Hey Guys! Just an MU fan who is following conference re-alignment pretty closely so I have been checking out the various team boards to see what other teams fans are thinking and looking at. First of all great win tonight against Butler, I know a lot of folks including us MU fans are talking about your performance lately, you guys are going to be a scary team come March! I have secretly rooted for you guys since Rick was your coach, he is a popular guy among us MU fans and we were all heart broken about the news of his passing as I am sure many SLU fans were.
Now as for the new conference... from what I am hearing the "B7" as they are preferring to be called would like to keep the new conference at 10 teams so that they can play a nice 18 game schedule where everyone plays everyone else twice a year. FOX though is pushing for a 12 team league so they can have more content for their new network. As I am sure we all know FOX will likely win out here because they are footing the bill for a lot of this. As far as start times go I am hearing that they are finally beginning to give up on the idea of starting in 2013 and now are looking at a realistic start date of 2014 (not much news there). When it comes to teams here is what I have heard from various sources, most have been reported in the media, but some is through back channels at Marquette. The locks for the league are Xavier and Butler, those teams are locked in and there are no scenarios where those teams are not involved, however from there the idea is that the league would like to start with 10 teams and then down the road a year or two they want to add an additional two more, why in the world they want to do it this way I have no idea, however that is what we are hearing. This is all unless of course FOX forces the issue which is possible. As for the 10th team I am being told that the Jersey guy article is infact correct, Georgetown is pushing for Richmond and is trying to eliminate VCU and the reason for this is that they see VCU as a larger threat to compete with them in their market and they want to be the top dog. Marquette of course is pushing for Creighton, now I know some of you have speculated that it could be because MU doesn't want to have to compete with SLU, but if take a closer look you will see that Fr. Lannon the president of Creighton U is also on the Board of Trustee's for Marquette, so obviously that is a pretty close tie hence the push. As for the 11th and 12th teams I know that MU has also made a push to include SLU because we would like to see an even East/West Split to the league. The remaining candidates for the final two spots are Dayton, VCU, Creighton/Richmond (whichever isnt apart of the original 10), and SLU. Originally we were told that the battle was between SLU and VCU for the final spot and that Richmond wasn't even in the picture, however I am now hearing that Richmond has replaced VCU and its down to SLU, Richmond and Dayton for the final spots.
All of that being said this is all likely to change on a daily basis and of course when you have this many different opinions there will be a lot of stuff thrown on the table, it will be interesting to see where the dust settles, that being said my personal preference would be the B7, X, Butler, SLU, Creighton, and VCU. I doubt it goes down that way, but I know MU fans are pulling for SLU! I don't know if it is against the rules or not but you guys should definitely come visit our MU board and share your opinion, I know we love to chat with different fans and get perspective, I won't post a link because I don't want to ruffle any feathers, but if I get permission I will throw one out there for everyone!