RE: Re: Conference Affiliations

[dfairchild]

The BCS contract is up in 2005 (I believe) and without Miami, I do not think
the Big East can leverage to be included in the next BCS like deal.  So
moving to the Big East without Miami seems like a parallel move at best.

What would C-USA look like if it could pry 3 teams away from the Big East -
V Tech (old Metro team), WV and Pitt

We could lop off some of the bottom feeders

FB members
Cincy
UL
Memphis
V Tech
Pitt
WV
TCU
ECU
So. Fla
Houston
So Miss
Tulane (New Orleans TV market)

for basketball keep Marquette and DePaul (chicago TV market)

so long Army, Charlotte, St. Louis and UAB

-----Original Message-----
From: Shinkle, Randy [mailto:address@hidden
Sent: Monday, May 05, 2003 5:30 PM
To: address@hidden
Subject: RE: [UC Basketball] Re: Conference Affiliations


Below is a post I made last September which appears to still be relevant.
In light of the proposed ACC expansion, I could modify this earlier post
to suggest a new Big East that looks like this:

New Big East "Football" Division:

    Army(FB)/Charlotte(other)
    Cincinnati
    East Carolina
    Louisville
    Pittsburgh
    Rutgers
    Temple(FB)/Connecticut(other)   <--- until 2005
    Virginia Tech
    West Virginia

New Big East "Non-Football" Division:

    DePaul
    Georgetown
    Marquette
    Notre Dame
    Providence
    St. John's
    Saint Louis
    Seton Hall
    Villanova

As I said in the earlier post, these probably become separate conferences,
which could agree to schedule each other so as to maintain existing
rivalries.

The big question is, does this new football conference merit a BCS slot?
Another question is whether UC and Louisville would be happy playing
basketball in this conference.

Each of these new conferences might also consider adding 3 schools to get
to 12, especially the football conference because of the potential for a
championship game (and to strengthen its basketball).  Possible additions:

Football:  Keep Temple (all sports), add Memphis and South Florida
Basketball:  Add Dayton, Xavier and one other Jesuit school

Randy '78


==========================================================================


The following was posted to the Forum on September 5, 2002 ....


This subject never goes away, does it?

What is interesting to me is that there is no discussion at all of the Big
East trying to preserve itself.  The assumption seems to be, if the ACC or
Big Ten want Big East schools, they'll get them, and the Big East will
shrivel up and die.

If I were among the leadership of the Big East, I'd be pushing for a
"pre-emptive strike" of some kind.  As it turns out, there is a fairly
simple one that addresses several issues at once.  Take the existing Big
East and expand it to include the current American division of C-USA
(including Army), then create 3 new divisions, as follows:

New Big East A Division:

    Boston College
    Miami
    Rutgers
    Temple(FB)/Connecticut(other)   <--- until 2005
    Virginia Tech
    West Virginia

New Big East B Division:

    Army(FB)/Charlotte(other)
    Cincinnati
    East Carolina
    Louisville
    Pittsburgh
    Syracuse

New Big East C Division:

    DePaul
    Georgetown
    Marquette
    Notre Dame
    Providence
    St. John's
    Saint Louis
    Seton Hall
    Villanova

Actually, the C division would most likely become a second conference,
which could choose to add 3 more schools (such as Dayton, Temple and
Xavier) if they want, although I'm not sure I'd do that.  This becomes the
oft-rumored "Catholic" conference, with Notre Dame remaining independent in
football.  The deal could include a scheduling arrangement between these
two conferences to maintain some existing basketball rivalries, such as
Syracuse/St. John's, UC/Marquette, Rutgers/Seton Hall, etc.

The remaining, new Big East would be a solid, stable BCS all-sports
conference (with the reasonable exception of Army/Charlotte) with plenty of
good football and basketball, and all in the Eastern time zone.  It may not
accomplish for Army what they intended with C-USA (road trips near major
bases), but I think they would be OK with it.  An alternative is to invite
Memphis instead of Army/Charlotte, but I was trying to keep everyone
covered.

The C-USA National Division (Houston, Memphis, South Florida, Southern
Miss, TCU, Tulane and UAB) could now form a true southern regional
conference by adding 2 to 5 schools (you know the candidates) and might
still be worthy of inclusion in the BCS, although it would probably be no
more likely to happen.

The obvious big winners here are UC, East Carolina and Louisville, which
makes me wonder if their respective leadership has thought about pursuing
this.  I certainly would.  But I would think the people with the most
vested interest would be the Big East leadership.  For most of them, their
BCS membership would appear to be at risk otherwise.

Randy '78


> -----Original Message-----
> From: richard l. kandell [mailto:address@hidden
> Sent: Monday, May 05, 2003 4:20 PM
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: [UC Basketball] Re: Conference Affiliations
>
>
> Yesterday's paper here reported University of Miami officials
> had approved
> the move of the athletic program from the Big East to the
> ACC.  The article
> also stated that the ACC Commissioner was in favor of
> expansion, which it
> asserted is currently 1 vote short of approval, with the
> University of North
> Carolina and Dook the schools primarily opposed to adding new
> teams.  The
> other 2 universities continuing to be mentioned along with
> Miami, to make it
> a 12 team conference, are Syracuse and BC.
>
> I assume that the Dookies are already so far down the totem pole with
> respect to football that they don't want to add 3 more
> schools better then
> they are.  I'm not sure what UNC's problem(s) would be,
> except I don't think
> they want to share men's hoops money with any more schools
> then they do
> already.
>
> This looks like it is very close to becoming reality (I don't know how
> strong either UNC or Duke is in opposition, and what can be done, if
> anything, to appease them).  Even with those 3 schools
> leaving the Big East,
> I'd leave C-USA and join the BE, especially if UofL and Memphis are
> included, in a New York minute.
>
> Richard K.