UCLA and USC travel to Rutgers and Penn State. Pitt, BC and Syracuse travel to Cal Stanford, SMU. UConn Baseball travells to Texas, California, Florida Ohio, Indiana. Basketball travelled to Washington State, Indiana, Wisconsin, Indiana , Nebraska. Just stop with the travel. Yes it sucks. But that is the price of playing major college sports these days.
I'll agree that there is a considerable difference in that the BE schools (save us) are in as good of a conference as they can hope for while the P-12 had lost its two best assets (USC, UCLA) and other assets were available to be plucked. My point however was that Kliavkoff didn't say anything for about a year as to what the media offer was as it was substantially less that what they had anticipated, we (the BE) may be in a similar situation and the lack of announcement is due to the offer being far less than expected.
Possible but I doubt it. The Big East is now one of only five major basketball conferences. It has the 2x reigning national champions and another top-10 brand in Villanova. Scarcity (6 —> 5 conferences) should help us a little.
This, I think is wishful thinking. The NEWBIE has exactly 2 brands that move the needle and one is struggling. Everybody else is the equivalent of Mount St Mary’s or Loyola Marymount in terms of national relevance. Actually Mout St Mary’s is probably better known than most. Can you imagine what this league is worth without UConn? Which is why Val keeps floating Gonzaga. Somebody needs to drive ratings. Especially if UConn moves on. FWIW, if your scarcity argument was worth anything, the PAC should still be with us. There are other substitutes that are equal to the NEWBIE minus UConn. Mountain West, WCC. Yeah they don’t do much for New York but honestly St John’s doesn’t either and it is St Who once you get much past Port Jefferson. It isn’t 1975 any more. Those leagues have good, not great teams who play competitive basketball much like the NEWBIE. The NEWBIE filled a role as the best non-power league in the east coast but with a larger Big 10, Big 12 and largerACC taking those time slots plus the SEC showing some signs of taking basketball seriously on a wider basis, the NEWBIE is at risk of becoming a space filler.
The Pac-12 dissolved because Oregon and Washington wanted to get into the Big Ten. If that doesn’t happen, the Pac-12 probably still exists with SDSU as a replacement for Colorado, and UConn is in the Big 12.
For what it's worth, after us, Creighton had the highest ratings of the season.
It helps that Creighton is good. Younger fans love to watch the ranked teams, as do a lot of gamblers.
What really helped is that Fox put those games in the late slot with a Big Ten lead in. They lost viewers from the early game, but enough people hung around for them to get good ratings.
this would have been a perfect opportunity to finally mention the all-important "Gonzaga to the Big East" strategy.
It definitely has something to do with Creighton being good though. It’s very easy to change the change after the Big Ten game, but average fans will stick around for a good matchup. The Big East has plenty of compelling games and good crowds. Most Big East games are great to watch.
I didn’t say BC and Wake are national brands. St Mary’s has been matched up against the eventual nation champ in consecutive years. They are what I said, a good, not great program that regularly makes the dance. The wac Hoyt 6 bids. NOOB got 3. St John’s is not a respected national brand. It is a “Didn’t you used to be somebody brand” same as Indiana and Cincinnati. Georgetown is now a laughing stock who’s rep was always bigger than its performance anyway. Only we old guys still think of them as Hoya Paranoia. There last really good team was 18 years ago. They had 3 winning seasons in the10 years of the NEWBIE. Won 20 games once.
The WAC had one bid. The MW had six.
reported
Basketbrawl refereed by the three blind mice, very enticing stuff.
Three too many as well
