Louisville and Cincinnati appear to be very silent during this game of musical chairs. I can see what is left of the Big 12 absorbing WVU, TCU, Louisville, and Cincinnati. If they want to expand past 12 teams, South Florida and UCF can give them a base in Florida.
They and Missouri can be the base for the Big Leftovers Conference.
I think West Virginia could still get into the ACC, if the conference’s wish list doesn’t work out. They’re certainly a fit.
UL and UC are basketball schools. Granted, so is Syracuse, but they expand the footprint into the coveted NYC market.
Even w/out 'Cuse and Pitt, the Big East will still be strong in hoops, if the rest of it stays in tact. And frankly, the addition of TCU and one other decent football program *might *be enough to keep their auto BCS bid.
Depends on who is deciding what they need to fit. If this is a race to gobble up schools to increase TV/Cable market share, West Virginia will be SOL with every potential super conf. Sorry, but a lot of schools will be in this boat. If the NCAA is going to fall out into 4 super conferences (making a base of 64) and all the rest, there simply isn’t enough spaces. Will there be enough schools to make another super conference? Maybe, maybe not. The Big Leftovers Conference (the BLC) may have some appealing schools for football, or more likely basketball, but geography/travel may be a real issue. Let’s say WVU is in the BLC. And Missouri, San Diego State, Boise State, South Florida and Louisville. That’s 6 schools off the top of my head. All with D1 football (yeah, I know… FBS. Go with me here) and basketball programs head that have had or currently have good to great programs in one sport, the other or both. Are they all able to join the same super conference? yes. Is it practical? Not even close.
We all keep talking about the NYC market… but other than ND, no one seems to agree on what team(s) will be able to grab the NYC market. Is there anyone that lives in NYC that can give us some insight into what college program(s) might actually do it? St. John’s in basketball plays home games in MSG. Are they the big NYC draw?
And what is TCU’s Plan B? They have to be pissed that they may be out there again, this time praying for a conference to take them. I doubt they can go home again, as it were. 
WVU has top 25 caliber basketball and football programs. It would be shocking if they are left out of big conferences, and it would be a huge step down to go to the MAC.
And, by the way, WVU is ranked the 89th best university in America. That’s not very good, but well ahead of Nebraska (104), and not too far off Iowa, Indiana, and Michigan State (72, 75, and 79). I think it all comes down to money again. WVU isn’t a national powerhouse type program and they don’t bring in big new TV markets.
I think so too. West Virginia could ultimately get screwed because its conference is collapsing around it. A school that’s already in a conference that is growing, like the Big 10, ACC or Pac-12, will get to stay regardless of athletic pedigree. But until you are in, you are on the outside looking in (think Dan Akroyd in Trading Places).
I found This articlerooting around the Pgh. Post-Gazette site today. Check out the date of the article. I wonder how Oliver Luck has been sleeping lately. He is probably having some trouble sitting down.
St. Johns in a NYC commuter U, gets good local coverage and has a nice basketball program. Lavin has done wonders. Yet this whole discussion is driven by football so St. Johns is a zero factor.
Syracuse does generate a substantial amount of interest in New York if they are successful. They also have a good basketball program so they are desirable. Rutgers has some appeal and coverage and their basketball program, especially women’s basketball is very successful so that adds another element. But I wouldn’t say that there are many that are living and dying by those teams. It’s a pro sports city.
NYC is not a dedicated college market other than the fact that so many that live there attended college outside of NYC. They bring their loyalties with them. On Saturday afternoons in the fall alumni clubs have designated bars as gathering places where their school’s game will be broadcast. The bigger the city, the less affiliation there is to one college program. Its much easier to get a ticket to a UCLA, So. Cal., or Northwestern game than it is get one to an Alabama, LSU or Nebraska game. NYC is big on college football but the interest is not concentrated on one team.
Thanks for the perspective. I hope we get some more if folks from NYC have anything else to add.
As for St. John’s, I agree that it’s a basketball school only. I thought if maybe they had a decent Div 1-AA team that could move up in class (like UConn did a few years ago), there would be some interest. I don’t even know if they had a football team (they don’t) until just looking it up. And football drives the bus, as you point out, so out they go. (I should have looked that up before asking about SJU. :smack:)
Actually, the original Big East basketball conference was a pretty good group of small eastern, mostly Catholic universities. Syracuse was the initial outlier of the group, the only Division 1-A football school in the conference until Pitt joined.
