jbweb7 Posted July 23, 2003 Share Posted July 23, 2003 Hey SLU fans, I have been debating the merits of many possible conferences on many boards. It has allowed me to get a lot of feedback regarding diehard fans views. Now I have one last scenario. It could be a long term solution that could be the best bet for all the schools that I have heard mentioned in this shakeup. Read the thread and see what you think. ESPN decides who the marquee teams are based on who they think is going to have a good squad that year. That is why the BE dropped the division format and is setting up their schedule to pair the top teams. I think two new like minded leagues could utilize that reality and over time could create a great made for TV inter conference rivalry. In my (biased Richmond) opinion I think the two leagues should be a Big East Conference and a Great Lakes Conference. A new regional Big East could dominate some very nice cities such as in Philly/Delaware, NYC, Boston, Providence, DC and yes Richmond,VA. The league could also feature some quality basketball/soccer/baseball. The Great Lakes conference would dominate mid western hoops in the major cities (since the Great East won't have teams in cities). Both the regional Big East/Great Lakes could probably get very solid league and individual tv contracts, as the A10 and Xavier have now (FoxNet shows all x games in Ohio). Sure the Great East would get a bigger overall TV deal than any newly created Big East or otherwise. That is because of football and the alumni numbers at the big public schools. However, that is going to happen no matter what league the bball only big easters create. If two new leagues were created they could work together to sell a made for TV event similar to the ACC/Big Ten Challenge. Then ESPN can pick the marquee teams each year and match them up for TV. Two leagues would provide for student athlete welfare, but also distance the two leagues from those below them. Each league would have benefits that are particulatar to their shared athletic traditions (1AA football / soccer / baseball) Some schools would have to make a new commitment or recommitment to basketball and all other sports. However, I think if all the schools were proactive they could start the challenge this year and get a TV deal for next. Then when the league really started in three years rivalries and name recognition would already be in place. Below are the leagues and teams I would pair up this year. Big East / Great Lakes Providence / Marquette Villanova / Xavier St. Johns / DePaul Georgetown / Dayton Seton Hall / St. Louis Richmond / Butler Rhode Island / Creighton UMass / Detroit Delaware / (One of these Bradley, Drake, Loyola, Wichita State or Tulsa if they gave up on football) Both leagues would be very good leagues that would form the best of the non BCS. If they worked together they could keep their RPI's very strong by playing each other in the challenge and maybe one other non league game a year. They could then play a few big name schoools and some small local rivalries to fill out their schedules. The Big East could also work with a new CAA to co-sponsor a dominant 1AA football league. (Gtown would be asked to move up or Dayton could fill in if they wanted to move up instead) The new CAA would have (* for football) ODU, VCU, Wilmington, Hofstra*, Drexel, Towson*, JMU*, WM*, George Mason, Stony Brook*, Charlotte, and Hampton*(or Northeastern*). The football teams could play within their natural league rivalries each year and then have cross over games with three or four others also. They might even have a championship game if they wanted. I don't see the down side to three large regional leagues working together to strengthen all their athletic teams. If this discussion were happening just 5 years ago the Big East schools would have welcomed the successful Rhode Island and UMass programs. Richmond would have been coming off a tournament appearence. However, right now the midwestern schools have had some recent success. Since the Big East 5 have not had much success lately they are looking for some teams with recent success. The truth is success is cyclical at many schools. Last year it was Marquette/Dayton/X. However, in the next two years I bet that could easily change. Who knows what might happen? URI/UMASS/Richmond/Nova all have great places to play and good teams returning. Maybe they will be the cream in two years when the shake out takes effect. The truth is that the 5 Big East schools have not been pulling their weight lately. Each of those schools needs to recommitt itself to high level basketball/athletics. If they don't make upgrades soon, it won't matter what league they join. Gtown/SHU/SJU need to renovate/expand their on campus facilities. If they had kept up with things all along they could have added anyone they wanted too right now, regardless of recent success. As it is, the Big East 5 have nice history's and locations. However, they are definitely at a crossroads. I am hoping they will make a recommitment and choose partners who are also willing to make a new commitment. Hopefully each league can form with like minded institutions that will be in the best interests of their student athletes and alumni bases. Big East schools should keep the future of all their students and athletes in mind with this change. They need to be creative, they shouldn't just do what will make a PR splash for a day or two. Leaving the league at nine and expanding south would also leave one important dream door open. In the future the Duke/Wake/Vanderbilt may get fed up with BCS athletics. It isn't likely, but if they did they would be logical additions to make the league 12. The league would be tops in basketball and allow for the best 1AA football conference in the country. The auto bids shouldn't be an issue for a new conference, since the quality of the teams listed will allow them to get at larges for the first year anyway. The only issue is who takes the Big East credits. Hopefully the current league members can act like adults and just share. They can agree to go their seperate ways and divide all the mutually generated credits as they would have been if the league still existed. If anyone thinks some schools don't belong in the Big East 5/Great Lakes class, please share your opinions in a constructive manner. I am interested to hear your takes on these possible alignments. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davidlee Posted July 23, 2003 Share Posted July 23, 2003 jbweb7 I think your overall ideas about possible conferences has merit. I think there are some specifics that some would provide different ideas about, in particular possible teams. I know there has been some discussion on the various message boards about the 5 BE BB teams getting together with Marquette, Xavier and Dayton for a BB conference but I personally question the practicality of such a set up. I am not sure some of the BE teams want to be going to the Midwest schools, especially for minor sports. I think some or all of the BE BB teams will either try to get together with the A 10 or try to develop their own conference similar to the one you proposed. One school that you didn't mentioned that I think should be considered, some how, is Charlotte. They have had a very strong program over the 5 or 6 years and would be an asset to any BB league. Just some thoughts for discussion Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbweb7 Posted July 23, 2003 Author Share Posted July 23, 2003 I totally agree with you about the travel factor. As for Charlotte, their problem is location and the lack of a football team. They are too far away from the midwest to be in that league. The don't have football 1AA and thus a school like Delaware would make more sense in a new Big East that could sponsor football for some extra revenue. Charlotte would be a great addition to the Colonial AA that includes some good programs like Hofstra, Old Dominion, VCU, Drexel. They also might end up wit the A10 leftovers that would have St. Joe's and other marketable NE teams. However, who knows what will happen. I also think that Valpo or Souther Illinois might work in a midwestern league. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davidlee Posted July 23, 2003 Share Posted July 23, 2003 I would agree with Valpo before some of the other names you mentioned, i.e. Detroit, Drake, Bradley, Loyola. As for as Charlotte not having football, I don't think that would be an issue since most of the teams mentioned in the Great Lakes list you presented don't have football either. I think being a public university with all the others being private might hurt them. As far as travel they are little farther away than some schools but they do have major airport which should make it easy to get to ( except maybe from St. Louis now since American has cut back on the number of flights from its airport) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted July 23, 2003 Share Posted July 23, 2003 i think the travel consideration isnt necessarily a question for basketball and football as much as it is a concern for all the rest of the athletic department. basketball and football tend to pay their own way and in fact fund the rest of the athletic department. the tough call example is flying a bunch of field hockey players off to the upper northwest to say play uconn. not a cheap ticket by anymeans and when no one is funding that (times all the other non-revenue producing sports in a division one program) with ticket sales or tv revenue that becomes a concern for the department. that issue alone makes some kind of midwest division or conference make more sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davidlee Posted July 23, 2003 Share Posted July 23, 2003 b roy I agree with you that travel and the $$$ involved for the minor sports is very important in what happens in the future development of BB only conferences. Since we are going to Charlotte now, I don't see that being a "show stopper" is the only point I was trying to make. I guess part of the issue with Charlotte is, I sort of like them and would hate to see them get left out in the cold. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted July 23, 2003 Share Posted July 23, 2003 davidlee, i should have qualified my post as one that was responding to this string in general and not your post. i personally do not want to leave charlotte out. they are a partner with us at c-usa. so i agree they should continue to be our partner. my whole point is that if we have a total re-organization, joining a predominantly east coast conference might not necessarily be a good thing for slu in the big picture. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbweb7 Posted July 23, 2003 Author Share Posted July 23, 2003 Well I am glad to see that at least one schools fans have some sense. You are the first board that I didn't have to come on and start pointing out the obvious monetary/travel considerations for the non-revenue sports. I agree that you might want to consider helping Charlotte out. One trip to Charlotte wouldn't kill teams. However, schools like Valpo and Detroit I think might make a bit more sense geographically. Charlotte would land in a good new home in the A10 or probably the CAA, which is a vastly underrated league. Theat league would be very solid with VCU and ODU having new arenas and Charlotte joining up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted July 23, 2003 Share Posted July 23, 2003 just because the economic sense of the big picture says we should restrict our conference goals to the likes of detroit, loyola and valpo, doesnt mean though that the lost revenue from not being in a conference with the big east schools makes it right. i think it will be a determining factor, but you can bet the revenue expectations would also be much less and thus might make the big east deal better as well. my best thoughts is somekind of midwest division of this whole scenario that keeps the majority of travel closer to home or else second, a conference usa re-configuring that would add the likes of 2-3 teams that would be a little closer than u-conn like say, west virginia and pitt and then letting the texas like schools run to the western conferences. either way that might make the big picture look better. in no way am i advocating a re-creation of the old midwestern cities conference you have more or less proposed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbweb7 Posted July 24, 2003 Author Share Posted July 24, 2003 Here is another league solution, Many posters have had an issue with the Drake/Detroit/Delaware types I included before in another thread. However, if you only want proven winners, I propose this. You accept the fact that you can't afford crazy travel costs. You would also like to take the CUSA and part of the A10 TV shares in a fit of greed. Assumming also you don't care about any football, which the midwest schools don't and only Nova and Gtown might in the east. Then you can creat a giant 16 team conference that will allow you to play a division only schedule in non-revenue sports. You also only play 4 teams from the other division each year in a league basketball challenge. However, you could still have all teams invited to the a conference tournament at MSG. Then you could have this league. Big East Division / Great Lakes Division Providence / Marquette Villanova / Xavier St. Johns / DePaul Georgetown / Dayton Seton Hall / St. Louis Richmond / Charlotte or Detroit Rhode Island / Creighton UMass or Boston U / Butler (since football aspirations are a factor) In case you were wondering about populations/tv markets Other figures to consider based on the 2000 census - Richmond 197,000 Providence - 173,000 Dayton - 166,000 St. Louis 348,000 Boston - 589,000 Milwaukee - 596,000 Indianapolis - 781,000 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kshoe Posted July 24, 2003 Share Posted July 24, 2003 I'm sure you are looking at the population of the city only. The metropolitan St. Louis area is between 2.5 and 3 million. I'm sure those other cities will also increase but St. Louis' urban sprawl makes those numbers look silly. We are a much bigger city then Indy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbweb7 Posted July 24, 2003 Author Share Posted July 24, 2003 I know the numbers are a bit off, but I didn't have any other figures to go off. If you can help me locate better figures that would be great. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quality Is Job 1 Posted July 24, 2003 Share Posted July 24, 2003 http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/metro01.prn You'll see that St. Louis, in 1997, had around 2.5 mil. people and was the 18th most populous metropolitan area in the U.S. If, for some reason, you can't see the above link (it has a strange extension), I found it on the following page: http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/metrolis.htm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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