Our Conference Saviors!!

[Aughnanure]

East Carolina has applied to the Big East. Thank God.

via Pete Thamel of The New York Times
http://j.mp/qZWV4N

The tweet is pretty funny.

[muhs03]

ECU and UCF replace Pitt and Cuse.

Thats means football side is UConn, WVU, ECU, UCF, USF, RU, Cincy and UL (although I think UL is B12 bound as aTm's replacement). If UL leaves, add one more and that's the new BE (plus bball schools).

edit: forgot about TCU so no additional team to add.

[Oldgym]

ECU and UCF replace Pitt and Cuse.

Don't know that this thread was supposed to go anywhere.

[Desert_warrior]

Wonder if Navy would come back for football only as it sounds like they thought about joining before Pitt and Syracuse left.

[Tribby]

Good lord, this conference is slowly morphing into Conference USA II.

[Warriors10]

Nah.  ECU won't keep any football school from leaving if they have a chance.

[DomJamesToTheBasket]

Good lord, this conference is slowly morphing into Conference USA II.

I'm starting to like the idea of taking the leap and finally starting the "Catholic League."

The BEAST is a ticking time bomb and always has been.  It is going to blow up totally eventually,  we may as well take the leap now before the new BEAST slowly brings us down a few notches.  I'm really sick of having football be the impetus....it's hard to get excited about adding TCU and ECU for basketball.  It's just going to get worse and worse.

The SOS in a 10 team all basketball league is going to be much better than the watered down BEAST IMO. Play Georgetown, Nova, ND, Xavier, Butler, and St. Johns twice a year.  That is a strong schedule!  Any talk about that being Mid-Major is absurd.  It would be a strong conference.  A conference that I think could easily get a good tv deal.  We would fill a nice niche.....the first ever basketball-only power conference......and we won't have to worry about our conference's impending doom on a yearly basis!

[muhs03]

I'm starting to like the idea of taking the leap and finally starting the "Catholic League."

The BEAST is a ticking time bomb and always has been.  It is going to blow up totally eventually,  we may as well take the leap now before the new BEAST slowly brings us down a few notches.  I'm really sick of having football be the impetus....it's hard to get excited about adding TCU and ECU for basketball.  It's just going to get worse and worse.

The SOS in a 10 team all basketball league is going to be much better than the watered down BEAST IMO. Play Georgetown, Nova, ND, Xavier, Butler, and St. Johns twice a year.  That is a strong schedule!  Any talk about that being Mid-Major is absurd.  It would be a strong conference.  A conference that I think could easily get a good tv deal.  We would fill a nice niche.....the first ever basketball-only power conference......and we won't have to worry about our conference's impending doom on a yearly basis!

But what if the services teams jumped on board and didnt play bball? IMO, the SOS would be much better after playing UConn, WVU and UL. Throw in mirror games against any of those three and it beats playing A10 additions, for sure.

[GGGG]

Dom...I agree with you.

The addition of ECU and UCF would mean two schools that care quite a bit about football...and very little about basketball.  (Just like TCU.)  In fact, as I look at it, the only "traditional" BE school with football is now UConn.

It might be some time for the "bold leadership" mentioned in the ESPN article on behalf of the bball schools.  This might shock people, but I would actually turn to Tranghese, who clearly loves basketball about how to navigate through this the next few weeks.  How can we keep the BE brand?  How can we keep MSG?  Who can we add to the conference?  What television deals can we strike?  Can we keep ND?

[Aughnanure]

I'm starting to like the idea of taking the leap and finally starting the "Catholic League."

The BEAST is a ticking time bomb and always has been.  It is going to blow up totally eventually,  we may as well take the leap now before the new BEAST slowly brings us down a few notches.  I'm really sick of having football be the impetus....it's hard to get excited about adding TCU and ECU for basketball.  It's just going to get worse and worse.

The SOS in a 10 team all basketball league is going to be much better than the watered down BEAST IMO. Play Georgetown, Nova, ND, Xavier, Butler, and St. Johns twice a year.  That is a strong schedule!  Any talk about that being Mid-Major is absurd.  It would be a strong conference.  A conference that I think could easily get a good tv deal.  We would fill a nice niche.....the first ever basketball-only power conference......and we won't have to worry about our conference's impending doom on a yearly basis!

Thats a VERY good point. I'm just worried about making it sooooo dense, that we end up just knocking each other out. I think 12 is a good number, where there are not only 2 things to win in a year, but 4 (2 division championships, conf championship, conf tourney championship). I think that does a lot to keep a fanbase interested and motivated. If fans start to feel overwhelmed and hopeless, you lose fans and value.

I wouldn't mind 16 if we did 4 division/channels. More teams' fans will see a divisional championship as an accomplishment.

[MUBurrow]

Thats a VERY good point. I'm just worried about making it sooooo dense, that we end up just knocking each other out. I think 12 is a good number, where there are not only 2 things to win in a year, but 4 (2 division championships, conf championship, conf tourney championship). I think that does a lot to keep a fanbase interested and motivated. If fans start to feel overwhelmed and hopeless, you lose fans and value.