The other thing that you point out is that NYC is not college football driven. That being true, I would think the closer schools, like Syracuse or Rutgers, would only get interest if they were making a run at a national championship. So perhaps ND really is the answer.
It does crack me up how the AD’s and Chancellors of these schools talk about joining the right conference for “academic” fit. Maybe if they had math and chess teams.
A small percentage of the NY/Connecticut/New Jersey market is going to beat out a bigger percentage of West Virginia market. And the discussion is focused mainly about football, but there is a big interest in CBB in the Northern Atlantic Coast.
I don’t think WVU is even an option at this point. If it’s true they’ve been turned down by the ACC and SEC, the only two left are the Pac-12 and Big10. (I’m working on the premise that there will only be 4 super-conferences, 16 teams each, and those conferences will be the current Pac-12, Big10, ACC and SEC - all of this is speculation, of course). With the ACC and SEC out of the way, the only real option is the Big10. (Pac-12 is a bad geographic fit AND they just announced they aren’t expanding from 12 any time soon. That could change tomorrow). But the Big10 doesn’t need WVU, especially when all they are concerned about is television numbers/footprint size. I believe the Big10 will hold one position for ND for as long as they can, reducing WVU’s chances even further. And there are too many other schools that will help the Big10 much more than WVU. It’s a buyer’s market, and it doesn’t help if WVU was already rejected by two of the conferences. They look desperate (which they should be). Even if this doesn’t finish for say 5 years, the writing is on the wall for a school like West Virginia. Recruiting is going to suffer in football and basketball… WVU has built two really good programs, and all that work will go down the tubes very quickly without the quality recruits they are getting now.
I find this whole thing fascinating, but not in a good way. My school happens to be in, but if this plays out like I think it could, a lot of schools will take major hits to their athletic programs. Maybe that’s good from an academic POV, but a university’s national image, especially outside of the Ivy League, is created by their sports teams. Also, long term rivalries could either disappear or become non-conference games.
The other thing I can’t figure out right now is how a playoff would work in football with all the bowl games still in existence. That will be a major fight. It will all boil down to cash, of course. But if the right team(s) and bowl(s) get screwed over this, I can see the federal government getting involved.
Members of congress have voters to answer to, and a lot of pressure will come down to keep money from flowing out of a state.
- I don’t think this is a given, although it is often stated as such. First of all, the only Big Ten team the ACC would be remotely interested in is Penn State, and their history with the Big Ten is much shorter. And if you consider how and why they wound up there (and look at Paterno’s recent comments on the ACC’s expansion north), I think there are some sentimental reasons they’d like to join what’s looking to become the closest thing possible to Paterno’s 1980s idea of an Eastern football conference (a dream that was killed largely by the Big East, but the ACC could have had more foresight too).
But they won’t decide on sentiment, of course. Money is driving this. The Big Ten distributes more money today to its current schools than the ACC does today, nobody can argue with that. They took a big gamble on the BTN, and it is paying off. The ACC, SEC, PAC 12 and Big 12 considered it, thought it was too risky and signed contracts with networks (or didn’t). If the Big Ten has a school that reaches into a media market, the cable companies there add BTN to the basic lineup and each school gets a penny or dime or a nickle or a quarter or whatever it is per cable subscriber. Doesn’t matter if anybody watches, they get the money. Heck, BTN is on my current cable package for some reason – I didn’t ask for it and I’ve never watched it (there’s usually something better on than a replay of the 2007 Wisconsin-Indiana game, I’m afraid) – but every time I pay my cable bill a little bit goes to Penn State. That’s a great deal.
But now that the Big Ten has figured it out, so can the other three. The Big Ten can’t patent it. And it becomes a part of the negotiations the other three power conferences have with the networks, even if nobody else replicates BTN exactly.
So which power conference does Penn State want to be a part of, given that any of them can maximize revenue out of their footprint over time? One that covers Massachusetts to Florida or one that runs from Pennsylvania to Nebraska. If they’re smart they’re thinking longer term, and not letting short term revenue differentials drive the decision.
