Blauds: UConn/Cincy Leaning Towards C7

[whaler11]

Why does everyone ignore the C7 additions? Are Butler and Creighton in museums or are they really good basketball teams.

The C7 has bad teams. They don't have Houston, East Carolina or SMU. So they don't have really bad teams.

 

[Pudge]

Houston & Memphis has had more success over multiple eras that SHU or PC. That's not debateable.

My question ... which we saw in BE football & basketball since 2003 ... Is who has the resources to step it up. Spend $1.5m+ for the coach. $20m for thePractice facility. Major arena upgrades?

A little research: our friends at USF actually had hoop/pigskin coaches with over $4m in Salary. SMU is now spending. UCF pays O'Leary Big $$$. Memphis pays young guys Big. We wouldn't find that at PC or SHU. I bet St. Johns & DePaul lag. Creighton too. That's the future. You don't want A-10 mentality. (actually Dunphy is great at Temple but gets paid miserly). IMHO - will any of these schools aspire to great Hoop? I don't see that from some of the C-7.

 

[UCFBfan]

Houston & Memphis has had more success over multiple eras that SHU or PC. That's not debateable.

My question ... which we saw in BE football & basketball since 2003 ... Is who has the resources to step it up. Spend $1.5m+ for the coach. $20m for thePractice facility. Major arena upgrades?

A little research: our friends at USF actually had hoop/pigskin coaches with over $4m in Salary. SMU is now spending. UCF pays O'Leary Big $. Memphis pays young guys Big. We wouldn't find that at PC or SHU. I bet St. Johns & DePaul lag. Creighton too. That's the future. You don't want A-10 mentality. (actually Dunphy is great at Temple but gets paid miserly). IMHO - will any of these schools aspire to great Hoop? I don't see that from some of the C-7.

WHile I agree that the NBE programs can get better, who are they aspiring to get better for (I'm thinking bball now)? After 2003 you had Cincy, DePaul, Marquette, Louisville, and USF trying to keep up with the Syracuse, UConn, Georgetown, Villanova, Pitt's of the Big East. Now it's just UConn and Cincy. There won't be that magical BE Tourny or a big TV deal. It's easy to say that the 2003 additions, minus DePaul and some extent USF, showed that you can improve but they had a reason to get better. They needed to in order to strive for excellence. In the NBE how much will really be needed to get better? What will be the drive or motivation? There is no more Syracuse, Pitt, Louisville, G-Town, etc....Houston and company have already been in a league with all the NBE teams minus Temple, UConn, Cincy, and USF. They haven't done anything to improve up to now. Why start all of a sudden?

I am a firm believer that the C7 is not the way to go, unless the FB program can get in with the MWC or something like that, but I'm not going to be blind to the fact that this conference is built for football and the basketball side is not going to be anything special. It's this knowledge that is driving a lot for people to say stupid things like we should go Indy in football.

 

[whaler11]

The C7 has been getting paid pennies. So of course they aren't paying the coaches. If they get to 4-5 million shockingly the dollars available for the coaches will increase.

The worst team in the C7 is still better than 60% of the new Big East.

While the Big East dicks around with UMass and Tulsa - the C7 gets to pick the cream of the mid major crop.

The C7 won't have a UConn. They might not even have a Cincinnati. They will have a bunch of schools that only care about basketball and they will have the dollars to pay coaches who want to rule their roost. They won't have Tulane or East Carolina who on their best days can't even do a DePaul impression.

 

[Pudge]

That's horsecrap.

PC & Seton Hall just aren't at an elite level. Or DePaul. I can see adding Butler & Dayton & Xavier raising a solid competitive level. But I agree with the sentiment that the Louisville, Pitt, UConn, SU level drove the level of excellence. I think your talking about a new dynamic. We will see.

If UConn beats ECU by 50, they best learn how to play. My prediction is we have 4 solid BB schools; the competition will push 2 others forward. I will miss the Bigtime BE. And so will the C7.

 

[metsfan2323]

.Houston and company have already been in a league with all the NBE teams minus Temple, UConn, Cincy, and USF. They haven't done anything to improve up to now. Why start all of a sudden?

Geez, UCONN didn't do anything to get better in basketball until it hired Jim Calhoun in 1986, why did they start then? Everybody has their eye on joining the ACC that provides motivation to improve. SMU laid out big bucks to bring in Larry Brown, clearly that is a signal they are trying to improve their basketball profile. Do you think it is a coincidence that Houston had their best basketball recruiting class in years (Ranked in top 25) last year after they announced they were joining the Big East? The Big East name provides a halo effect for basketball programs, ECU, Tulane, UCF, Houston, SMU, Memphis all see this as a great opportunity to improve their basketball fortunes. I'm convinced Houston turned down the MWC because they want to return to their glory years in basketball and they see The Big East as the best path back.

Butler getting to the finals two years in a row makes every school feel like they can get there too.

 

[Waquoit]

Perhaps we should throw in with the C7. Just this week you have the Seau lawsuit and a devestating article in Rolling Stone.
Will there be college football in 20 years? There will always be pro football, like there will always be boxing as long as there is money to be made. But HS and college? I think there is a real doubt.

