The new old Big East

[Shoalzie]

The Catholic 7 are trying to keep the Big East name and are bringing in the likes of Butler, Xavier and potentially Creighton, Dayton and Saint Louis...

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketb ... ng-sources

That's going to be a fun conference...the Big East was too big any way. The leftovers are basically the old Metro Conference/Conference USA. That'll still be a decent league with Louisville and Cincinnati leading the way.

[Screw_Michigan]

Sucks for the A-10 that Butler and X are going to bail, but fuck X anyway.

[Terry in Crapchester]

The Catholic 7 are trying to keep the Big East name and are bringing in the likes of Butler, Xavier and potentially Creighton, Dayton and Saint Louis...

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketb ... ng-sources

That's going to be a fun conference...

I've heard that VCU is also in the mix. The C7/Big East figures to start out with 12 teams, Butler and XU joining certainly and three of the four others. I think the odd man out will be either Creighton (geography) or VCU (poor institutional fit). Some talking heads have also mentioned Gonzaga as a possibility, but the reality is that geography isn't totally irrelevant to these conferences. I'm guessing there will be a spot available for ND should the football conferences ever decide to give us an ultimatum that we're either all the way in or all the way out.

the Big East was too big any way.

I've never quite gotten this one. 16 members is too many for college basketball but not too many for college football??? x infinity. WTF is that?

The leftovers are basically the old Metro Conference/Conference USA. That'll still be a decent league with Louisville and Cincinnati leading the way.

Louisville is joining the ACC in 2014. The best basketball schools among the holdover football schools from the Big East will be Cincinnati, UConn, Temple and Memphis. That'll still be a fun conference, as will the C7/Big East, But for this longtime Big East fan, it won't be the same. One final hurrah for the Big East next season, then turn out the lights.

[Mace]

Sounds like you'll have to become an ACC fan, Terry.

[Terry in Crapchester]

Mace,

I was a Big East hoops fan even before ND joined the conference. I always considered the Big East my "hometown" conference because of the presence of Syracuse.

I've told this story before, but back in the 80's when I was attending college, the debate in the sports world was which conference played the best basketball: the ACC, the Big East, or the Big Ten. Granted, ND was an independent at the time, so we didn't have a real dog in that particular fight. But that fact didn't stop a bunch of sports-obsessed, sexually-frustrated (ND had 3 guys for every girl at the time, and most of the girls that were there were nothing to write home about) young men from weighing in on the subject. Of course, most of us gravitated toward defending our "hometown" conferences, which in my case meant the Big East.

I always considered the ACC a southern conference and had no particular affinity for it for that reason. I doubt that will change, even with ND's impending move.

[King Crimson]

TiC....16 is too many for football and basketball. solves it.

not sure as a Domer you can defend no conference and 16 teamer at the same time.

c'mon?

[Shoalzie]

The leftovers are basically the old Metro Conference/Conference USA. That'll still be a decent league with Louisville and Cincinnati leading the way.

Louisville is joining the ACC in 2014.

Wow, I can't keep track of where these schools are going anymore...

[Terry in Crapchester]

TiC....16 is too many for football and basketball. solves it.

not sure as a Domer you can defend no conference and 16 teamer at the same time.

c'mon?

The difference is that one is football and the other is basketball. The sports are different and have different needs viz. conferences. The "one size fits all" mentality that seems to pervade conference membership in college athletics has always puzzled me.

In a 16-team basketball conference, you can still play every conference opponent every year. In a 16-team football conference, you probably won't play some conference opponents in a four-year period. You definitely won't play some conference opponents at home in a four-year period.

Similarly, ND's needs viz. the two sports are different. I was arguing that ND needed to be in a basketball conference a good five years (if not longer) before we joined the Big East. In fact, I've argued that joining the Big East saved ND basketball in the 90's, and considerably helped a number of ND's olympic sports as well. At a minimum, joining the Big East provided ND with a framework through which it was able to save its basketball program. By contrast, in football, I don't see any benefit that ND would get from joining a conference, certainly not from joining any currently existing conference.

As for the future of the Big East, from strictly a ND-centric point of view I suppose it could be argued that the impending fissure is a good thing, in a caca-hitting-the-fan type scenario. If every power conference gives ND an ultimatum -- you're either all the way in or all the way out -- then at least this guarantees that there will always be a non-football conference option available that is a step up from, say, the Atlantic 10 (sorry, Screwy). OTOH, I think it's likely that the increasing centralization of power among the football conferences is a greater threat to ND's football independence than is any potential ultimatum, so it would've been in ND's best interests for the old Big East to remain together.

[Terry in Crapchester]

I always considered the ACC a southern conference and had no particular affinity for it for that reason.

WTF?! :?

For those of us who live in the north, anything south of D.C. is the sourh. That would encompass the entire old-school ACC save Maryland.

Before my time, but I've read that the ACC was once named the Southern Conference.

[Terry in Crapchester]

One thing I haven't heard yet, but am kinda curious about, is how this affects the NCAA tourney going forward. Or if it doesn't.

Recall, though, that when the Mountain West Conference split from the WAC, the NCAA added the play-in game to the tourney so that no at-large bids would be taken away. Same thing is in effect here, at least potentially (more on that later).

My prediction: the NCAA winds up expanding the field to 72 teams, adding two more automatic play-in games and two more at-large play-in games.

As it stands now, the America 12, or whatever the football schools end up calling themselves, does not meet the criteria for an automatic bid for the NCAA tourney. The Big East, even though it is the one breaking away and therefore technically the "new" conference, does. I don't think the America 12 has too much to worry about in that regard, at least -- the NCAA is considering a waiver from the automatic bid requirements for the WAC. If the WAC gets that waiver, it would be highly hypocritical not to give it to the America 12 as well, since that's a better basketball conference than the WAC. Still, I can't for the life of me figure out why Aresco didn't try to accelerate the timetable for East Carolina and Tulane. That would have taken care of the automatic bid requirement for basketball, and would have put the conference in position to run a CCG in football next year, something it needs to recoup at least some of that lost TV revenue.