I've been following the conference realignment for awhile, and I have to wonder: What exactly are they waiting for?
It's been roughly a month since Syracuse and Pitt left the Big East. Within that time WVU and TCU left (before they joined). There's been talking of adding football only members with the academies, Temple, Memphis, UCF, Boise State, merging with another conference, forming a b-ball only conference.
All this talk has kept me coming back to that same question. When are we going to do something about it? Is the strategy to sit and wait for all the football teams to leave so we can form a b-ball only conference? What other options are there?
I'm not asking for a definitive answer for what the Big East will do. I'm asking what elements still needs to start putting the pieces back together.
answer is in your post, must wait it out and see
Quote from: muball on October 31, 2011, 06:15:28 PM
answer is in your post, must wait it out and see
Exactly. The BE has to wait it out. No school is going to join (at least for fball) if they dont know who is going to be part of the conference. A lot has changed since Pitt and Cuse announced their departure. WVU left. Will UL leave as well? The BE appears to be handing out invitations to join as a fball-only member. If there are more defections, maybe a potential expansion school is thinking they should be full-time members and are holding out (just like USF did). Slowly, the leverage is moving from the BE to the target schools. The more unrest, the more these schools believe they hold the cards. If Im an AD of a school within the footprint of the BE (like UCF, Temple, ECU, etc), there is no way I would pull the trigger on a partial membership invitation. I going to want to be a full-time member (Boise State is prob an exception since it would be too costly to be an all-sports member).
I believe the conference Presidents are meeting tomorrow. My guess is that we will see something then.
Quote from: The Sultan of South Wayne on October 31, 2011, 06:56:12 PMI believe the conference Presidents are meeting tomorrow. My guess is that we will see something then.
Yeah...but how many times have they already met about expansion? I know this is a waiting game, but it seems everyone else (read: ACC, SEC, and Big 12) are being aggressive while we continue to wait. It seems like every other day, there's a "Big East has offered..." or "XXXXX is considering Big East" story, only to be followed by a "Big East hasn't formally invited anyone" story the next day.
I know...it's frustration on my part, be patient, but it would be nice to hear that there's actually something positive going on in regards to our conference :-\
Completely agree with Brew and the title of this thread. The BE seems to just be sitting here, while the rest of the conferences are actively making moves. If they don't have a choice but to wait, then they should have been proactive in taking drastic steps; if that's a basketball-only conference, then so be it. This slow bleed is awful.
On that note (maybe this has been talked to death already), but is there a football-only school out there that Marquette could align with to negotiate as a package deal? Is something like that even a legal option?
Quote from: Utile et Dulce on November 01, 2011, 07:55:49 AM
Completely agree with Brew and the title of this thread. The BE seems to just be sitting here, while the rest of the conferences are actively making moves. If they don't have a choice but to wait, then they should have been proactive in taking drastic steps; if that's a basketball-only conference, then so be it. This slow bleed is awful.
Making moves for the sake of looking like you are doing something doesn't make any sense - rarely are smart business decisions made that way. First thing that needs to happen is that they need to figure out who is in and who is out. Only after that happens can they figure out where to go from here.
This was in the Philadelphia Inquirer this moning:
http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/colleges/villanova/20111101_Basketball_should_be_at_top_of_Big_East_presidents__agenda.html
Quote from: The Sultan of South Wayne on November 01, 2011, 08:29:07 AM
Making moves for the sake of looking like you are doing something doesn't make any sense - rarely are smart business decisions made that way.
Agree totally. We're all anxious for resolution, but our dinner bell won't ring until the big dogs are finished eating. It sucks that we have to wait on the 5 strongest conferences, but at least we're 6th in line instead of 8th or worse (Conference USA, Great Midwest, etc.). The landscape won't look as good when the bombing finally stops but it won't be the post-apocolyptic world that some fear.
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Quote from: The Sultan of South Wayne on November 01, 2011, 08:29:07 AM
First thing that needs to happen is that they need to figure out who is in and who is out. Only after that happens can they figure out where to go from here.
Chicken or the Egg comes first? If i was in Louisville or UConn's position, and if I was going to be honest with everybody, I would not be committing to the conference. I would easily accept an invite to the Big 12 or ACC as their AQ status is not in doubt and my main concern would be revenue coming from football.
I still don't believe we will retain the AQ status, which every football school is interested in, even if we get all the possible football Adds. WVU, Pitt and Syracuse are the top three football schools in the conference and even with them it was questionable that the AQ status would be removed, and now they are leaving. Thats a big hole to fill and I don't know if it can be filled by the others. The only consistently good team, at least the last 5-10 years is Boise St.
Quote from: Abode4life on November 01, 2011, 09:58:37 AM
Chicken or the Egg comes first? If i was in Louisville or UConn's position, and if I was going to be honest with everybody, I would not be committing to the conference. I would easily accept an invite to the Big 12 or ACC as their AQ status is not in doubt and my main concern would be revenue coming from football.