 

[HuskyHawk]

It is not going to be a terrific basketball conference. it is going to be the A-10. It just is. No basketball only conference has managed to be "terrific." It can't. It can have a few very good teams, but the Providences and Seton Halls and St Johnses of the world simply lack the infrastructure and the financial capabilities to truly compete at a national level against leagues like the ACC, SEC, Big 10 and so forth. It just doesn't work. Of the C-7 maybe 2 can manage it, and it takes a significant and concentrated effort. Georgetown is a very different place than the others so they can more or less compete on a regular basis. Marquette, Xavier, and those other Jesuit schools can sort of hang around the edges. But the rest simply don't have any chance to do it on any kind of consistent basis. Their goal is to be respectable, nothing more.

The original Big East was terrific.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Perhaps we should throw in with the C7. Just this week you have the Seau lawsuit and a devestating article in Rolling Stone.
Will there be college football in 20 years? There will always be pro football, like there will always be boxing as long as there is money to be made. But HS and college? I think there is a real doubt.

What I think will happen as parents come to grips with this, is a virtual end to pee wee/midget football. Football with pads really shouldn't be played until 8th-9th grade at the soonest. Increasingly, high school football will come under scrutiny, and parents will direct their kids to other sports. On the whole, I think the talent level will shrink. Baseball and probably soccer will attract more kids. Lax and rugby too.

 

[CL82]

Ironically, less head protection may be the solution. You put on the pads and the helmet and you feel invincible. My understanding is there are far fewer concussions in rugby. Why, well my guess is that people keep their unprotected heads out of the way. I wouldn't suggest less protection, but I wonder about softer helmets. Yeah you'd feel hits more and you'd likely get more external bruising but that's not what causes concussions. It is the sudden decelleration from going full speed to dead stop.

Another part of the solution is proper tackling techinique. Instead of hurling yourself at a player hoping to knock him down or out of bounds, just wrap him up and bring him down. You still make the play (more effectively in my opinion) and you aren't slamming your brain around your skull.

I've seen some articles talking about these points, but they don't get much mainstream discussion.

 

[ZooCougar]

Does the C7 even want us? Didn't they leave to get away from football programs like us, that were destabilizing the conference?

If they let us in, then that means that Tulane and Company were the real reason they wanted to leave.

 

[freescooter]

The original Big East was terrific.

Very different era. Nobody has been capable of replicating that since the Big East did it. And the C-7 plus a couple won't either.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Very different era. Nobody has been capable of replicating that since the Big East did it. And the C-7 plus a couple won't either.

I guess I disagree. Butler went to two title games. Gonzaga has been as good as just about any major conference team for quite some time. Xavier has had excellent teams and in the last five years had an elite 8 and three sweet 16 teams. Butler, Dayton and Xavier, plus the 7, plus UConn and Cinci, would be probably the second best basketball league to the ACC. If you add Creighton and SLU as well, it gets even better. I think Butler, Xavier, GTown and Marquette are all better than any team in the proposed NNNBE (excluding UConn and Cinci, since they would be in whatever league they join). So the level of basketball would not even be comparable.

That said, there is no way we can go independent for football, and Blauds never suggested it. The concept that was floated was Cinci and UConn football to the MWC, and the rest to the C7. That does yield a great result for UConn and Cinci, but I doubt that the MWC would go for it.

 

[upstater]

The original Big East was terrific.

The BE was just fine after it added Louisville and Cincy. One could argue it improved.

I guess I disagree. Butler went to two title games. Gonzaga has been as good as just about any major conference team for quite some time. Xavier has had excellent teams and in the last five years had an elite 8 and three sweet 16 teams. Butler, Dayton and Xavier, plus the 7, plus UConn and Cinci, would be probably the second best basketball league to the ACC. If you add Creighton and SLU as well, it gets even better. I think Butler, Xavier, GTown and Marquette are all better than any team in the proposed NNNBE (excluding UConn and Cinci, since they would be in whatever league they join). So the level of basketball would not even be comparable.

That said, there is no way we can go independent for football, and Blauds never suggested it. The concept that was floated was Cinci and UConn football to the MWC, and the rest to the C7. That does yield a great result for UConn and Cinci, but I doubt that the MWC would go for it.

memphis chopped liver?

 

[freescooter]

What I think will happen as parents come to grips with this, is a virtual end to pee wee/midget football. Football with pads really shouldn't be played until 8th-9th grade at the soonest. Increasingly, high school football will come under scrutiny, and parents will direct their kids to other sports. On the whole, I think the talent level will shrink. Baseball and probably soccer will attract more kids. Lax and rugby too.