I wouldn't mind 16 if we did 4 division/channels. More teams' fans will see a divisional championship as an accomplishment.

I think if you go 16 though, you have to go west. Like way west.

[Aughnanure]

I think if you go 16 though, you have to go west. Like way west.

I'd be for that. You have to wonder what BYU, Gonzaga will do...or if UNLV would want to be in a basketball-centric conference (similar to Memphis).

But without those 3, I think its too big of a stretch to add any of them by themselves.

[brewcity77]

I'm starting to like the idea of taking the leap and finally starting the "Catholic League."

The BEAST is a ticking time bomb and always has been.  It is going to blow up totally eventually,  we may as well take the leap now before the new BEAST slowly brings us down a few notches.  I'm really sick of having football be the impetus....it's hard to get excited about adding TCU and ECU for basketball.  It's just going to get worse and worse.

The SOS in a 10 team all basketball league is going to be much better than the watered down BEAST IMO. Play Georgetown, Nova, ND, Xavier, Butler, and St. Johns twice a year.  That is a strong schedule!  Any talk about that being Mid-Major is absurd.  It would be a strong conference.  A conference that I think could easily get a good tv deal.  We would fill a nice niche.....the first ever basketball-only power conference......and we won't have to worry about our conference's impending doom on a yearly basis!

Someone has to lose. Half of the teams in that league will be below .500 in conference play, which means no invite. And if there are a glut of teams in the middle (7-11 to 11-7) you could easily see a league that only gets 2-3 bids in the first year. This league wouldn't look mid-major, but once these teams beat each other up for a couple seasons, it'd be mid-major.

10 teams isn't enough. Get all the best basketball-only schools (14-16) and you might have something that wouldn't be mid-major. Anything less and you're just counting down the years until you're the A-10 v2.0

[ringout]

Dom...I agree with you.

The addition of ECU and UCF would mean two schools that care quite a bit about football...and very little about basketball.  (Just like TCU.)  In fact, as I look at it, the only "traditional" BE school with football is now UConn.

It might be some time for the "bold leadership" mentioned in the ESPN article on behalf of the bball schools.  This might shock people, but I would actually turn to Tranghese, who clearly loves basketball about how to navigate through this the next few weeks.  How can we keep the BE brand?  How can we keep MSG?  Who can we add to the conference?  What television deals can we strike?  Can we keep ND?

I'm with you Sultan.  At some point you need to go with your strength.   We need to band together with like minded ( basketball only) schools.   We may need to cobble the Big East together for the short term while we get our head around a longer term plan.  Ideally, we would have had our doodoo together already, but no permanent AD and brand new president put us behind the 8 ball. 

[brewcity77]

I'm with you Sultan.  At some point you need to go with your strength.   We need to band together with like minded ( basketball only) schools.   We may need to cobble the Big East together for the short term while we get our head around a longer term plan.  Ideally, we would have had our doodoo together already, but no permanent AD and brand new president put us behind the 8 ball.

I think this is important right now. We need to hold the Big East together until the basketball-only schools have 8 years of continuity together. Then if we want to create the 12 (or 14 or 16) team basketball-only superconference, we can do it. If we want to create the 10-team A-10 v2.0 I guess we can do that too. But first, we need to hold this thing together for another couple years. Then if we want to tell the football schools to go screw, we can do that.

[Tribby]

I think this is important right now. We need to hold the Big East together until the basketball-only schools have 8 years of continuity together. Then if we want to create the 12 (or 14 or 16) team basketball-only superconference, we can do it. If we want to create the 10-team A-10 v2.0 I guess we can do that too. But first, we need to hold this thing together for another couple years. Then if we want to tell the football schools to go screw, we can do that.

This is at least the second time you've mentioned the 8-year continuity threshold. Can you explain? What is so magical about eight years that doesn't exist at six or seven? Seems arbitrary.

[GGGG]

It is an NCAA rule that a conference has to be around 8 years to get an autobid.

I don't think it is all that relevant since the conference would likely get multiple bids anyway.  The only team that could be screwed is the tournament champion would wouldn't have gotten a bid anyway.

[brewcity77]

This is at least the second time you've mentioned the 8-year continuity threshold. Can you explain? What is so magical about eight years that doesn't exist at six or seven? Seems arbitrary.

Basically what Sultan said. For a conference to get an automatic bid, at least 7 members need to have 8 years of continuity. If we are in the Big East 2 more years, that would include Marquette, Georgetown, Providence, Seton Hall, DePaul, Notre Dame, Villanova, and St. John's. So if the 8 of us left (or 7 left) we could bring in however many additional teams we wanted and still get an automatic bid. Obviously 2011-12 will go forward as planned to get us all to 7 years, so we just need to get through the 2012-13 season.

Most likely, the conference would get multiple bids, but in a scenario like 2006 Syracuse, the Orange would have been left out despite winning the Big East tourney.