NCAA Realignment Proposal: The Mega-East.

Vanity ^ | 11-19-10 | dangus

[dangus]

Originally cobbled together by basketball teams, but dominated by football teams, the Big East faces an enigmatic problem: It has grown too large to be a sensible arrangement for a conference, yet it faces pressure to grow yet again: football interests possibly would like to add Texas Christian, Temple, or both. The solution may be similarly enigmatic: to compact itself by expanding.

My proposal: Invite the sought-after football clubs, but ALSO invite a couple rivals from the Atlantic Ten. Then form four divisions, forming two mini-conferences. For basketball, there would be 18 games:

• Teams in the same division would play each other twice per year.
• Other teams in the same mini-conference, or who are both in the East or both in the West would play each other once.
• Teams in the Football West would never play teams in the Basketball-Only East, and likewise, teams in the Football East would never play teams in the Basketball-Only West. (If the NCAA had a problem with teams in a conference never playing each other, the two miniconferences could form as separate conferences for basketball, and simply contract the 5 games per team between miniconferences as being non-conference play, since tournament invitations for conference champions shouldn't be an issue in such a strong league. )

For football, teams would simply play each other once (except Notre Dame, which doesn't play in any conference).

Football	Basketball Only
East	East
Syracuse	St. John's
Connecticut	Georgetown
Pitt	Providence
Temple or Rutgers	Seton Hall
West Virginia	Villanova
West	West
Louisville	DePaul
Cincinnati	Marquette
South Florida	Xavier
Notre Dame	Dayton
Texas Christian, Notre Dame or Temple	Notre Dame or Saint Louis

This chart includes options for whether the Big East seeks to add Texas Christian, Temple, or both. If only one is added, Notre Dame, which plays football but not in the Big East football conference, would be placed into the Football Conference, opening up a space to extend an invitation to Saint Louis.

This arrangement has several benefits:

• Geographically suitable divisions: Villanova or Providence won't have to play TCU, S. Florida, Notre Dame, etc.
• Allowing football teams to build rivalries among themselves, while keeping basketball-only teams in healthy, competitive conferences with large television audiences despite small student bodies. Teams would play 13 games against nine mini-conference rivals.
• Keeping the old Big East rivalries intact; a team such as Georgetown would play 11 games against the seven other old Big East teams.
• The old Metropolitan Valley Conference would be reborn, as Cincinnati, Louisville, DePaul, Marquette, Xavier, Dayton, and Saint Louis may all be reunited. (Only Saint Louis might be excluded, if both Temple and Texas Christian joined.)
• Most of the best teams of the old Atlantic Ten conference would be reunited: West Virginia, Temple, Xavier, Dayton, and Rutgers.
• Avoiding match-ups with little interest, such as Providence v. Louisville, Syracuse v. Marquette, St. John's v. Louisville, etc. I'd even suggest that the apparent, teams left behind in the Atlantic 10 such as George Washington, Richmond, U-Mass and Rhode Island, might ultimately be better off working out a realignment with the up-and-coming Colonial Athletic Conference.

[dangus]

FWIW, Atlantic 10 basketball teams Richmond, URI, and UMass already play football in the Colonial Athletic league.

[HenpeckedCon]

Since the Big 12 is losing Nebraska and Colorado, why don’t they add Boise State and TCU? Are Texas and Oklahoma afraid?

[dfwgator]

Are Texas and Oklahoma afraid?

You betcha!

[Eric Roelfsema]

Boise State, who is on ESPN tonight, is moving to the Western Athletic Conference next year.

[FlJoePa]

You want Temple back now after you booted them out a few years ago? Funny...they would probably win the crummy Big East this year.

[CommerceComet]

After watching first-hand the almost melt-down of the Big XII, I've come to the conclusion now that the feeding frenzy is over, the conferences will realize that the Mega-Conferences are a bad idea. Diminishing returns become evident way too soon. There are not enough super programs like Notre Dame, Texas, etc. available whose contribution margin is large enough to make this work.

Big XII stumbled into a truth when all the remaining teams realized that they are getting a raise because two teams left. Of course, the danger comes when the new TV contract has to be negotiated without Nebraska and Colorado. However, based on preliminary discussions on the new TV contract (and the Big XII lagged behind others this past summer because their TV contract was the oldest), the remaining teams are expecting another substantial raise.

The Big XII learned that it had expanded beyond its optimal size. I think that the Pac-10 will realize this in a few years. I'm not so sure about the Big Ten since they were able to land a premier program (although not the one they really, really wanted).

Concerning the financial bonanza of a conference championship game, notice the Big XII with its long history of a conference championship game is making no move to try and restore it.

Frankly, had the Big XII desolved, I was hoping that the remaining northern teams (Missouri, Iowa State, Kansas, and Kansas State) would have migrated as a group to the Big East. Maybe adding Baylor and TCU to form an entry group of six.

[dangus]

Texas Christian - Baylor - Texas Tech - Texas - Texas A&M - Texas Tech

Seems like a natural division, doesn’t it? The question: which is the 6th team? Oklahoma or Oklahoma State?

[Eric Roelfsema]

With your setup, Notre Dame should be in the Basketball only division, since they don’t play football in the Big East.

