Big East in NIL Era

[Huskymagic]

The Big East conference in the new corrupt NIL era, and mercenary portal is going to be in trouble keeping up nationally with the Power 5 conferences.
Jay Wright retiring abruptly does not help the conference. The Big East will be relegated to slightly below PAC-12 level in the near future with these kind of foolish enterprises that the NCAA has endorsed.

UCONN can play the pay to play game, and will get stronger in relation to the rest of the conference. However, the conference will have trouble competing on the court soon against the power conferences when it matters. The SEC has received a big boost due to this, and are in position to become the best basketball conference very soon. It's no surprise the best coaches are now located in the SEC, and recruiting in the conference has experienced a big surge in top recruits throughout the SEC. The addition of Texas and Oklahoma will only help in this regard.

The Big East needs to think about expanding to add Gonzaga and Memphis.

 

[RayIsTheGOAT]

I've heard the Big East is dying for like 10 years now, and it oddly enough continues to do well.

Two of the mid-lower level Big East teams just reeled in two high profile coaches- Thad Matta and Sean Miller.
UConn is restocking talent and hasn't even remotely hit its peak in the NBE. Providence is restocking with big time transfers. Seton Hall just hired the hottest name in college basketball. Villanova has a long way to fall and Wright will still have a finger or 2 on the program. They have a pretty loaded recruiting class for next season (assuming it stays together).
It can only go up from here for Georgetown.
Creighton is a consistent NCAA team and is bringing back their core, and will maybe even be a top 20 team next season.
Shaka Smart has only 1 year under his belt at Marquette, and pretty much killed it relative to expectations for year 1.

The Big East is still the go-to conference for high end Northeast recruits, I believe.
Take a deep breath.

 

[auror]

Coaching and development still matters a ton, more than recruiting. (It'll be harder not getting your developing players poached, but things like bench guys who are in the rotation eventually becoming your junior/senior year stars will still be very important).

Schools with good, passionate, and historical fan followings will do well in NIL (UConn, Georgetown, Villanova). Schools like Creighton, Xavier, and Marquette will do better than you'd expect as well. Go look at some Creighton fan attendance logs. Providence fans are activated right now, so they'll also do fine. The St. Johns, Seton Halls, and Depauls of the world could potentially be in trouble, but they weren't very powerful to begin with, and should continue benefiting from just the association with the other schools.

Basketball-only schools will also not need to share the wealth of their NIL fundraising with football, either.

 

[PNolanFan]

So A&M supposedly spent like 20 million on their football recruiting class. Obvi we cannot keep up with that sort of spending but the big boys are always gonna blow their load on football. I think that our basketball centric conference should be able to keep up just fine with average power 5s monetarily when considering how much they are spending on football

 

[HuskyHawk]

Even if I agreed with the first two paragraphs (in which I find grains of truth), the solution "lets add Memphis and Gonzaga" is nonsensical. Gonzaga is one of the absolute worst positioned schools for NIL. Tiny, west coast and in Spokane. That's a recipe for terrible exposure. Memphis is certainly better off but wouldn't change anything for the Big East.

I'm not sure people get NIL. The money isn't coming from the schools. It's about how many fans you have (especially some that have deep pockets), plus local or national businesses that can benefit from your athletes promoting them. P5 TV money doesn't mean squat. The advantage P5 schools have is that they are huge and well known. Part of the "well known" comes from playing D1 football. Big publics have an edge with bigger alumni networks.

UConn's primary advantage is that it's the only game in town. It dominates locally, and there is enough money in the state that can hire UConn players to promote their businesses (and people like Paige will go national). DePaul doesn't move the needle in Chicago the same way. Or Marquette in Milwaukee. Or St. Johns in Queens.

 

[dennismenace]

Shouldn't St John's and DePaul being in great markets (NYC, Chicago) be attractive for NIL marketing and therefore recruiting in the Big East. NIL is just starting and if these teams just start to get it going it could be a bonanza with the markets they have.

 

[CTFAN4LIFE]

Coaching and development still matters a ton, more than recruiting. (It'll be harder not getting your developing players poached, but things like bench guys who are in the rotation eventually becoming your junior/senior year stars will still be very important).

Schools with good, passionate, and historical fan followings will do well in NIL (UConn, Georgetown, Villanova). Schools like Creighton, Xavier, and Marquette will do better than you'd expect as well. Go look at some Creighton fan attendance logs. Providence fans are activated right now, so they'll also do fine. The St. Johns, Seton Halls, and Depauls of the world could potentially be in trouble, but they weren't very powerful to begin with, and should continue benefiting from just the association with the other schools.

Basketball-only schools will also not need to share the wealth of their NIL fundraising with football, either.

Exactly - the power FB schools have lots of mouths to feed and bball-centric athletic departments have less (if you spend your resources on 3 or 4 bball players you can have a large impact).

 

[HuskyHawk]

Shouldn't St John's and DePaul being in great markets (NYC, Chicago) be attractive for NIL marketing and therefore recruiting in the Big East. NIL is just starting and if these teams just start to get it going it could be a bonanza with the markets they have.

No. Because they aren't popular enough in those markets. Nobody is going to some midtown Deli because Posh Alexander posts it on Instagram. Most of NYC couldn't name anybody on that team.

Your market is "everyone who has a phone" no matter where you are. The question is: can you use your status as a player for X university to sell people stuff, yes or no? The factors are numerous. Does your school have hundreds of thousands or millions of rabid fans who know who you are? Are you attractive? Are you funny? Can you dance? Do flips? Do you have a puppy or a kitten? Are you already social media famous (as Paige was)?