The Mega-Big East: What Could Have Been
by Sean Keeley on Aug 4, 2010 4:16 PM EDT
Email
PrintThe only piece of information resembling a bombshell from yesterday's Big East Media Day was the news that the Big East apparently considered adding four schools from the Big 12 at one point during Conference Expansion-Palooza.
The Big East explored the possibility of adding four Big 12 teams had the Big 12 disbanded in June, a Big East source told SNY.tv.
The Big East would have targeted Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State and Missouri, swelling its ranks to 12 football teams and 20 basketball programs, the source said.
The source who told Adam Zagoria about this makes it sound like it was thisclose to happening. If I had to guess, I don't think it quite went down like that. I imagine the Big East was more of a lurker, waiting to offer the four possible cast-offs if Texas & Co. did end up going to the Pac-10. It ultimately makes the Big East sound like they were being proactive but who knows if they really were.
Still, it makes for an interesting discussion. While Big East football would have suddenly become a complete 12-team conference, eligible for a conference championship game, Big East basketball would have ballooned to an ungodly and unmanageable 20 teams. And what a 20 teams...Kansas is basketball royalty, Kansas State is a nouveau riche program, Missou has some good history and Iowa State can't be any worse than DePaul.
Assuming the Big East wouldn't have thrown out any non-football members to make room (ahem, DePaul), one has to wonder what the breakdowns would have looked like. In both instances, divisions would have to be instituted and I have to think they would have looked a little something like this.
Big East Football
| Eastern Division | Western Division |
| Connecticut | Cincinnati |
| Pittsburgh | Iowa State |
| Rutgers | Kansas |
| Syracuse | Kansas State |
| South Florida | Louisville |
| West Virginia | Missouri |
Given that they're the western-most of the current BE teams, Cincy and Louisville get the nod to join the newbies. Plus, they're relatively close to one-another while Kentucky & Missouri share a border, so it works. The traditional Big East teams get to stay with each other. USF stays with them as well, which I'm sure they'd prefer.
Now, basketball, where it gets downright hairy.
Big East Basketball
| Dick Gavitt Division | Mike Tranghese Division |
| Connecticut | Cincinnati |
| Georgetown | DePaul |
| Pittsburgh | Iowa State |
| Providence | Kansas |
| Rutgers |
Kansas State |
| Seton Hall | Louisville |
| St. John's | Marquette |
| Syracuse | Missouri |
| Villanova | Notre Dame |
| West Virginia | South Florida |
I have to say, this actually works out pretty well for almost everyone. All of the traditional Big East schools stay together. South Florida is the only football school that has to get "re-districted" in order to make things work, they're the outlier. Overall, the divisons are pretty even. SU, Nova, UConn, West Virginia and Georgetown battle it out on one side while Kansas, Louisville, KSU and Notre Dame fight it out on the other.
Most importantly, Rutgers and Seton Hall remain in the same division. Breaking up that epic rivalry would have been a deal-breaker.
17 comments
|
0 recs |
Do you like this story?
Comments
Of course...
… there’s really no reason not to split the non-football schools off once you add the Big 12 North schools. It’s not like Georgetown wouldn’t play us out of conference (or Rutgers wouldn’t play Seton Hall :) ).
Post-split, the non-football schools add Xavier, Dayton. St. Louis, and one other school. And set up the Big East / Great East challenge.
The easiest thing
Is to split into two BIG EAST conferences…. one for football schools… one for basketball schools. With 20 schools total, you could have 19 in season basketball games. Or you could just have X number of crossovers. With that many teams, you could have ample inventory for a Big East channel. Live events drives the revenue—more viewers = more ads. How many people watch Ron Zook’s post-game recap… .12?
The Big East is never going to be a cookie cutter, 12-team conference that looks and smells like the Big 10, ACC, SEC, and Pac 10. It just isn’t. So, instead of worrying about whether we LOOK like other conferences, we need to find a more profitable paradigm. 20 teams? 24 teams? Who cares if it makes more money for Syracuse?
God
I want to play Kansas every year. More than all the acc teams combined
by ryanwk628 on Aug 4, 2010 8:41 PM EDT via mobile reply actions
That would be a seriously awesome game, and it could become a monster of a rivalry
Too blue blood basketball programs slugging it out every season?!?
abayarde- "I SAY this get ready cause the BUFFALO BILLS ARE COMING TO TOWN and I dont mean like Santa clause. WE will not Surrender this is were you all FALL The WHAGON BLASTER IS TAKING OFF AND YOU PUNKS are in our way, This wagon has no BREAKS so get ready for the ride of the life time"
12/20 could work
it’d be damn hard, but its possible it could work. although i’d rather just ditch depaul, marquette, providence and seton hall. nova, gtown, nd, and st johns are the only bball only’s i care about playing
Expand conference basketball games
A 12/20 team league with the current structure would cause each team to skip 2 Big East opponents per year. A simple extension to 20 conference games to year allows a game against everyone with a Home&Home with 1 designated Rival. (Georgetown) An extension to 22 conference games allows for the schedule that exists now with a Home&Home with 1 designated rival and 2 other rotating “double doubles” per year.
You stay classy Syracuse.
The BBall split you have creates two conferences
If the BE were to be 20 teams I would hope that we play every team in conf. Otherwise what is the point. So 19 games (every team once), 20 games (one rival twice which would be GTown for SU), or 22 games by making 5 pods of 4 (which would only leave room for 10 OOC games). I wouldnt mind seeing pods of
KU, Mizzou, ISU, K St
Louisville, Cincy, Marq, DePaul
Pitt, WV, ND, USF
UConn, Nova, StJ, PC
SU, GTown, SH, RU
How would a 20 team BET work.
Games at MSG and the Meadowlands at the same time?
Missouri, the union narcissus
Don’t trust them. Too self-involved as a swing-state with previous border issues.
If I were commish
Why not go 24 teams NOW?
Big East All-Sports:
Add Central Florida, East Carolina, Memphis, and TCU.
Division 1: UCF, ECU, Cincy, Memphis, Louisville, TCU
Division 2: USF, Syracuse, Rutgers, UConn, WVU, Pitt
Play intradivision—5 games. 3 games against other division.
Championship game held in Miami. No home stadium. People will attend.
Big East Basketball Only
Add Xavier, St. Louis, Richmond, Butler.
Division 3: Marquette, DePaul, Xavier, ND, St. Louis, Butler
Division 4: G’Town, Richmond, St. Johns, Seton Hall, Nova, Providence
Basketball scheduling… the possibilities are endless:
Pre-season…each division ranks the teams. The #1 team in each division plays 2 games against the #2 team. Home and away. Same for #3 and #4. And #5 and #6. That’s two games. Plus, each other team in division = 4 more games (up to 6). Plus Division within league 1-2, 3-4 (6 more games, up to 12). Plus, 1/2 teams in Division 3 and 1/2 teams in Division 4 = 18 games.
A typical season for Syracuse could be… two games against UConn, one game against WVU, Pitt, USF, Rutgers. One game against UCF, ECU, Cincy, Memphis, Louisville, TCU. One game against Georgetown, Richmond, and Seton Hall. One game against DePaul, ND, and Butler.
MANY tough games. However, also have games against Rutgers, USF, UCF, ECU, TCU, SHU, DePaul, Richmond.
New markets or areas added to potential TV pool extend into Texas, Missouri, Indiana, Virginia, Carolina, Orlando. You think playing a game in Richmond would not help recruit kids from Virginia? Plus, having the Big East network in Virginia will help football recruiting. And so on.
Big East Tournament… games in new arena in Brooklyn and MSG. When down to 8, all games in MSG.
I’d gladly give up annual game against Georgetown. Think of how much MORE meaningful it would be to play them in the BE tournament. This year it was Game 3. And both teams were in the Dance already. Net impact—losing A.O. was 1,000,000 worse than losing game. Or if we had not played them in a few years.
With Dome attendance well off the pace, I think it is time for some new blood too. Who generates more fans… UCF or Seton Hall? Adding an away game to UCF every other year would be nice too.
Profit sharing… 12 football schools and Notre Dame… 6 percent = 78%. 11 remaining basketball schools… 2 percent = 22%. Sorry, that’s just reality. Football drives revenue and always will. Notre Dame deserves the extra $ because their allegiance with the Big East increases the bowl pool substantially. It sucks when an 8-4 Notre Dame team leapfrogs a BE team… BUT… would we even HAVE that bowl without ND???
The Big East needs to step way outside the box. We can’t imitate other conferences, we need to drive our own market. Start our own network. With this proposal, we would have access to 100,000,000 homes… way more than the Big 10.
Think of it this way
The Big Ten does not want its channel generating 10 cents a month. They want to get 70 cents a month and would not accept less. They may charge Nebraska cable companies $1+ per month. Huge fights with cable companies here in Michigan when the BTN was formed.
If the Big East could form a network getting 10 cents a month and land 50,000,000 homes… do the math… that is still $60,000,000/year. EXCLUDING AD REVENUE. That’s $3.6 million per football team alone. Get a quarter per month and drop down to 25,000,000 homes. That becomes $4.5 million per football team.
Partner with a network… you can keep 75% of the ad revenue. If it is 1/3 of the subscription rate (the Big 10 is apparently close to 50/50, possibly more ad revenue than subscription, but we will stick conservative). If so, that ups it to $6,000,000. The network would clear… $50,000,000. I think they could live with that.
Meanwhile, basketball only schools get a cool $2 million for nothing. Can the A-10 match that?
Here is the kicker… with 12 teams in football, the added two games per week can be the live event that builds the Big East network. We don’t have to give up the ESPN contract currently in place. The Big 10 network built itself on Illinois/Syracuse and Indiana/Central Michigan games…. and then… Indiana/Northwestern games. In basketball, we are talking extra games every day. Again, no need to adjust ESPN contract…we’ll take the leftovers. Probably still enough to have a game every single night. Imagine every single Syracuse game on TV… football and basketball. ESPN has no interest in Syracuse/Cornell. The Big East Network would. Or could. Villanova/St. Joes. UConn-Central Connecticut. USF/Fla. Int’l. People would watch those games!
So… the added revenue from the Big East network could just be ON TOP of what we currently get.
The trick is… get the markets and get the money. The Big East always had it right… they just didn’t think ahead of the curve.
The other conferences are CONSTRAINED from adding teams because that dilutes their revenue. They are splitting their big pie. The Big East can still create its pie.
Plus
With the midwestern teams added… you could have Syracuse/Cornell at 7pm… Notre Dame/Green-Bay Milwaukee at 9 pm. Not a bad Monday lineup. That is DECEMBER we are talking. Not too shabby. Do that four nights a week.
What you suggest
Makes far too much sense for the Big East to adopt.
In all seriousness, you are right – we are sitting on a potential cash cow across the Northeast, and the Big East is (naturally) sitting on its hands.
"(BARF)" - Donovan McNabb, during his game winning drive against Virginia Tech in 1998
Unbalanced Schedule
If they went to a 20 game BBall Conf, they should do an unbalanced schedule, two divisions as Sean has above but if you were in the top half of your division the league the year before you play home and homes with the top 5 in your division one game against the bottom 5 in your division and one game against the top 5 in the other division, you dont play the bottom half of the other division. If you are in the bottom half of your division you play one game against everybody. Thats a 19 game schedule one more than this season and you play a 16 team BET letting the 6,7,8th place team in each div play for that bubble spot. You could also add 1 extra against a team that you dont already have a home and home with if you wanted to go 20 games, start conference play right after christmas. This setup would test the best teams and give more great and TV Ready matchups every year preseason when selling the games to networks counts while letting the team that is in 5th or 6th in each div a chance to climb out of the basement and get into the NCAA the following year.
18
Check that an 18 game sched same as this year which is big enough
by OrangeBlood06 on Aug 5, 2010 2:09 PM EDT up reply actions
Certain photos copyright © 2012 by Associated Press or Getty Images. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of Associated Press and Getty Images is strictly prohibited.
