component of that. Of course, a 2018 final four of GT, SJ, DePaul and Creighton (sorry, had to 'homer' on this one) would further our terrific start and improve our national brand without expansion--can't imagine what the odds in Vegas are of that happening.

Expansion, especially for the crappy current options, does not solve or help to solve these "problems".

What does?

[_lh]

What's the problem exactly ol wise one.

[Bill Marsh]

I don't know about you guys, but I never watch Big Ten games. I have enough trouble keeping up with Big East games and still having a life. I assume that Big Ten fans are the same with regard to their league. So, I don"t know why the move of 50 Big Ten games to Fox is going to turn Big Ten fans into Big East watchers. Big Ten fans are still going to watch Big Ten games regardless of who broadcasts them.