GoldenWarrior11 wrote:I have my reservations about the Gavitt Games being extended past 2022 (Michigan State still hasn't appeared in the series), but as long as there are five power conferences, they will continue to need the Big East in order to have another power conference to schedule pre-conference tournament games, IMO. Even if the P5 becomes the P4, with the Big 12 somehow dissolving/removed, those 60+ teams will still need an additional conference to play against to fill a schedule. The trend definitely appears to be going against removing the cupcakes and beefing up the SOS with quality opponents. It will hurt the potential for conferences like the A-10, AAC, MWC, Horizon and MWC to get challenges against the power conferences, but it would help strong programs - like UConn, Cincinnati, VCU, Wichita State, Dayton, Valparaiso, etc. - get quality games.
Long-term, I think we will end up getting a challenge against the Big 12, simply because we match up in the number of teams. By 2026, when their deal is done, who knows what the landscape will look like. The Big East will be fine because of its brand, its reputation and the overall strength of all of the teams within it.
I really think you are over simplifying things. With 20 conference games, and a MTE a conference has 24 of 31 games filled. With best case scenario 12 home games filled. Just looked at the ACC and every team except for Wake Forest(at 14) had played at least 16 home games. Big Ten- everyone had at least 16 home games. Big 12- everyone had at least 15- and 7/10 had at least 16(Kansas, Iowa St, Oklahoma with 15). Pac 12- Everyone had at least 15- and all but Stanford had 16. SEC- everyone had 15 and Auburn only one with that few even(note Florida had 11 officially but that was due to the renovation of their arena. So of the 65 P5 teams- only Wake Forest had 14 home games, and only 5 had 15. 59 had 16. Even with the Big East adding in- only Seton Hall had only 14 home games last year, and only Nova and St John's had 15. The rest had at least 16. So that's 2 with 14, 7 with 15, and 66 with at least 16. So teams need 16 home games- the economics of that won't change. So going to a team with a 3 game MTE- that team would have 24 games filled with only 11 home games. So of the other 7 games, they would have to have 4 home games bare minimum, and really most would require 5. And if they have a road conference challenge in there- they have only 6 games left and need either 4-5 home games to fill that. And a lot of those home games will be buy type games.
And that's BEFORE things like the champions challenge. So a Michigan St for instance could have 25 games filled with a 3 neutral game MTE and have only 11 home games. If they are in both conference challenges- 1 home 1 away- they have 27 games filled and only 12 home games. They would pretty much be done with all their good OOC games- and would have 4 buy type games.