Villanova does play football, but they play in the I-AA (FCS) Division. Same with Georgetown. They could move the football programs up to the BCS division of Division and Play in the Big East.

[dangus]

There’s two problems:

1. NCAA passed a rule prohibiting football conference tournaments... unless a conference has 12 teams. Naturally, that had everyone scramble to get ten teams: the Big “Ten,” the ACC, the Pac “Ten.”

2. Big East Football had little to do with Big East anything else... until Big East football started using Big East everything else to attract more teams to itself, while booting non-Big East Temple and elevating Big East UConn. Suddenly, Big East Football is entirely within the Big East, but the rest of the Big East has those eight extra teams to deal with, making it very difficult to create a conference with enough Football power, but not so big as to lose any conference identity within other sports... this is what I tried to work out with my proposal.

[Eric Roelfsema]

I think Iowa State would have joined the Big Ten. The same possibly for Kansas & Kansas State. Missouri I do not know.

I would not be surprised if TCU might want to get in the Big 12. The majority of the games would not even be out of their home state.

[dangus]

There's two problems:

1. NCAA passed a rule prohibiting football conference tournaments... unless a conference has 12 teams. Naturally, that had everyone scramble to get ten 12 teams: the Big "Ten," the ACC, the Pac "Ten."

2. Big East Football had little to do with Big East anything else... until Big East football started using Big East everything else to attract more teams to itself, while booting non-Big East Temple and elevating Big East UConn. Suddenly, Big East Football is entirely within the Big East, but the rest of the Big East has those eight extra teams to deal with, making it very difficult to create a conference with enough Football power, but not so big as to lose any conference identity within other sports... this is what I tried to work out with my proposal.

[CommerceComet]

Since the Big 12 is losing Nebraska and Colorado, why don’t they add Boise State and TCU? Are Texas and Oklahoma afraid?

Because the Big XII isn't in a panic to get back to twelve teams. TCU is a reasonable candidate and would get consideration. Boise State has absolutely no chance. Geographically, it is just too isolated from the rest of the league. Colorado left in part because of its geological isolation from the Big XII and Boise is several hundred miles further away. Besides, in academe, Boise State is viewed as a semi-pro football team attached to a junior college.

Football fans tend to forget this but conference affiliations extend to the academic side of the institution as well. Boise State has zero respect in academic circles and no self-respecting major conference is going to add Boise State until there are substantial improvements in their academics which will take years to implement.

[Eric Roelfsema]

Error to self. Boise State is going to the Mountain West Conference next year, and leaving the WAC. Fresno State and University of Nevada-Reno are joining the MWC in 2012.

The WAC is gaining University of Texas-San Antonio and Texas State and the University of Denver but they do not have football.

[CommerceComet]

I think Iowa State would have joined the Big Ten. The same possibly for Kansas & Kansas State. Missouri I do not know.

I understand that KU, ISU, and Missouri all approached the Big Ten and were told no. They just weren't in any of the plans which the Big Ten envisioned. K-State isn't a member of the American Association of Universities which was required for a new admission to the Big Ten.

[dangus]

Yeah, the sensible thing to do would been to have Boise St. join the Pac-Ten. ut there’s an academic myth of excellence in the Pac Ten which would have been exposed by having an outsider kick their asses in sports AND academics. Pac-Ten graduates are rock-ignorant. I saw a UCLA 4.0-GPA graduate go 0-for-5 on “Are You Smarter Than a 5th-Grader,” even though every question was applicable to his major (politics). Those idiot Jay Walkers? Half of them probably went to Pac Ten schools! One in eight Californians knew that Nancy Pelosi was house speaker, even though she’s a Californian. (The one exception is Stanford, which seems to have excellent business, politics and engineering programs.)

[Eric Roelfsema]

I have a feeling that the Big Ten only wanted 1 team at this team to make the conference with an even number of schools.

I had not heard that Kansas, Kansas State and Iowa State all approached the Big Ten. I was aware of Missouri. Iowa State would make for natural rivalries with Iowa and other BIg Ten Schools. Kansas & K-State I am not so sure of.

[Mr. Blonde]

Isn’t Colorado just as geographically isolated from the Pac-10?

[dangus]

>> With your setup, Notre Dame should be in the Basketball only division, since they don’t play football in the Big East. <<

It’s a big school, it’s in the mid-west, it’s known for its football program, and if there are only conference nine football teams and 11 basketball teams, someone’s gotta go into the football conference. It just makes sense that it be Notre Dame. But if Temple and TCU both join, and St. Louis stays out, then, yes, I agree, and accordingly, I’ve placed it with the basketball programs.

>> Villanova does play football, but they play in the I-AA (FCS) Division. Same with Georgetown. <<

Like the other teams in the “Basketball-only” Conference, they’re small schools, private (nominally Catholic), and placing them in the Basketball-only East maintains the old rivalries. If they were to move up, they would be by far the smallest IAA teams, and would weaken, rather than strengthen, the Big East. They could, however, be teams #11 and 12, allowing for a Big East Football Conference Championship game. Even if that did happen, it would still make most sense to leave the divisions as they are.

[dangus]

Moreso. My guess is he means Colorado said, “since we’re geographically isolated ANYWAY, we might as well leave,” rather than, “let’s leave because we’re geographically isolated.”