Did you happen to notice that you are the only one defending an old agreement that doesn't work for the conference anymore?
All you do is rant and rave, and then put words in my mouth to argue with.
I'm not defending the agreement, I'm laughing at the people delusional enough to blame ND instead of looking in the mirror. None of your bitching and moaning about ND, or me, disproves the following.
1) Notre Dame adds value to the basketball contract, much more than programs like DePaul, USF, Rutgers, Providence, Seton Hall, and some others. The fact they are on TV 30 times, and more than a school like Villanova is evidence of that. That our games vs them were on CBS the past few years is more evidence, not less. If you think UConn was the only reason, and ND had nothing to do with it, explain why EACH of our games vs. USF, Depaul, Seton Hall, Rutgers, etc, etc, haven't been on CBS or espn/espn2 the past few years. Or explain why ND vs. Marquette is on CBS this year. I'm not saying UConn has nothing to do with it, I'm saying it's delusional to pretend ND has no impact either.
2) Notre Dame isn't to blame for our current situation, the lack of tradition, prestige, and large fanbases; combined with better options for some of the members are the reasons we're here now. ND said they wouldn't join, didn't join, and we brought them on anyway. Blaming them for our willingness to bend to their conditions is delusional.
3) Notre Dame isn't going to join for football because it's not in their best interest. If you want to pretend this isn't true because their president hasn't held a press conference announcing it, fine, pretend away, but know that you're wrong. If joining the Big East was in their best interest, they would have joined years ago. Asking them to join now that Pitt/Quse are leaving and they should be good christians (looking at you Geno), is akin to asking UConn to join the MAC to help legitimize UMass' upgrade because we should be good neighbors. Asking them to "join,
then look out for [their] best interest" is begging and pathetic, and I expect better from Geno.
4) Notre Dame provides stability for the basketball schools and they are not kicking them out. If the football schools split, they lose the best of the rest of the basketball programs except for Georgetown, Nova, and Notre Dame. If kicking Notre Dame out helped stabilize the conference, the basketball schools would agree to it. ND is the head of the expansion committee, do you really think that is an accident and the basketball schools don't want to stay associated with ND because they don't add any value?
If you're not going to disprove those points (and you can't) then anything else you post is a waste of your time.[/quote][/quote]