Article suggesting "decoupling" sports into multiple conferences

[LloydMooresLegs]

This author takes the next (logical?) step and suggests the possibility of schools separating football and basketball (and for that matter, hockey and other sports) among various conferences.  So, for example, Duke could join a middling football conference, the best basketball conference and a geographically efficient conference for all other sports.
http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2012/11/conference_realignment_the_acc_big_east_and_big_ten_are_all_failed_experiments.html. 

[Parsighian]

There's no link so we don't really know what the author said. From your synopsis though it sounds stupid. Conference identity cannot be spread like mayo.

[Tugg Speedman]

http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2012/11/conference_realignment_the_acc_big_east_and_big_ten_are_all_failed_experiments.html

The Big East Is a Failed Experiment
So is every other college conference. Here's a better approach to blowing them up.

In the last few days in conference realignment, Maryland and Rutgers left the ACC and Big East respectively to join the Big Ten; Louisville switched from the Big East to the ACC; Tulane and East Carolina moved from Conference USA to the Big East (the latter in football only); Florida Atlantic and Middle Tennessee went from the Sun Belt to Conference USA; Denver traded the Western Athletic Conference for the Summit League; and the for-profit Grand Canyon University joined the WAC, becoming the first school of its kind to catch on with a Division 1 conference. The inevitable result of all this horse-trading: In 2022, the Pac-28's University of Phoenix will play for college football's national title in University of Phoenix Stadium. (They will lose to Alabama, the champion of the Confederate Football States of America.)

It's surprising it took a for-profit school this long to get in on the action. For all of these institutions of higher learning, switching from one conference to another is all about profit maximization. This is more a truism than a criticism: Major athletic departments do everything they can to wring every dollar from their football and basketball programs. For the University of Maryland, moving to the Big Ten means an instant bump of $12 million in annual television revenues with the promise of more to come when the conference renegotiates its TV deal in 2017. But if this is a blatant cash grab, then Maryland isn't grabbing as much as it could. That's because joining up with the same group of schools for all sports doesn't make sense.

Even if a school is successful at both football and basketball, fans and big-money donors usually care about one far more than the other. Florida, Texas, Michigan, and Ohio State typically excel at both sports, but they're really football schools. Duke, North Carolina, and Kentucky are basketball schools. (What colleges are equally passionate about both? It's hard to think of many—BYU, Illinois, and maybe Georgia Tech come to mind.)

Given that reality, college athletics would be more lucrative and—just as important—more stable if football schools and basketball schools stuck together. Imagine a basketball-only conference featuring Maryland, Georgetown, and Syracuse along with the likes of Duke, UNC, Kentucky, Indiana, and Kansas. Likewise, the SEC's top football powers could enrich themselves still further by dumping Vanderbilt and Kentucky's gridiron Wildcats in favor of football-only members Texas and Florida State.

This is not a radical idea. For years, Notre Dame has sold its sports a la carte: It's an independent in football, plays hockey in the CCHA (it will join Hockey East in 2013), fences in the Midwest Fencing Conference, and plays every other sport as part of the Big East. Notre Dame will soon jump from the Big East to the ACC in most sports. It makes sense for the Irish basketball team, which has been good lately, to align itself with powers like North Carolina and Duke. It makes less sense for its lucrative football team to go all-in, which is why the Irish are staying independent and playing five games a season against ACC opponents.

Decoupling sports doesn't only make money; it saves it. As a consequence of West Virginia's football-motivated move to the Big 12, the Mountaineers' women's tennis team—which has a budget fit for Greyhound—now must make road trips to Texas, Iowa, and Kansas. This is foolish and unnecessary. If the West Virginia football team can earn more cash by aligning with Texas, let them play in Austin. Every other Mountaineers squad should stick to playing schools closer to Morgantown, like Marshall, Pittsburgh, Virginia, and Virginia Tech.

West Virginia's former home, the Big East, shows the perils of today's approach to conference affiliation. The Big East, which came into existence in 1979, the same year as ESPN, was the original made-for-television conference. Boston College, Connecticut, Georgetown, Providence, St. John's, Seton Hall, Syracuse joined together, with Villanova and Pittsburgh joining soon after, to create a basketball behemoth that placed three teams in the 1985 Final Four. By the following March, the Big East had national TV deals with CBS, ESPN, and the USA Network. ''I just hope in 20 years we will have withstood the test of time, like the ACC and Big Ten,'' the conference's then-commissioner Dave Gavitt told the New York Times.

