Big East Catholic Schools Ponder Leaving En Masse

You haven't looked into this, because you'd know the number of sports does not correlate to greater participation.

http://espn.go.com/espnw/title-ix/7729603/five-myths-title-ix

 

Garry Parrish on CBSSports.com reports the seven will split from the Big East, unless something completely unforseen comes up.

Link: http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/blog/eye-on-college-basketball/21389753/sources-big-east-expected-to-split

 

Don't go into that closet Fibber.

 

But will they land anywhere with enough television revenue to support the program? And I agree that it makes no accounting sense for the Texas States, Georgia Southerns, etc. to start FBS programs. I do think that it offers a brand identity for the school. But Cincinnati has a rich basketball tradition and is in a city with an NFL franchise and no NBA franchise. I think if they go looking for a place to park the football program and walk away from the Catholic schools in the Big East they damage the basketball program.

 

Which means we'll now get a new chain reaction where this new conference will go poach a few Atlantic 10 teams to fill itself out, leading A10 to go poach a couple Conference USA replacement teams, causing CUSA to then go poach a couple Horizon League teams, etc.....

This shit never ends. The pandora's box has sprung wide open.

 

It's also guaranteed to lead to further NCAA hoops tournament expansion. No way to add another D-I conference with an autobid and keep the field at 68 because the existing conferences will balk at the idea of killing one at-large spot to award to the new National Catholic Conference (same thing that happened with the Mountain West and expansion from 64 to 65).

 

God I hope they don't do that. Just take one fewer at large team, that simple. There's too many of these 13 loss bottom half of their conference type teams getting in anyways. One fewer would be an improvement.

 

To be fair, some of those Big East only schools have been getting in the tournament regularly as at large teams recently, so it's not like a bad conference is being created.

And I don't think it will be a huge domino effect for hoops conferences. You already have seven from the big east. They could only take three to go to 10 and do a true home and home for an 18-game schedule. They could take whatever three from the A-10, which would leave the A-10 with 13, so they would only need to take one from like the CAA to get to 14.

 

Or they could add four teams and drop DePaul like a bad habit.

 

People who think you can simply look at the individual sport's profit and loss sheet and decide if it's worth it to the school to have a football team are missing the big picture.

You need a football team because you need something to rile up the alumni base and create interest to generate funds. Particularly in football-crazy hotbeds like Texas. Football is an investment. For the entire school, not just the athletic department. Unless you're New Mexico State and have been doing it wrong for five decades.

 

I suspect the football teams now in the Big East and C-USA will merge. Who knows what the name will be? Cincinnati fits much better with Houston, Marshall, Memphis, UAB, etc. than it ever did with Syracuse, Rutgers, Connecticut, etc.

We've seen that you don't need a power conference to be a power team in men's basketball. What did Memphis go one year under Calipari, 39-1? And, of course, basketball costs far less than football.

 

Yeah, I can see a 26-team conference working really well...