ACC-Big East merger?

[NCMUFan]

Wouldn't that be something.  Have family that are current students or grads of UNC, WF and NCState. 

[The Equalizer]

Yeah, given our positioning in the current iteration of the BE I'm sure we'd be fine - they want us and Uconn playing Dyke and UNC

They want St. Johns and UConn playing Duke and UNC. And their backup would be Georgetown and Villanova. 

The midwest schools will be tagalongs at best, and left out at worst.

[Billy Hoyle]

They want St. Johns and UConn playing Duke and UNC. And their backup would be Georgetown and Villanova. 

The midwest schools will be tagalongs at best, and left out at worst.

I prefer Saomas:

[The Sultan]

They want St. Johns and UConn playing Duke and UNC. And their backup would be Georgetown and Villanova. 

The midwest schools will be tagalongs at best, and left out at worst.

I feel like your sense of college basketball is more than a few years out of date. You think Georgetown is drawing eyeballs?

[muwarrior69]

They want St. Johns and UConn playing Duke and UNC. And their backup would be Georgetown and Villanova. 

The midwest schools will be tagalongs at best, and left out at worst.

The BE midwest schools should merge with the Big12orMore and let the ACC have the rest.

[The Sultan]

The BE midwest schools should merge with the Big12orMore and let the ACC have the rest.

That's not happening

[mu_eyeballs]

When I think about this I think it might be fun if a ACC + Big East super conference had an A an B level and teams could be relegated and promoted like English Soccer leagues. They could have the A league be the top 16 teams and the B league be the bottom 12.  It would ensure the teams that want to invest in their programs would be rewarded with a killer schedule(like the glory days of the original 16 team big east) and likely get 8-12 teams in the tourney and the teams that don't want to compete get a good conference and some of the fruits of a Super SUPER LEAGUE.

[SaveOD238]

That's not happening

Never say never.  The Big XII doesn't have a presence in Wisconsin or Nebraska and Yormark loves his basketball.  There's a world in which Marquette and Creighton get Big XII invites.

I don't think anyone beyond that is valuable enough to the Big XII

[Pakuni]

Never say never.  The Big XII doesn't have a presence in Wisconsin or Nebraska and Yormark loves his basketball.  There's a world in which Marquette and Creighton get Big XII invites.

I don't think anyone beyond that is valuable enough to the Big XII

Why would the Big XII want to add non-football members?

[TallTitan34]

Why would the Big XII want to add non-football members?

This.

The Big XII doesn't even want the back-to-back national champions. 

[Scoop Snoop]

During the first conference realignment years ago, some scoopers and other BE fans on the holyland site smugly laughed at the struggles of FB schools and the Big 12 was looking like an endangered species. The theory was that as a bball only conference, we were in control of our future.

Val is simply doing her job by listening to the ACC and others. With the SEC and Big 10 floating the idea of the top 4 slots in the FB championship being divvied up between their conferences in the future, is it not feasible that they will also suggest preferential seeding in the tourney?

Marquette and/or the BE is not in a great bargaining position in my opinion.

[Billy Hoyle]

Why would the Big XII want to add non-football members?

expanding their geographic reach. They have looked at St. John's for the NYC market and playing at MSG.

[bilsu]

Also these conversations aren't happening BECAUSE of K and Pitino. They are happening because the two weakest of the P5 conferences are finding ways to align and strengthen themselves. The Big East needs to do this sort of stuff to put them in a good place should there be a breakaway.

I think Sultan is right. The mega conferences are going to freeze everyone else out.

[MarquetteMike1977]

Feel the mega conferences will do what is best for them.
Which in and of itself is not bad.
But feel it is bad for the many many left out and more importantly bad for America.

[The Lens]

I feel like your sense of college basketball is more than a few years out of date. You think Georgetown is drawing eyeballs?

Georgetown becomes a story as soon as they have any success. When Ewing led the Hoyas to the 2020 BET title, SportsCenter was falling all over itself to cover it. A lot of media decisions are made by old people.  Like to cover the Cowboys who hasn't been to a Super Bowl in 30 years.

If I'm ranking national draw of Big East teams (assuming each team would be Top 10 in the AP...ie relevant) I would guess it would go:

1) UConn
2) Georgetown
3) St. John's
4) Villanova
5) Marquette
6) Creighton
7) PC
8) Xavier
9) DePaul (you could argue me higher)
10) Hall
11) Butler 

[Scoop Snoop]

Georgetown becomes a story as soon as they have any success. When Ewing led the Hoyas to the 2020 BET title, SportsCenter was falling all over itself to cover it. A lot of media decisions are made by old people.  Like to cover the Cowboys who hasn't been to a Super Bowl in 30 years.

If I'm ranking national draw of Big East teams (assuming each team would be Top 10 in the AP...ie relevant) I would guess it would go:

1) UConn
2) Georgetown
3) St. John's
4) Villanova
5) Marquette
9) Creighton
8) PC
6) Xavier
7) DePaul
10) Hall
11) Butler 

I put my guesses in your lineup. Creighton/Omaha? Nope. PC is in UCONN's shadow. Xavier is difficult to mark down. They've had a good program for a long time. And DP? Look at how Chicago suddenly became a bball town when Loyola was putting on a show in the tourney. If anything, I might switch DP and X., despite DP reeking for decades.

Edit: I am looking at how things might play out in the near future rather than the "here and now".

[TallTitan34]

0% chance of ever happening but it's fun for me to pretend. Sorry DePaul, Butler, and Seton Hall. 

