Strongly disagree. All college basketball fans know Villanova. Two Final Fours in the last 7 years including last year's national championship. Plus, probably the biggest upset of all time in a national championship game in 1985 over Georgetown. Under John Thompson, Georgetown was probably in the top 3 of college basketball brands, although it has faded somewhat.
Cinci is a solid, but not top brand in college basketball. Heck, the last time they were in the Final 8 was in 1996!
I agree that under John Thompson Georgetown was on a national level, but that was a long time ago and has been forgotten by most.
I don't think people automatically decide to be fans of schools who make final fours. It's great and all but different than schools who have fans regardless of winning a tournament or getting to a final 4. Fans like that are short term and memories fade quickly once March is over and spring hits.
Most casual fans not form the NE pert of the country have no idea where Villanova is even located let alone consider them a national brand. Being the cinderella story of the tournament like VCU or Butler have been in recent history hardly makes you a big brand. It means for a couple of weeks in March you were a big deal. The other 50+ weeks a year the Georgetown's, Villanova's, Butler, VCU, Creightons of the world are regional at best and more likely just local brands nobody else pays attention to aside from the small (but rabid) fan bases. That's the downside to not being big public flagships like UConn who are more recognizable than all those put together and people actually know where UConn is located on a map.
This is essentially the equivalent of a West Coast guy claiming Gonzaga is a well known program when in reality most people in the country have no idea where it is located either and couldn't name a player or coach in thier entire AD.
Or a guy from the Midwest claiming that Creighton is a well known program when in reality most people in the country have no idea where they are located and couldn't name a player or coach in their AD.
All of those little cinderella schools like Wichita St, Creighton, Gonzaga, Villanova, Butler, VCU are neat but not recognized like Cinci is simply from playing football. People might have vague memories of those teams having a good tournament at some point but that doesn't mean they are tuning in for regular season games or follow the team in any way. But people including BIg 12 fans will be watching when Cinci plays Houston this weekend. Big 12 fans have zero interest in watching Big East events nor do fans of conference like the SEC or PAC.