1080 this morning

[whaler11]

It makes no sense for Navy to join the Big East. It never did.

It makes no sense for the PAC 12 to allow Boise to join. It never will.

Yeah if I'm Stanford, and field a team of students, I'm going to let Boise field a team of welding majors against me.

 

[Gregory Koch]

If all these Western schools join, do we change the name of the conference or just stick with something horribly inaccurate? Because in a few years, the "Big East" could be Boise State, Houston, SMU, Cincinnati, Louisville, some other C-USA and MWC teams, and remnants of the collapsed Big 12 or something like that. Which would not be East, and frankly, probably wouldn't be "Big" either. And eventually, we expand into the "Big Far East" and take this game global....

 

[Sky ball]

not necessarily. That's making a lot of assumptions. Even if they were accepted for basketball, it's not guaranteed that the football deal would have been struck; and even if it it was, what's to say that they wouldn't have joined the first or second wave of defection or left at any other time. If the conference is so undesirable, why wouldn't Penn St leave for greener pastures?

There may have not been a bunch of defections in 2003. How does this Eastern Confrence look to you assuming JoePa had his (Eastern Dream) way?

Penn State
Miami
WVU
Syracuse
BC
Va Tech
Rutgers
Pitt
Temple
Maryland - probably have jumped (at the time) to be with PSU, WVU and Pitt

Why would anyone leave that confrence? Maybe Miami to SEC. Heck the BE might be poaching UVA. One thing - if this happened UConn may never had an invite to join BE Football. No Need or desire from FB members.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Scott Gray is just being provocative. He can be ignored.

 

[huskyjawz]

That is a great conference, but not what Penn st was applying for and rejected from, in 82, which was bball only Big East. For the above to happen, they would have to split and take bc/syr/pitt and kill basketball conference, or get basketballs to take on all of those new members, which we know back in the 80's they probably wouldn't have done. So not sure how rejecting psu was bad for gavitt/tranghese and basketball only schools, including Uconn.[/quote]

 

[JaYnYcE]

Scott Gray is just being provocative. He can be ignored.

The irony.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Danzz]

Wouldn't surprise me one single bit that this was the case. The Big East is run by the most INCOMPETENT commissioner in the history of D1 athletics! The day Mike Tranghese retired was the day the Big East was doomed!

Don't know if he is incompetent or not. He deals from a very weak and shakey position and no commisioner has the problems he has and i doubt Tranghese could do any better with the situation. The BE has Uconn and Rutgers chomping at the bit for an ACC bid, Louisville courting the Big 12 and Notre Dame using the conference as a landing place for non football sports.They already lost Cuse and Pitt. Why would Boise State or the academies want to join the BE if they could go somewhere else that had a BCS bid?

 

[uconnfan68]

Wouldn't surprise me one single bit that this was the case. The Big East is run by the most INCOMPETENT commissioner in the history of D1 athletics! The day Mike Tranghese retired was the day the Big East was doomed!

Stop blaming the commish... he has NO AUTHORITY. This conference should have split 10 years ago.

 

[FDNY99]

Stop blaming the commish... he has NO AUTHORITY. This conference should have split 10 years ago.

Well it didn't and he "is in charge of day to day operations of the conference"...if not Marinatto then who do we blame the member schools including UConn?

 

[Nostical]

If you are not willing to blame Marinnato (saying its the Presidents etc) then you shouldn't credit Larry Scott for his proactive and lucrative maneuvers for the Pac12. He brought the innovative analysis and gameplan to the PAC 12 Presidents who had their eyes opened wide by a smart and savvy guy. Does that sound like what happened in Providence?

 

[Danzz]

If you are not willing to blame Marinnato (saying its the Presidents etc) then you shouldn't credit Larry Scott for his proactive and lucrative maneuvers for the Pac12. He brought the innovative analysis and gameplan to the PAC 12 Presidents who had their eyes opened wide by a smart and savvy guy. Does that sound like what happened in Providence?

The circumstances were different for the Pac 12. The Pac 12 like most of the major conferences were football first conferences from the start. The BE was formed as a basketball conference with loosely alligned football schools. Once football became the overwhelming driving force, the BE was doomed as a football conference. The BE is still a basketball first conference because half the schools don't play Div 1 football.This was not the case or culture for Larry Scott.
I'm not saying that Mainnato hasn't made mistakes because I don't know but I've never heard one person post a course of action that would have worked.

 

[IthacaMatt]

I think the part about the academies has the strongest possibility of being true but I think the rest is pretty much a wrong and wild guess. I don't think any current Big East members are going indy and we all know that Boise isn't going to the Pac 12, or at least we should all realize that. I think that without the academies this new league still works pretty well with adding Boise, Houston, SMU, UCF, and hopefully BYU. Adding those 4 or 5 schools is really all that matters in all of this.

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com...-usa-members-ucf-president-john-hitt-big-east
UCF's President confirmed pretty much confirmed over the weekend that all 3 CUSA schools are coming and are ready to announce whenever they get the green light fromthe league. The hold up is BYU and to a lesser extent Boise because they are waiting on BYU or another western team.

You need to read it again more closely - he didn't say "decide to go" independent - he said "find themselves as" independent. That's talking about the defection of Louisville triggering the basketball schools to break away.

But that's kind of a stupid argument. The only thing the basketball onlines have is the name and ownership of the history of the conference. That's what will keep them on TV and in the Garden for the foreseeable future. If they suddenly broke off and became the Eastern Catholic League, do you think they come within a mile of the existing TV contract ? And where do they play their conference championship, at the Dunk?

 

[mattp]

So who still thinks beign a basketball power means anything? My biggest concern has been that if kansas could almost be left in the dark, UCONN certainly could, and it looks like it might happen. Not sure how it would work out, but maybe playing as an indepednent for a few years, with a local tv contract would be possible.

we'll be just like Notre Dame!!! i actually think staying in the Big East in everything else and going independent in football for a few years could be a lot of fun. hopefully we'd be able to put together a competent schedule, but assuming we can, it would give us a lot of freedom to try to schedule big name opponents. if we can put together a top level team, we can still make BCS bowls.

not having an AQ hasn't kept teams like Utah and Boise from multiple appearances and we've seen several others come very close. maybe we can build ourselves up with a lot of 10 win seasons against a MWC/CUSA level schedule. if BCS autobids go completely out the window we might have an easier time making a BCS bowl as an independent since BE wins are always so undervalued by voters anyway. the toughest obstacle would be fewer bowl game opportunities but with more independent teams it's always possible that the tie ins will be different

 

[pepband99]

see our 8-4 independent season as a reason this shouldn't happen. If you're 12-0 or 11-1, being an indy is possibly great. Anything less, and not having a bowl tie-in means you're screwed.

 

[willie99]

BSU is coming for football only. They're pretty good at that

and maybe some football money will help them elevate everything else

hoops paved the way for just about everything UConn is today

 

[willie99]

as for Scott Gray, I stopped listening to him about 10 years ago when he said the Phoenix Coyotes were condoning and encouraging gang violence because they picked purple and black as their uniform colors.

He said those were popular gang colors

I kid you not

 

[epark88]

see our 8-4 independent season as a reason this shouldn't happen. If you're 12-0 or 11-1, being an indy is possibly great. Anything less, and not having a bowl tie-in means you're screwed.

Actually we were 9-3 that season, and politics kept us out.

Big Lew had an opportunity to throw us a bone and have Kansas accept a bowl in TX instead of one in FL which could've taken us, and for whatever reason he dissed us and snagged the FL bowl anyway.

Without bowl tie-ins, we'd be subject to some crazy arrangements at season's end. If the system is already shipping BCS-quality teams to Vegas, what do you think it would do to an 8-4ish UConn?...

 

[Da_Aisijimo_Gou]

Actually we were 9-3 that season, and politics kept us out. Big Lew had an opportunity to throw us a bone and have Kansas accept a bowl in TX instead of one in FL which could've taken us, and for whatever reason he dissed us and snagged the FL bowl anyway.

In that specific instrance as KU AD, how did Perkins "diss us"? At that point, the Jayhawks played at least one if not 2 games per season in Texas. Florida? Not so often, and Perkins was all about fundraising. Maybe he was looking out for KU, a more attractive ball location, and the potential for KU alumni/fan fundraising among Kansas snow birds.

 

[mattp]

we were kept out at 9-3, but i think if we were 9-3 as an independent today we'd get a bowl. at that time we were barely 1A, i think we've established ourselves a bit more now. we would definitely have to schedule to win 9-10/year, with 7-8 wins being a bad year, which means our schedule would have a lot of fluff, but if we had 6-7 MAC/CUSA teams along 3-4 lousy BCS teams a la Duke or Cuse, and two heavyweights i think we could be successful. we would basically have to schedule a MWC or CUSA type schedule overall