- Yeah, you got me, I was exaggerating.
Notre Dame would have a somewhat tougher time if the power conferences get bigger and their members have to play more conference games, but it won’t come down to Buffalo or Troy. They do need to find a stable home for basketball and the Olympic sports, and I don’t think any of the power conferences will take them on without their football team. Even talking about a boycott would be completely self-defeating, since it was essentially an anti-Catholic boycott that kept ND out of the Big Ten in the first place. Notre Dame doesn’t forget things like that.
As for NYC and college football, it’s not very popular, but the three most popular college football teams there are Notre Dame, Syracuse and Penn State.
If the ACC was settled on Rutgers and UConn they would have announced four teams joining last weekend. West Virginia is still very much in play for all three of its adjoining power conferences in my opinion. In any case, if the SEC goes to 16 in the next couple of years, it’s one of their best options for 15 or 16. The source for the WVU rejection story came from elsewhere in the leftover Big East, so I chalk it up to politics.
Sorry for the double post, I don’t know how to reply to two different posts in one post.
I don’t think that anyone can make a case for UConn not fitting in the ACC - they are a better fit than any Big East Team, past or present (the ACC is a basketball conference first). And while Rutgers has mostly been a doormat in hoops, their team has a rising star in Head Coach Mike Rice, who in his first full recruiting season assembled a class ranked higher than they’ve had in, well, maybe, ever.
You can’t chalk it up to politics alone. I know my posts have been long and you probably didn’t read them, but I urge you to read the article I linked to in Post #67. The date of that article is Sept. 8th, and it’s WVU’s Oliver Luck talking about the future expansion of the Big East. Less that two weeks later, the conference lost two of its football schools. 10 schools applied for membership. The ACC sent out feelers to specific schools. I have no problem believing WVU was one of the other 8, even if we don’t know that for sure.
This doesn’t mean WVU couldn’t get invited again. Perhaps the ACC will reconsider them down the road.
I did not know this. If true, I’d be shocked if ND ever joined the Big10.
On the NYC market, it’s not about grabbing it in the sense that you would actually get great viewer ratings from the team in that market. It’s about getting your games, or your channel, on their cable boxes. That’s it. Cable companies pay for the Big Ten Network whether I watch it or not. That is where the BTN makes its money. Not viewership and not even so much advertising.
Syracuse has supposedly been putting up billboards in NYC in an attempt to be the team that brings in that market.
I saw this blog from the NYT recently about the number of fans of various teams in New York City. It’s pretty long, and I’ve only had time to skim it so far. The one thing that really stood out to me is the claim that Rutgers has more than 2x as many fans in the City than any other school, including Notre Dame.
I know you’re talking about 4 16-team megasuperduper conferences with your playoff scenario (although I do think more than 64 teams are going to have places somewhere, whether it’s bigger conferences or more than four conferences) … but I continue to shake my head at the BCS for overlooking the obvious playoff solution that’s right in front of them right now. I mean the Plus One model.
You wouldn’t have to change the bowl setup or schedule at all. You seed your top four teams at the end of the season into two of the BCS New Years bowls (you know, Rose, Sugar, Orange, Fiesta, whatever you want. Mix and match, trade with your friends!). The two winners play the next week in the BCS championship.
The schedule is already there. The games are already there. You get a four-team playoff without changing a thing (well, except for losing two overall bowl slots, but come on). It just makes so much sense to me.
Just an observation:
Something the fan breakdown doesn’t take into account is the demographics of the audience. As I noted before, a lot of New Yorkers attended college outside New York and bring their loyalty with them. Notice I said “attended college”. I think you would find that, while college football doesn’t command a high percentage of the total audience, that very significant portion is highly educated and very affluent. That’s why it can be very attractive to advertisers to use college football to get to that audience.
While the discussion on the construction site is about the Jets and Giants, the discussion around the office cooler is often about college football (along with the Jets and Giants).
If logic or sense played into this, there wouldn’t be a discussion at all. There would be a playoff system, with 4 or 8 (or whatever) teams in the tourney.
I don’t think this happens any time soon.