There is way more information on concussions now than even 5 years ago. And sports rules haven't really caught up. Heading the ball really ought to be outlawed in soccer at least until high school...you could make an argument that it ought to be outlawed for girls even at the high school level, for example. As should taking a charge in girls basketball. That play alone accounts for a huge proportion of concussions among high school girls, who are 5-6 times as likely to get concussions as high school boy basketball players. the numbers are similar in soccer for what its worth. As for switching to lacrosse, boys lacrosse ranks only behind football in the rate of concussions reported so I'm not sure that is a real solution. Of course nothing is completely safe. A friend's daughter got clobbered with a tuba in band practice and ended up with, you guessed it, a concussion.

 

[CL82]

. A friend's daughter got clobbered with a tuba in band practice and ended up with, you guessed it, a concussion.

I felt badly about liking this, but it was funny.

 

[businesslawyer]

[quote="CL82, post: 478876, member: 44" My understanding is there are far fewer concussions in rugby. Why, well my guess is that people keep their unprotected heads out of the way.[/quote]

You have fewer concussions in Rugby because the players aren't running as fast. Football is sprint full speed, rest, sprint, rest, sprin. In Rugby, there is much more constancy of movement, but because of that at much lower speeds of collision.

I think it would be a leap to read more into the difference than that.

 

[upstater]

[quote="CL82, post: 478876, member: 44" My understanding is there are far fewer concussions in rugby. Why, well my guess is that people keep their unprotected heads out of the way.

You have fewer concussions in Rugby because the players aren't running as fast. Football is sprint full speed, rest, sprint, rest, sprin. In Rugby, there is much more constancy of movement, but because of that at much lower speeds of collision.

I think it would be a leap to read more into the difference than that.[/quote]

Entirely different tackling techniques. You're literally taught to tackle the opposite way of football. You put your head to the outside of the body (i.e. you try to land on top of the ball carrier instead of trying to take him down). It's much more important that you stop him and try to come up right away and even stay upright rather than go down with him. Plus, as you say, movement is constant, which means the ball is already out and there's no point to hammering your guy when he doesn't even have the ball. By the time the defense catches up with the guy with the ball running just as fast as NFL'ers do, he's far away from the pack and the big guys. He's got another small fast guy on him. So you rarely get fast guy getting hit by big guy.

I do think though that having a helmet makes a difference. If rubgy players had hard helmets, you would probably see more concussions because those helmets would be used as weapons.

If any of you have seen Jonah Lomu play, you'd see some huge collisions with a big fast guy.

 

[freescooter]

I felt badly about liking this, but it was funny.

I know what you mean...I had the same reaction when I heard about it. And on a related note, I was telling this story to my daughter and she mentioned that her roommate was in the flag corp in high school and got a concussion from being whacked by a flag...then got whacked a second time when she returned and had a second concussion...

 

[CL82]

I know what you mean...I had the same reaction when I heard about it. And on a related note, I was telling this story to my daughter and she mentioned that her roommate was in the flag corp in high school and got a concussion from being whacked by a flag...then got whacked a second time when she returned and had a second concussion...

... and yet I laughed at that as well.

 

[freescooter]

... and yet I laughed at that as well.

You're a sick bastard I guess...

 

[CL82]

You have fewer concussions in Rugby because the players aren't running as fast. Football is sprint full speed, rest, sprint, rest, sprin. In Rugby, there is much more constancy of movement, but because of that at much lower speeds of collision.

I think it would be a leap to read more into the difference than that.

Entirely different tackling techniques. You're literally taught to tackle the opposite way of football. You put your head to the outside of the body (i.e. you try to land on top of the ball carrier instead of trying to take him down). It's much more important that you stop him and try to come up right away and even stay upright rather than go down with him. Plus, as you say, movement is constant, which means the ball is already out and there's no point to hammering your guy when he doesn't even have the ball. By the time the defense catches up with the guy with the ball running just as fast as NFL'ers do, he's far away from the pack and the big guys. He's got another small fast guy on him. So you rarely get fast guy getting hit by big guy.

I do think though that having a helmet makes a difference. If rubgy players had hard helmets, you would probably see more concussions because those helmets would be used as weapons.

Like I said, I read a few articles suggesting that helmets may be encouraging concussion the NFL. I'm not sure how you could test it, since the change might be putting people at greater risk. It does make sense to me though, that the sense of being armored contributes to the contact level. You don't see those kind of hits in backyard games - not a fair comparison, I know.

A big part of what makes football so compelling is the incredible athleticism of the players. Huge people are moving fast and are stopped on a dime. That's a lot of momentum for the brain cavity to absorb. We just aren't made to do it. In any event changes are going to happen to the game. The trick will be making the game safer, without gutting it.

 

[DW4UCONN]

Big wins for Nova and Gtown today. Nova fans storm the court after team's second win over a top 5 team in the same week. Awesome.

 

[B1GEast]

Big wins for Nova and Gtown today. Nova fans storm the court after team's second win over a top 5 team in the same week. Awesome.

Sorry DW, just don't care what happens with BE bball, unless it involves uconn, this league is the walking dead.

 

[noeynox]

Big wins for Nova and Gtown today. Nova fans storm the court after team's second win over a top 5 team in the same week. Awesome.

Well, whoop dee damn do! Nova wins, lets disband football and join the C7, cause Nova won some nice regular season games. I'm sold!