Marinatto: Big East modeled a 19 and 24 team basketball conference, wants grantof media rights

[Rumrunner]

He said 19 basketball teams makes for easy scheduling.

Commissioner John Marinatto said the league plans to revive discussions about grant of rights when the conference becomes more stable.

"We've modeled it. If you have a 19-team basketball conference everybody plays each other once," he said. "We've actually done models for 24."

http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/ter...Expansion/id-ee98a27789014fb4a6e379172a26a576

Do the clowns in Providence ever learn?

 

[Mr.Phat]

38 teams makes for even better scheduling. You could have double-headers.

 

[gabect]

Marinatto said again that Pitt and Syracuse, who are contractually bound to the league for the next two seasons, will not be allowed out earlier.
"Absolutely not," he said. "We have no intentions of doing that. Period. Exclamation point. End of sentence."

Good news for us. Looking at Andy Katz's interview with Swofford they were so giddy about the options they may have to see Pitt/'Cuse earlier. That means ACC is going to have to go for the kill to get anything done before 2014.

 

[mcs333]

The ACC wants them earlier because they agreed to 9 primetime Sunday night ACC games starting this year with a pre game show. The only ACC draws are Duke and UNC. So ESPN needs better inventory.

 

[cheech63]

38 teams makes for even better scheduling. You could have double-headers.

day-night double-header would be the ultimate.

 

[TRest]

The ACC wants them earlier because they agreed to 9 primetime Sunday night ACC games starting this year with a pre game show. The only ACC draws are Duke and UNC. So ESPN needs better inventory.

The ACC can go piss up a rope. They do have New England's College Team®.

 

[freescooter]

This has been around for a while, really. Last summer someone from th eBigEast office made a comment that you can have 50 teams for basketball and it doesn't matter. The problem with the 19 or 24 team model is it perpetuates the same old problems. But in one sense, Marrinatto is correct. Conferences are really meaningless for high level mens basketball. what matters is RPI so if you can assemble a bunch of schools which play solid basketball such that everyone, regardless of where they finish "in conference" ends up with a relatively good RPI, you can get a bunch of teams into the Tourney and make some money. But really, whether you finish first or sixteenth is pretty much irrelevant because you'll be taken over the 2nd place MAAC team or the regular season NEC Champ every day of the week.