Midwest Division
1) Marquette
2) Creighton
3) Notre Dame
4) Louisville
5) Xavier

Northeast Division
1) UConn
2) St. John's
3) Georgetown
4) Syracuse
5) Providence

Southeast Division
1) North Carolina
2) Duke
3) Virginia
4) Pitt
5) Villanova

Geographically would make more sense to flip Georgetown and Villanova but I wanted to keep Syracuse and Georgetown together.

[WhiteTrash]

So, I don't see Dayton mentioned anywhere? Must be an unintended oversight, right?

[Viper]

Feel the mega conferences will do what is best for them.
Which in and of itself is not bad.
But feel it is bad for the many many left out and more importantly bad for America.

i'm sooo tempted, but the suspension would follow...so I'll begrudgingly resist 🤣

[TallTitan34]

So, I don't see Dayton mentioned anywhere? Must be an unintended oversight, right?

They are with DePaul, Butler, and Seton Hall.

ABD

[GoldenWarrior11]

A full-on merger does not make a ton of sense.  Between the bulk of inventory somehow being cleanly split between FOX, ESPN and Peacock, it also creates a ton of unnecessary fat at the bottom in a current landscape defined by consolidation, not expansion.  Additionally, with where the current payouts of the ACC are, it doesn't make financial sense to add (for basketball-only) UConn, St. John's, Villanova and/or Georgetown, because those payouts would have to be noticeably greater than what they each are making in the BE; and between the new payouts and tournament credits still being paid out, that would likely need to be higher than $10 million per year; no BE program, individually or even as a group, can add to the overall ACC contract because of the number of teams it would require ESPN to pay more (and ESPN just gave away the Sunday Night Baseball contract for *only* $550 million).

What is much more likely, and actually exciting, is to to create a limited scheduling alliance in a similar format to the Duke/Illinois game this past Saturday at MSG.  Schedule 3-4 OOC games annually, creating top-matchups between the best brands of both leagues.  Between the top of the BE and ACC, there could be some really great matchups (UNC/Villanova, UConn/Duke, Marquette/Louisville, Georgetown/Syracuse, etc.).  And if you play these at MSG, Barclays, Capital One Arena or Spectrum Center (an off-campus 20k-ish seat NBA arena), you create a high-profile in-person and TV audience event (making a bit more revenues for both leagues, or just the teams, without doing a full conference merger or a challenge. 

We will see though.  The BE does need to be proactive for sure.  With only eleven teams, and with the annual "Will DePaul win more than 4 conference games this year?", along with seemingly always having a second team in rebuilding mode (Hall, Georgetown, Providence, us, etc.) the room for error is vastly too small to maximize revenue (between getting the most teams into the NCAAT, and getting teams advance far into the NCAAT). 

[Pakuni]

expanding their geographic reach. They have looked at St. John's for the NYC market and playing at MSG.

Would Marquette joining the Big XII make you more likely to tune into Kansas State-Texas Tech on a Saturday night in October? Are people in Omaha turning off the Huskers to watch Arizona play Baylor?

[Billy Hoyle]

Would Marquette joining the Big XII make you more likely to tune into Kansas State-Texas Tech on a Saturday night in October? Are Creighton alums turning off the Huskers to watch Arizona play Baylor?

I'm not sure if that matters anymore. What they're after is regular access and exposure to the NYC media market. The ACC has it (Syracuse), the BE has it, and the Big Ten has it (Rutgers). The Big 12 wants a piece of it and to regularly play conference games at MSG.

[DoctorV]

It's always amazed me how into the conference realignment concepts people get, and how opinionated they are one way or the other...

If I remember correctly, when the Big East broke apart and the basketball schools stuck together everyone, or nearly everyone, thought it would be catastrophic and that the conference could turn into another mid major type of deal.
The new BE has been amazing for Marquette, it's hard to imagine how it could've gone better (sans a few Nattys)
The conference has been very relevant and has had two elite programs win multiple Nattys while the B10 mires in year after year of mediocrity.

That's a slam dunk and complete massive success for the conference, when most probably didn't expect it. Meanwhile, the ACC has struggled and UConn came crawling back when it saw the success the BE was having.

So, what we learn from history is that we just don't know how things will shape up.
Therefore, we can only trust those in the power positions to make the right move. We have no reason to distrust Val and Co, all the ADs, in making the right call.

After all, how could you not salivate at the thought of Marquette being in a conference with the current BE plus Duke, UNC, Louisville, Syracuse, ND etc?
I get that the idea of all the bottom feeders amongst the two conferences can be repulsive, but who cares?
If bigger and badder is the new trend, the name of the game, those in charge will figure it out.
Combining the two conferences accomplishes bigger and badder. Even though the ACC has been down, there are some perennially elite programs in that conference.
If some of the bottom feeders, or some of those new west coast programs need to be cut to smaller conferences then that stinks for them, but that's just the way of the world.

If expansion is the new name of the game, the new horizon, and keeping up with the B10, SEC, B12 is necessary then so be it

[Pakuni]

I'm not sure if that matters anymore. What they're after is regular access and exposure to the NYC media market. The ACC has it (Syracuse), the BE has it, and the Big Ten has it (Rutgers). The Big 12 wants a piece of it and to regularly play conference games at MSG.

Are you suggesting New Yorkers are going to be more likely to watch KState, Texas Tech and Houston play football because St. John's plays basketball in the same conference?

These programs already have access to the New York market. P5 football games are national broadcasts.