Twenty-six years later, the Big East is a teetering Jenga tower, and adding Tulane and East Carolina won't stabilize it. The conference created the conditions for its own demise in 1991, when it abandoned its sensible, money-generating basketball-centrism by trying to compete in basketball and football. First, Rutgers, Miami, Temple, Virginia Tech, and West Virginia came aboard. Then, in 2003, Miami and Virginia Tech started the trend of leaving the Big East for the more football-conducive ACC. Boston College followed suit the next year, while Temple got kicked out of the Big East for being terrible at football. Then Louisville, Cincinnati, and South Florida signed up. TCU came on over, then decamped to the Big 12 without playing a single game. Syracuse and Pittsburgh left for the ACC. West Virginia went to the Big 12. Boise State and San Diego State joined the Big East as football-only members—hey, they're east of the Pacific Ocean. Louisville went to the ACC. Hey, wait, Temple's back? Where did Houston come from? Now, after all that shuffling and re-shuffling, the Big East is basically what Conference USA used to be, with the Naval Academy thrown in just in case they want to launch an amphibious assault against the Pac-12.

What has this pigskin obsession done for the Big East? On the plus side, the conference scored an annual, automatic, revenue-securing BCS invitation when that system spewed forth in 1998. But in desperately clinging to this automatic berth, the Big East has morphed into a sickly husk of its former self. It is college football's Gollum. And by overreaching in its mission to become an all-sport power, the Big East has now lost a number of its great basketball schools. But wait, it gets worse: When the four-team football playoff commences in 2014, the Big East will lose its guaranteed position, at which point it might just wither and die completely.

There is a lesson here for money-hungry athletic directors and college presidents. It's true that conferences like the Big 10 and SEC can score higher-value deals with TV networks by packaging more schools and more sports together. But the conferences aren't supposed to serve anyone other than their member institutions, which might well do better by shopping their services on their own. In the long run, it's hard to see how a school like Maryland is better-served economically and competitively by running out on the Duke and North Carolina basketball programs. The realignments of the last few years have killed a bunch of great traditional rivalries, including Texas-Texas A&M in football and Syracuse-Georgetown in basketball. It's time for schools to recognize that the one-conference-fits-all approach is the only tradition that needs to be scrapped.

[LloydMooresLegs]

Sorry about that.  Thanks, Another.

[The Equalizer]

Imagine a basketball-only conference featuring Maryland, Georgetown, and Syracuse along with the likes of Duke, UNC, Kentucky, Indiana, and Kansas.

Which four are going to turn into the DePaul of this new league.

Always left out of these types of proposals is the observation that someone is going to have to be last, and half the confernce will be bottom half teams--and more likely to miss the tournament.

Or are we going to be allright with a UK or Maryland or Duke making the tournament with a 3-13 conference record because, well, they're UK, Duke or Maryland and play in such a tough conference?

What happens when the A10 or MVC becomes more agressive at reverse engineering the RPI, and a 3rd place team, undefeated in non-conference and only 3 or 4 conference losses winds up pushing a 5th place Syracuse or 6th place Indiana off the tournament bubble?

What these mega-conferences will inevitably lead to is a further expansion of the NCAA tournament--And we may have already passed that point.  If you have a power basketball leauge with 16 great team, all 16 are going to want (and deserve) to be in. Hell, just expand the tournament by a weekend, make it 256 teams, and be done with it.  Because thats the only way you can set up a conference with only good teams and satisfy them all when it comes time to tournament bids.

[Tugg Speedman]

What these mega-conferences will inevitably lead to is a further expansion of the NCAA tournament--And we may have already passed that point.  If you have a power basketball leauge with 16 great team, all 16 are going to want (and deserve) to be in. Hell, just expand the tournament by a weekend, make it 256 teams, and be done with it.  Because thats the only way you can set up a conference with only good teams and satisfy them all when it comes time to tournament bids.

The conferences make good money with their conference tourneys.  If all the power schools cluster into one or two conferences, it waters down the rest of the conferences.

Then the rest will votes to expand the NCAA to 128 or 235 schools and kill off the conference tourney.

Ideally we needs 5 or 6 decent power conferences.  Each with 12 to 16 schools.

[Aughnanure]

 

Which four are going to turn into the DePaul of this new league.

Always left out of these types of proposals is the observation that someone is going to have to be last, and half the confernce will be bottom half teams--and more likely to miss the tournament.

Or are we going to be allright with a UK or Maryland or Duke making the tournament with a 3-13 conference record because, well, they're UK, Duke or Maryland and play in such a tough conference?

What happens when the A10 or MVC becomes more agressive at reverse engineering the RPI, and a 3rd place team, undefeated in non-conference and only 3 or 4 conference losses winds up pushing a 5th place Syracuse or 6th place Indiana off the tournament bubble?

Agree 100%. I know some people here would dream about being in the new ACC. But I think it could be the death knell for a team like Marquette, and many others solid but not elite programs. Look at was has happened to a lot of the former great ACC programs now? That conference is almost entirely just Duke and UNC.

[Benny B]

It's actually not a bad idea, but I think the author is severely underestimating the "identity" that so many universities still attribute to being a member of a particular conference.  Decoupling would create brand confusion.  For example, if Indiana was Big Ten for basketball and ACC for football, would they get the full prestige otherwise given to members of those conferences, or would they be viewed as outcasts of both because they weren't full members of either.

[Pakuni]

Agree 100%. I know some people here would dream about being in the new ACC. But I think it could be the death knell for a team like Marquette, and many others solid but not elite programs. Look at was has happened to a lot of the former great ACC programs now? That conference is almost entirely just Duke and UNC.

If you could find a time machine and go back to 2004 and 2005, you'd see some of these very same arguments were being made against Marquette possibly joining the Big East. We were told how Marquette would be much better off finishing top 3 year after year in a depleted Conference USA than face our inevitable fate in the lower half of the Big East.
In fact, if memory serves, I'm pretty sure someone in this very thread was at the forefront of that argument.

The ACC has been, for the last 30 years, almost entirely Duke and UNC with other schools (Maryland, NC State, Wake, Georgia Tech) popping up occasionally for relatively brief spurts to challenge their supremacy. What's happening today is no different from what happened in 10, 15, 20 years ago.

[unforgiven]

The ACC has been, for the last 30 years, almost entirely Duke and UNC with other schools (Maryland, NC State, Wake, Georgia Tech) popping up occasionally for relatively brief spurts to challenge their supremacy. What's happening today is no different from what happened in 10, 15, 20 years ago.

Maryland was Lefty
GT was Cremmins
NC State was Sloan
Wake didn't have such an icon though were solid under Odom then Prosser

[GGGG]

It's actually not a bad idea, but I think the author is severely underestimating the "identity" that so many universities still attribute to being a member of a particular conference.  Decoupling would create brand confusion.  For example, if Indiana was Big Ten for basketball and ACC for football, would they get the full prestige otherwise given to members of those conferences, or would they be viewed as outcasts of both because they weren't full members of either.

Not just that but look at the Big Ten for instance.  Next year they are bucking decades of college hockey tradition by creating a Big Ten college hockey conference, which is causing the old WCHA to be severely downgraded and the CCHA to fold.  The reason?  Television programming for the BTN.

[unforgiven]

Not just that but look at the Big Ten for instance.  Next year they are bucking decades of college hockey tradition by creating a Big Ten college hockey conference, which is causing the old WCHA to be severely downgraded and the CCHA to fold.  The reason?  Television programming for the BTN.

Which is a good business decision. What's the problem?

[GGGG]

Which is a good business decision. What's the problem?

That "de-coupling" to save on travel costs fails to recognize the revenue generation and programming that can take place under a single-conference umbrella. 

[The Equalizer]

If you could find a time machine and go back to 2004 and 2005, you'd see some of these very same arguments were being made against Marquette possibly joining the Big East. We were told how Marquette would be much better off finishing top 3 year after year in a depleted Conference USA than face our inevitable fate in the lower half of the Big East.
In fact, if memory serves, I'm pretty sure someone in this very thread was at the forefront of that argument.

But we're not talking about a single team--we're talking creating a conference of 8 to 12 Marquette-like teams.

Our success since 2004-05 doesn't change the fact that USF, Rutgers, St. Johns, Seton Hall, DePaul, and Providence have each languished in the bottom half of the league for most if not all of the past six years.  Our success means someone else has to fail.

And the observation is that some teams (like MU, Pitt, UConn, Georgetown, ND) emerge as a perennial top half team, and some (like DePaul, St. Johns, Seton Hall, Providence, South Florida, Rutgers) become perennial bottom-half teams.  

So if you start with 8 or 10 or 12 of the "best" basketball teams, five years from now, only five or six of them will remain among the "best" and the rest will have dropped to the equvalent of Seton Hall, Providence, St. Johns or DePaul.

In other words, if you built a conference that includes Maryland, Georgetown, Syracuse, Duke, UNC, Kentucky, Indiana, and Kansas,--then which four teams wind up like Marquette, and which four are like DePaul?  

[Pakuni]

In other words, if you built a conference that includes Maryland, Georgetown, Syracuse, Duke, UNC, Kentucky, Indiana, and Kansas,--then which four teams wind up like Marquette, and which four are like DePaul?  

None.
It's asinine to suggest that playing in a more challenging conference dooms some teams to perpetual loserdom.
Kansas, Duke, etc., assuming they continue to make smart decisions and remain committed to supporting the program, aren't suddenly going to become bad programs because they play in a more challenging conference. They may have a few more "down" seasons here and there, but they'll remain powerhouse programs.
Your argument oddly seems to rest on a theory that what makes Kansas, Kentucky, UNC, etc., great isn't in how they run their programs, but that they're fortunate to be in conferences with an adequate number of weak sisters.

[Aughnanure]

None.
It's asinine to suggest that playing in a more challenging conference dooms some teams to perpetual loserdom.
Kansas, Duke, etc., assuming they continue to make smart decisions and remain committed to the support, aren't suddenly going to become bad programs because they play in a more challenging conference. They may have a few more "down" seasons here and there, but they'll remain powerhouse programs.
Your argument oddly seems to rest on a theory that what makes Kansas, Kentucky, UNC, etc., great isn't in how they run their programs, but that they're fortunate to be in conferences with an adequate number of weak sisters.

But you need breathing room. Let's not rewrite history and forget Marquette never has really competed at the top of the league except for 1 year, and even then, it was never really in doubt for Cuse. Sure, we're really good at finishing 5th-8th. But is that your goal?

I'd rather be part of the Big XII, PAC-12, BIG, SEC yes, but the ACC is a different story right now - with Syracuse, Pitt, Duke, Louisville, UNC, Notre Dame, NC State, UConn, Cincinnati, Wake Forest, Nova, St. John's, Georgetown (adding those last 3, b/c I assume that has to be the model for Marquette to even get in this, i.e. no way we get in w/ out GTown, SJU, Nova). That's 13 teams right there, and don't forget Fla St, Va Tech too. So which teams are going to be in the needed bottom group? Miami, Clemson, UVA, BC? And that's assuming that UConn, Cincy, and the bball schools aren't added to make-up for the the weaker, football-oriented teams, leaving.

There are only so many wins, and guess what programs are going to suck them all up? You'd have to go to 20+ teams to help maximize on the brand basketball programs in that conference (something that the Big East's large 16-team set-up helped significantly to mitigate the power of the top 6 programs). With this, you're going to end up having the conference's power concentrated in a very small number of programs (4-6 tops)simply because there isn't enough to go around. Why would you bring in so many strong basketball programs, that you aim to make money off of, only to beat down more than half of them every year and slowly erode the money you can make off of them.

Look at the ACC, outside of NC State (which is finally doing something this yr), what basketball teams have been actually relevant the past 5 years? It has hurt their NCAA bid numbers. the Big East was large enough overall, that your season didn't come down to having to win ALL those games cause you had an equally easy bottom 4 (USF, Providence, DePaul, Rutgers) along with a strong middle class (Seton Hall, St. Johns, Cincy, West Virginia, Notre Dame, Marquette).

AND yes, having multiple losing seasons will be a detriment to any program. It'll be too easy to get buried in a conference like that - and some programs will lose their power and success for 5+ years at a time (look how long it's taken Cincy to work up basically just get even with MU). That is the price you pay for such a concentrated strong conference, unless you move to divisions and pods where there is something to win rather than placing 6-14th every year.

[The Equalizer]

Your argument oddly seems to rest on a theory that what makes Kansas, Kentucky, UNC, etc., great isn't in how they run their programs, but that they're fortunate to be in conferences with an adequate number of weak sisters.

No, my argument rests on the absolute zero-sum nature of confernce play. Every win for one team is a loss for another.  I'm not sure why you find this concept "asinine" or "odd".   It doesn't matter that all the teams start out as powerhouses.  They're not all going to remain that way--some are going to have to begin to lose far more frequently than they're used to.

