St. Josephs

[Coleman]

I think we should take a long look at St. Josephs, especially if we are talking about a 12 or 14 team league.

IMHO, they are a better option than SLU. Check out their history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Joseph%27s_Hawks_men%27s_basketball

[Skatastrophy]

But Villanova?

[Coleman]

Don't understand the issue.....La Salle and St. Joes are both in the big 5 and in the same conference right now...

[MuMark]

Nova won't want them so they aren't going to be included...it's really that simple.


Plenty of others who are as good or better long term then St Joes and are not in duplicate media markets.

Not going to be 14 teams.

You start at 10...maybe 12 and then see how the landscape changes going forward.

Don't want to be stuck with schools you might not want in 5-10 years.

[JTBMU7]

dont over-think it. Butler, Xavier, and Creighton should be no brainers. VCU, SLU and the west coast teams will likely be there any time the new conference wants to expand.

[GOO]

Go to 10 to start:  Butler, Xavier gets us to 9.  Then either SLU, Creighton, VCU, or possibly UMass if they can park their football somewhere. 
We can to to 12 later, unless it really makes sense to ESPN or NBC to add teams right away and get to 12.

[muspc]

St. Joe's home gym is smaller than the Al. They are a decent team, but haven't been close to big time since the 60's and/or the Jermaine Greer years.
I think the basketball Big East is looking for big arenas and big TV draws.

[ChicosBailBonds]

I think we should take a long look at St. Josephs, especially if we are talking about a 12 or 14 team league.

IMHO, they are a better option than SLU. Check out their history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Joseph%27s_Hawks_men%27s_basketball

Would you want UW-Milwaukee in the same conference?  They've actually gone to more NCAA tournaments since 2005 than St. Joe's has.

Villanova is going to say no and I don't blame them one bit.  St. Joe's is a nice program, but they where they belong in my opinion, a rung down.

[chapman]

Don't understand the issue.....La Salle and St. Joes are both in the big 5 and in the same conference right now...

Part of the reason the A-10 is so easy to pick off and can't maximize their per member payout...two schools in one city (three when they had Temple), just added VCU when they already Richmond.  And why adding the C7 was a ridiculous notion since 4-5 of them are redundant markets.  I like St. Joe's, they just built a nice facility, but they're way below the cutoff line.  Would have to have Xavier's level of recent success at the very least to be worth a look.

[Clam Crowder]

If we consider St. Joe's we open up a much larger door to schools such as Iona, St. Peter's, Fordham... many others who play in small gyms and have smaller followings. St. Joe's had 1 amazing year...besides that they belong in the lower rung.

[chapman]

If we consider St. Joe's we open up a much larger door to schools such as Iona, St. Peter's, Fordham... many others who play in small gyms and have smaller followings. St. Joe's had 1 amazing year...besides that they belong in the lower rung.

They've got a good history and following.  If Villanova wasn't with us I'd take St. Joe's in a heartbeat, but we've already got our Philly Catholic school that happens to be better and much more tied to the rest of us.

[brewcity77]

In one regard, markets don't mean quite as much to this type of conference because we won't be forming our own network any time soon. The reason it means so much to the B1G is because they get direct shares per user, so when they open up NYC, that's some 15-20 million users giving them a chunk of their cable bill every month. We won't get that.

But our footprint is still important because it will dictate who is tuning into ESPN/NBC Sports/Fox Sports when our league's games are on. Duplicating markets is senseless and will splinter local recruiting for the conference.