If I had my druthers, we'd be 1-AA and not flushing tax payer money down the tube chasing a bunch of fake crap so alumni dorks have an excuse to have more bbq's.
The fact that anyone finds this so difficult to comprehend is beyond me. Conference realignment didn't happen because of basketball or any other sport. It happened because of football. The Big East didn't break up over hoops - it broke up because of football. And the dipsh-- administration was stupid to get into the football game to begin with where there's barely even a market for it, no sustained football culture, etc. They were double stupid for dragging their feet on realignment. The whole thing is a bungled, idiotic mess. Even when they backed their way into a freaking BCS Bowl - they figured out a way to *lose* $1.8 million on it. You still can't even half fill the stadium papering it, the team still sucks and it's the *actual* reason that the basketball team has been iced out of top level conferences. It's the *actual* reason they were left out in the cold. It's the *actual* reason the new Big East didn't want us.
As for how we'd have done this year in that conference there's no way to know. No way to know the degree to which the NBE would have helped this program. Might have been able to draw some better recruits. Might not have lost out on guys like Hamadou. Might not have lost out on Diamond Stone. The impact from probation might not have been felt as acutely. Who knows. But saying the New Big East isn't a better spot for the hoops program to be in - from strictly a *hoops perspective* is crackers.
To me - chasing the power-5 football stuff is a pipe dream. It's not happening. I'm not even sure - given cratering youth football participation, ESPN's continued instability, football in general beginning to suffer from over-saturation... that's it's even worthwhile to pursue on any level. There's *no* correlation between football success and university prestige. But pursuing it we are and that's why we're at. It's because of football. Whether people think that's good or not - that's up to them. But I don't. And haven't, ever. And in this pursuit and trying to sustain things at this rate - there will be some high level casualties - and the worst might be the basketball program. And it's already bleeding. Not dead, far from it, but it's taken some serious licks.