My observation is that I don't think we've reached a point where a 0-16 (or 2-14 or 4-12 or 6-10) team will be accepted as a tournament calibre team -- even if they were previously a powerhouse team in another league.  A 6-10 conference record still sucks, even if all 10 losses came to other powerhouse teams.

[Aughnanure]

No, my argument rests on the absolute zero-sum nature of confernce play. Every win for one team is a loss for another.  I'm not sure why you find this concept "asinine" or "odd".   It doesn't matter that all the teams start out as powerhouses.  They're not all going to remain that way--some are going to have to begin to lose far more frequently than they're used to.

My observation is that I don't think we've reached a point where a 0-16 (or 2-14 or 4-12 or 6-10) team will be accepted as a tournament calibre team -- even if they were previously a powerhouse team in another league.  A 6-10 conference record still sucks, even if all 10 losses came to other powerhouse teams.

Exactly. Would a conference of Texas, Oklahoma, LSU, Nebraska, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Arkansas be able to work? And secondly, if that conference did exist, how many of those teams would actually be considered "elite" considering the expected losses that would've come had they been in this conference for 40+ years.

[Canned Goods n Ammo]

You might end up see "revenue conferences" for major sports that have potential to produce revenue (basketball, football, hockey, etc.) while the "Olympic sports" and non-revenue sports have more region affiliations to limit costs and travel time.

The problem with big conferences obviously isn't football, it's when you have to fly your women's volleyball team thousands of miles for a Tuesday night match-up.

[Pakuni]

No, my argument rests on the absolute zero-sum nature of confernce play. Every win for one team is a loss for another.  I'm not sure why you find this concept "asinine" or "odd".   It doesn't matter that all the teams start out as powerhouses.  They're not all going to remain that way--some are going to have to begin to lose far more frequently than they're used to.

My observation is that I don't think we've reached a point where a 0-16 (or 2-14 or 4-12 or 6-10) team will be accepted as a tournament calibre team -- even if they were previously a powerhouse team in another league.  A 6-10 conference record still sucks, even if all 10 losses came to other powerhouse teams.

Stop. I never said anything about the zero sum nature of conference play. You're being disingenuous (again).
What I said was asinine is your insistence that some teams will become perpetual bottom feeders in a challenging conference. It's the same lame argument you used against MU joining the Big East. And it's not true.
Programs become bottom feeders because they're poorly run, because they don't invest resources, because they make poor hiring decisions. NOT because they play other good teams. DePaul isn't bad because it plays in the Big East. DePaul is bad because the administration has made a string of bad decisions that have left the program in terrible shape.
It's true that some teams will have losing conference records in some seasons, but there's no reason to believe that'll a permanent state.

[The Equalizer]

Stop. I never said anything about the zero sum nature of conference play.

No, and that's your big problem.  Perhaps if you actually considerd the zero-sum implications instead of pretending they don't exist, you'd realize a league of eight powerhouse teams cannot exist.

It's the same lame argument you used against MU joining the Big East. And it's not true.

No, the argument I used was that it would be easier to achieve sustained success in a conference that wasn't as top heavy as the Big East.  Memphis, Xavier, Butler and Gonzaga (with 19 league championships over the last six years betwen them) have proven that the argument wasn't as lame as you suggest.

Programs become bottom feeders because they're poorly run, because they don't invest resources, because they make poor hiring decisions. NOT because they play other good teams. DePaul isn't bad because it plays in the Big East. DePaul is bad because the administration has made a string of bad decisions that have left the program in terrible shape.

Or, sometimes, they're just not as good as the other teams  For example, its entirely possible that Georgtown is not now and will never be as good as Duke, UK, UNC, Kansas etc.. 

[Pakuni]

No, and that's your big problem.  Perhaps if you actually considerd the zero-sum implications instead of pretending they don't exist, you'd realize a league of eight powerhouse teams cannot exist.

So after I write "It's true that some teams will have losing conference records in some seasons," your reply is that I'm ignoring the fact that some teams will have losing conference records?
OK.

No, the argument I used was that it would be easier to achieve sustained success in a conference that wasn't as top heavy as the Big East.  Memphis, Xavier, Butler and Gonzaga (with 19 league championships over the last six years betwen them) have proven that the argument wasn't as lame as you suggest.