I still don't believe we will retain the AQ status, which every football school is interested in, even if we get all the possible football Adds. WVU, Pitt and Syracuse are the top three football schools in the conference and even with them it was questionable that the AQ status would be removed, and now they are leaving. Thats a big hole to fill and I don't know if it can be filled by the others. The only consistently good team, at least the last 5-10 years is Boise St.
It is all about the AQ.
Quote from: 79Warrior on November 01, 2011, 10:01:22 AM
It is all about the AQ.
And hopefully about the IQ of the basketball only school presidents - do not admit all the riff raff programs being discussed to try to save football, while simultaneously devaluing the Big East basketball brand.
Great article to this point (thank for posting)
Quote from: muwarrior69 on November 01, 2011, 08:43:35 AM
This was in the Philadelphia Inquirer this moning:
http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/colleges/villanova/20111101_Basketball_should_be_at_top_of_Big_East_presidents__agenda.html
Quote from: The Sultan of South Wayne on November 01, 2011, 08:29:07 AMMaking moves for the sake of looking like you are doing something doesn't make any sense - rarely are smart business decisions made that way.
I couldn't disagree more. Smart business decisions are made when you view the landscape and take proactive, informed measures towards a goal. When your goal is to keep a group together, and one of the main reasons everyone wants to leave is that they feel insecure about their position,
looking like you are doing something can be incredibly valuable. It's like launching a navy fleet towards the coast of somewhere just to prove you can.
My point, though, was that the Big East appeared to be in wait and see mode. The result of that seems obvious: nervous football members will start looking and you're going to lose all the good ones. If that is obviously your future based on your current actions, then it makes sense to get there in as beneficial a way as possible.
I don't know what that is. I would think it'd start by saying "If you want to leave before the 27 months, we're offering a $20m buyout, effective immediately." Drive as much as you can, while you can. That's smart business.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/watch/2011/11/big-east-expansion-goes-west-byu-east-carolina-temple-and-memphis-all-mix
I saw this article. A 14-team Big East football conference may be in the mix?
Quote from: Utile et Dulce on November 01, 2011, 11:14:00 AM
I couldn't disagree more. Smart business decisions are made when you view the landscape and take proactive, informed measures towards a goal. When your goal is to keep a group together, and one of the main reasons everyone wants to leave is that they feel insecure about their position, looking like you are doing something can be incredibly valuable. It's like launching a navy fleet towards the coast of somewhere just to prove you can.
Oh I agree with this. But what's the landscape? Who is with you?
A conference is a collection of schools. It is hard to move forward when two of your members leave two months ago...another one leaves last week...after fighting off another member's flirtations with the same conference. You can't really go anywhere if you don't know who is going.
Furthermore, don't confuse "appearances" with reality. The conference might "appear" that they are in a wait and see mode, but they obviously have had conversations with multiple schools. Decisions cannot be made overnight by these other schools. They obviously are doing something.
Just because you aren't kept in the loop about it doesn't mean it isn't happening.
About the only pro-active step MU can take is to lead the charge to kick out the FB schools and go hoop-only. Is that really the best move? And even if we had the cool time machine that we built to go back 50 years and keep football, and instead used it to convince the MU powers that were, circa 1979, to accept the BEast's invitation to join and give up our independent status, what would be different about our current situation. As a hoop-only school, our options are limited. Throwing a tantrum is never the one to choose.
And as has been said elsewhere, going "hoops only" is a nuclear option. Once you do that, it cannot be undone. Hastily making a decision of that magnitude, without carefully understanding its implications, could be a HUGE mistake.
Quote from: The Sultan of South Wayne on November 01, 2011, 11:27:04 AMFurthermore, don't confuse "appearances" with reality. The conference might "appear" that they are in a wait and see mode, but they obviously have had conversations with multiple schools. Decisions cannot be made overnight by these other schools. They obviously are doing something.
Just because you aren't kept in the loop about it doesn't mean it isn't happening.
I completely agree that I don't know what is really going on. I'll go a step further and say that even if I did, I wouldn't know if it was good or bad.
There's this theory in user experience design where showing something—anything—to a waiting user, will decrease the perceived wait time. The next time you click a link and see that little spinning wheel or "Loading..." with the animated dots, you're being hoodwinked into thinking the process is happening faster than it is. Sometimes the act of putting up the loading animation makes the process take longer.
Doesn't matter. Perception is often stronger than reality.
That's the only reason they announce the meeting of the presidents. It's PR designed to calm the storm. Seems to me that they've fumbled every opportunity to appear like they are a stable, in-control conference. Even if you knew what was happening in the background, it's hard to fight that public perception.