Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="unclejohn, post: 3199294, member: 9973"] Welcome back from a Marquette fan. OK, technically you never left. But the conference you just abandoned could not possibly have been called the Big East. Add me to those who have mixed emotions about your return. I mean, you are coming, so welcome. But whenever the question has been raised about UConn returning, I have been ambivalent. I have been in the category of “when they get rid of football.” My thought was that as soon as UConn got an offer from a major football conference, they would be out the door. I assume Val Ackerman and the school administrators have thought about that and made some provision for it, most likely financial. (Edit: Yes, clearly they did, to the tune of $30 million. I wrote this a couple days ago, but had to wait until I was approved to post it.) But there is another problem. The makeup of the conference has changed. Yes, there will be seven familiar teams, and the conference will once again have six of its first eight members. But UConn will now be the only state school. It dwarfs the rest in size. There was more of a mix of state and private schools and larger and smaller schools when the conference split apart. The Catholic seven went out and found three more that fit their own profile. I think I am one of many who said that UConn was the only state school that should even be considered for membership. (Get lost VCU.) Private religious schools simply have different missions and needs than large state universities. But you are back. Another thing that has changed, and for the better, is that this is a men’s basketball conference. Yes, it will be great to have your women back. But the driving force is men’s basketball. The three new members all got in because they were solid basketball programs and were committed to staying that way. That is why some other candidates did not make the cut. Every school is committed to having a quality men’s basketball team. Somebody has to lose of course, and teams will take turns on the bottom in a given year or two or three. But there are no South Floridas or East Carolinas, there only because they have a football team and are not all that worried about basketball. More likely you will see those bottom-dwelling teams getting markedly better, like Providence and Seton Hall have recently. So there is no longer any tension between the football schools and the non-football schools. You of course are concerned about where your football team will wind up. Good luck with that. The rest of us do not know or care. It would be better if you never mentioned you had one, and maybe everyone will forget. Don’t ask that games be rescheduled or something to accommodate your football team. Not happening. Football is what broke the conference up. Of course, it was also what allowed us to get in, too. The P-5 expected/hoped that the Big East would fade into obscurity after the reconfiguration. That did not happen. The BE has more than held its own. But it is a step down from when I thought it was at its best, the sixteen-team behemoth that regularly dominated the polls. claimed three #1 seeds in the NCAA tournament one year, and placed eleven teams another. You will not see the kind of murderers’ row that resulted in Notre Dame losing something like five or six in a row, all to ranked teams. At Marquette, we miss Louisville. It was always fun to play West Virginia and watch to see if Huggy Bear would spontaneously combust, and even if you hate the Domers, Mike Brey is a great coach. We don’t miss Pittsburgh. Their fans are all as and the currently suck anyway. A lot of traditionally good teams who could be counted on to be ranked three years out of five and make frequent deep runs in March are gone. But it is still true that there are no easy Big East games. (DePaul is better than they look, and improving.) What has also changed is that the conference is at a distinct disadvantage vis-a-vis the Power 5. Football just brings in so much money. So Chris Holtman left Butler for Ohio State and Chris Mack left Xavier for Louisville. Val Ackerman has done a great job as commissioner, but she made a revealing comment in an interview recently that “We think we can still attract quality coaches.” In other words, she pretty much conceded that football schools can throw outrageous sums of money at BE coaches to pirate them away. That is the reality So far, the new configuration of the Big East has done pretty well. This year, there might have been some question whether the AAC was stronger in basketball. They had an up year. The BE had a down one. Usually it is not in question. Providence and DePaul are going to be better than Tulane and East Carolina just about every year. So welcome back. But if you expect to walk in and take over, or if you expect walk-overs against Butler, Xavier, and Creighton, you’re in for a surprise. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach