Crawfish - Other BE Sports

[GumbyDamnit!]

Can only speak from personal experience, but Nova is a BB school. Period. Do alums politely cheer when football or lax or track, etc. do well? Sure. I played soccer at Nova and even I have only a cursory interest in how they do each year. Would I love to hear that they won a BE championship or made a FF? Sure. But comparatively I follow BB recruiting so much more than actual soccer results. I care a whole lot more if Nova lands a PG to replace Brunson than the FB, soccer, or cross country team winning a national championship. And really it's not even close...

So if we as a conference got another NC in BB, it would mean more than 10 NC's in the "other" sports IMO.

[FriarJ]

Can only speak from personal experience, but Nova is a BB school. Period. Do alums politely cheer when football or lax or track, etc. do well? Sure. I played soccer at Nova and even I have only a cursory interest in how they do each year. Would I love to hear that they won a BE championship or made a FF? Sure. But comparatively I follow BB recruiting so much more than actual soccer results. I care a whole lot more if Nova lands a PG to replace Brunson than the FB, soccer, or cross country team winning a national championship. And really it's not even close...

So if we as a conference got another NC in BB, it would mean more than 10 NC's in the "other" sports IMO.

This is as I expected, it's nice to have verification that they are not important from someone who actually played one of them. I mean I love Friar hockey and it means a lot to the school and the fans/alumni but I don't give a hoot about the conference. Men's basketball is on a whole other level.

For instance PC has been way up in the Directors Cup standings for a while now and is always #1 or #2 in the schools that have no football and above many of the schools that have FBS football and double the sports. But who cares honestly other than the current school administration?

[sciencejay]

Can only speak from personal experience, but Nova is a BB school. Period. Do alums politely cheer when football or lax or track, etc. do well? Sure. I played soccer at Nova and even I have only a cursory interest in how they do each year. Would I love to hear that they won a BE championship or made a FF? Sure. But comparatively I follow BB recruiting so much more than actual soccer results. I care a whole lot more if Nova lands a PG to replace Brunson than the FB, soccer, or cross country team winning a national championship. And really it's not even close...

So if we as a conference got another NC in BB, it would mean more than 10 NC's in the "other" sports IMO.

This is as I expected, it's nice to have verification that they are not important from someone who actually played one of them. I mean I love Friar hockey and it means a lot to the school and the fans/alumni but I don't give a hoot about the conference. Men's basketball is on a whole other level.

For instance PC has been way up in the Directors Cup standings for a while now and is always #1 or #2 in the schools that have no football and above many of the schools that have FBS football and double the sports. But who cares honestly other than the current school administration?

So what is your point? We should drop the other sports that you don't care about? We obviously can't due to NCAA D1 requirements and Title IX issues. What could the BEast possibly do to circumvent NCAA and Title IX to improve their MBB budgets? What grand conclusion are you trying to achieve here? The overwhelming number of collegiate athletes compete in non-revenue sports. There is inherent (though not financial) value in having a broad-based academic curriculum for students as well as a diverse set of athletic programs to attract different kinds of students, both male and female, to each of our universities. Hard to quantify, but indisputable benefits.

I get that you don't care about most of the varsity sports your schools offer. We're all that way. The WBB coach at CU was a classmate of mine and is someone with whom I'm friendly. Even still, I don't really follow WBB at CU--barely watched more than a quarter of their NCAA tourney game this spring. I pay no attention to softball or baseball. But I have alum friends who love baseball who could give a rat's ass about volleyball (a sport for which I have season tix in addition to MBB).

Maybe the question you are asking is whether another 10-20% bump in budget (due to dropping other programs and based on the assumption that all BEast MBB programs already receive the lion's share of athletic dept spending in their schools) would drastically raise the bar for your school's MBB program? With Nova, that absolutely can't be the case since they won it all last year. For CU, I'm not sure that McD's lack of more significant program success is due to financial limitations. He/his staff recruit nationally. They fly charter frequently/as needed. They have brand new, state of the art training facilities and they get to show off a nightly crowd of 17,000+ for game atmosphere in a terrific venue. Academically, CU is solid, and it's Jesuit, so for the parents of recruits caring about those things, CU checks a lot of boxes. CU's athletic department budget is estimated to be ~$11M/yr. Of that, I would guess McD gets $6-7M for MBB (if anyone has more solid numbers, please share). If he had $7-8M (at the expense of other programs), would CU be consistently in the Top 10 or frequent the S16/E8/F4? Heck, before Mo went down (and then out) this season, we were there anyway.

So again, I don't see where a slight/moderate increase changes the performance level on the court for each of our member institutions.

[FriarJ]

The OP stated that we needed to have success in the other sports to be considered a Power conference. I disagree with that, they are not important in that consideration in any regard. That is my opinion and point. I never said anything about dropping them and I don't see how you got that from my posts.

[sciencejay]

The OP stated that we needed to have success in the other sports to be considered a Power conference. I disagree with that, they are not important in that consideration in any regard. That is my opinion and point. I never said anything about dropping them and I don't see how you got that from my posts.

You're right. My bad. I conflated your discussion about not caring about anything but MBB with the suggestions of ArmyVet and others who indicated that maybe we could drop women's/non-revenue sports and/or keep a streamlined offering of varsity sports in order to increase MBB budget. I disagree with that premise on a lot of levels.

[GumbyDamnit!]

The OP stated that we needed to have success in the other sports to be considered a Power conference. I disagree with that, they are not important in that consideration in any regard. That is my opinion and point. I never said anything about dropping them and I don't see how you got that from my posts.

Yep. Agree with FriarJ.

[EMT]

I'm glad someone raised the topic. I would be fully in favor of the Big East changing the non-revenue sports to "club" sports. Let the P5 have their bloated athletic departments and give 100+ scholarships and have the non FBS football schools focus on 3-4 sports each.

That would be a bad move....I'd be totally against that. PC gets a ton of $$$ in donations from rich hockey & lax parents/alums....

[gosports1]

I was on a varsity team in college as well and I still have an interest in how successful the athletic department is on a whole. Of course if the field hockey team doesn't win the BE championship I am not going to be depressed and feel they let me down. The success of the Olympic sports is important to the AD's, administrations and participants of those involved as well as the leadership of the conference. Success breeds success. If you have a successful soccer or lax program you are more likely to attract better athletes. Generally speaking more successful athletes tend to be successful in their professional lives. This in theory leads to greater donations to the school by these successful former athletes which helps continues the cycle. The typical student or alum have a greater interest in the more prestigious sports such as BB and FB. its part of the culture. There are various reasons why BB and FB dominant and I m sure most of us know what they are so I wont get into that.

[RedStorm]

St Johns has the nations best Fencing program. I doubt most students even know what the hell fencing is. Maybe someday they will show a match on ESPN 5.

[GumbyDamnit!]

St Johns has the nations best Fencing program. I doubt most students even know what the hell fencing is. Maybe someday they will show a match on ESPN 5.

No. That belongs on The Ocho.