So, in Equalizer's opinion, MU would have been better off spending the past seven seasons in the Horizon League or West Coast Conference than the Big East. Duly noted.
No doubt donors, season ticket holders, students, recruits, etc., would have swooned for those January and February matchups with Cleveland State, Youngstown State or Pepperdine instead of UConn, Pitt and Georgetown.
Nope. Nothing lame about that argument.

And again, Butler, Xavier and Gonzaga aren't good programs because they play a lot of bad teams.

Or, sometimes, they're just not as good as the other teams  For example, its entirely possible that Georgtown is not now and will never be as good as Duke, UK, UNC, Kansas etc..  

This is true. And yet Georgetown continues to consistently make the NCAA tournament (and the occasional deep run), attract top recruits, earn national television appearances, etc., despite not being as good as Duke, UK, Kansas, etc.
What was your point?

Actually, if your point had a shred of validity, why aren't mediocre programs in good conferences scrambling to get out and find places where they'd face lesser competition?
Why aren't programs like Vandy and Mississippi State trying to escape the SEC, where they'll never realistically compete for a BCS spot going against the likes of Bama, Georgia, Florida and LSU?
Why hasn't Seton Hall and Providence begged for a spot in the A-10?

And, on the flip side, why on earth would Butler join the A-10 when, according to you, they had such an ideal setup in the Horizon?
Why was Memphis eager to step into the Big East when they could go on dominating C-USA?
Why did Louisville jump at the chance to join the ACC when they could have been the dominant football and basketball program of the Big East?

It appears most athletic departments across the country think your theories are as ridiculous as I do.

[The Equalizer]

This is true. And yet Georgetown continues to consistently make the NCAA tournament (and the occasional deep run), attract top recruits, earn national television appearances, etc., despite not being as good as Duke, UK, Kansas, etc.
What was your point?

The point is that if Geogretown isn't as good as the other teams, Georgetown becomes the last place team and would no longer consistently make the NCAA touranment. If they don't consistently make the NCAA tournament, they no longer attract top recruits.  If they no longer attract top recruits, they won't earn national television appearances.

And your counter is that in some years Georgetown might not be the worst team--but someone else would have to move down.

Only two ways for this powerhouse leage to shake out--a handful of teams dominate the top half, and the rest find their level at the bottom.  Or everyone trades places every year, and each team goes from being a perennial contender (E.g. UNC/Duke in the ACC, UK in the SEC, KU in the Big 12) to 50% contender/50% bottom half team.

You simply can't put 8 perennial contenders into one league and expect they will all continue to be perennial contenders.

Actually, if your point had a shred of validity, why aren't mediocre programs in good conferences scrambling to get out and find places where they'd face lesser competition?
Why aren't programs like Vandy and Mississippi State trying to escape the SEC, where they'll never realistically compete for a BCS spot going against the likes of Bama, Georgia, Florida and LSU?
Why hasn't Seton Hall and Providence begged for a spot in the A-10?

And, on the flip side, why on earth would Butler join the A-10 when, according to you, they had such an ideal setup in the Horizon?
Why was Memphis eager to step into the Big East when they could go on dominating C-USA?
Why did Louisville jump at the chance to join the ACC when they could have been the dominant football and basketball program of the Big East?

It appears most athletic departments across the country think your theories are as ridiculous as I do.

What you'll note is that every team actually moving is doing so into a league with a defined top and bottom.  Lousville isn't moving to a league of powerhouses--they're moving to a league that still contains Miami and Wake Forest and Boston College and Virginia Tech.

Memphis isn't moving into a league of powerhouses--they're moving into a league with DePaul, Seton Hall, USF, Tulane, Houston, Providence, SMU

Butler, Providence and Seton Hall's motivations are different due to the A10's unique NCAA touranment pool split. Any team joining will get 75% of the NCAA tournament money they earn.   So Butler stands to win big, up from 10% in the Horizon.  Seton Hall and Providence aren't clamoring to move becuase 10% of the Big East's pool is a lot more than 75% of the nothing that they have earned for themselves.

And note that Butler didn't attempt form a new league with nothing but powerhouse basketball teams like Xavier, Gonzaga, Creighton, Marquette, Georgetown, Villanova.  They saw the changing landscape with a high likilihood that the Big East basketball teams might be interested in a new league--but STILL chose not to even investigate it.

Instead, they settled for a league that includes URI (last NCAA bid in '99) Duquesne ('77),  Fordham ('91) and LaSalle ('92), and is losing Temple (which had made five of the last tournaments).