New Big East Deal Could Be Worth As Little As $60 Million A Year

[Pudge]

I have been looking at this on a "Valuation" basis ... using Aresco's terms.

I believed that Louisville & Rutgers BOTH were better Values than us. I'd love to think our excellence in Hoop gains something; it hasn't. Further, though, BYU is probably the clear most Valuable NON-Big 4 Asset. Market, Q Rating, Eyeballs. UCF is not quite that far from USF. And, Boise is really a wonderful story. Add San Diego State with a HUGE future.

So ... in OUR unwashed toy box, it is not just us & Cincy. (and in the IN list are a whole lot of Syracuse/BC/Wake/Vandy/Mississippi State that fell into it) That's 7. Sucks to be there; but, that's where we are.

Then layer this thought into it (after the Election we just went through), where are you going to bet on the future of the Sport & Eyeballs as the demographics change? These are 10+ year Contracts; but, I think there is too much leakage of good product outside the Big 4 conferences. Anomalies.

 

[Dann]

Temple fits the list of teams that were in an AQ conference the last half decade? Thanks for the history lesson though - I was unaware of who has been in the Big East over the years.

USF will never be in the ACC unless FSU leaves? Guess what neither will UConn.

fsu or miami would block another fl team. that was what i was getting at. if uva went to the b10 2moro the acc would need another team. i would think uconn and cincy would be top of that list for example....not that it matters cause were going big10....

 

[whaler11]

I don't get why a few posters here think San Diego State is so promising. Nothing in the sporting history of the city of San Diego leads you to believe they will ever matter even locally.

 

[whaler11]

fsu or miami would block another fl team. that was what i was getting at. if uva went to the b10 2moro the acc would need another team. i would think uconn and cincy would be top of that list for example....not that it matters cause were going big10....

Right we turned those assholes down twice - cant wait to tell them three strikes you are out. I'm aware why USF won't be invited to the ACC. They also blocked UConn - so really USF and UConn are in the same boat.

 

[zls44]

zls ... where --- did you get the impression that I was near perfect? Refuted regularly. You'll grow some humility as you get older too.

I was just thinking ... the Syracuse folks hated the re-constituted league in 2004. I think UConn fans would have been thrilled if we stayed in that construct for the next 30 years. That's part of this ... isn't it? You simply cannot keep anything set for more than a nanosecond.

Tulane & ECU are thrilled; others are nauseated. My response to whaler ... you simply cannot go through life ALWAYS grabbing the negative. I simply won't accept the notion that never upgrading out of the Yankee Conference wasn't the right move. We are just going to have to do what Susan says: we win & we keep winning (NCs would be nice); we will get noticed.

With all due respect: it's...tough not...to...get...the impression that...you think...everything...YOU say...is perfect...from THE STYLE...with which...you convey...YOUR points...

 

[Pudge]

You're just a little . You'll grow up to your own self-involved image someday. I could give a darn why you think you can give stylistic points.

 

[Pudge]

I don't get why a few posters here think San Diego State is so promising. Nothing in the sporting history of the city of San Diego leads you to believe they will ever matter even locally.

Have you watched that campus grow?

Seriously. This ain't just about sports. If a school is a little piddly commuter type school & grows into a massive Institutionally significant campus; you should pay attention. Somethings are just pure inertia. They are going to be relevant because, damn it, they have the size/scale/balls to do it.

I don't think Steve Fischer is that great a coach; nor have they really rang the bell in football. Sometimes, though, you can't ignore when things are just done extraordinarily well.

 

[Fishy]

I don't get why a few posters here think San Diego State is so promising. Nothing in the sporting history of the city of San Diego leads you to believe they will ever matter even locally.

It's become a hobby here - we grab the fifth or sixth best program in a given state and then set about polishing that turd.

Sit tight for next week's installment, "East Carolina, the Sleeping Giant of Pitt County".

 

[ZooCougar]

It's become a hobby here - we grab the fifth or sixth best program in a given state and then set about polishing that turd.

Sit tight for next week's installment, "East Carolina, the Sleeping Giant of Pitt County".

I dont disagree, I think ECU may actually carry its own weight, but the Big East is just looking for warm bodies.

I think it's time UConn, Cincy and USF wake up and smell the coffee. Our investments are at grave risk at this point.

I would hire an exploratory consultant to develop a provisional conference framework, that actually makes sense geographically. Maybe a new football conference is the best path for everyone.

UConn, USF, Cincy, ECU, Temple, UCF, UMass and then gerrymander two more schools based on what is most important.

We might make more money staying in the Big East for Basketball, or if this is going to be all sports, then you cowboy up, bite the bullet and take Memphis. Yuck.

Then you talk to Navy, doubt they would go for it though. But you never know.

The Big East can't add much more quality, we've gone well past he point of diminishing returns, and we're dividing the pie way too much. It might be time to dump this framework.

 

[Pudge]

Frankly, this reminds me of a Shopping Mall convention I attended about 5 years ago in Vegas.

Everyone thought that, IF you had the best mall in the region, that you were golden. I think the future for Malls/Shopping is going to tell you something completely different. Big massive malls are getting ripped to shreds in some DMAs because alternatives are eating their lunch.

You simply cannot tell me that a UCF/USF with 50-60,000 students & massive Institutional growth/development is not going to be something when they grow up. And, then tell me that BC in that little bandbox is always going to be a player. In our years since 2003, we have watched several of our Programs grow tremendously in stature. Rutgers? Look how far those twerps have gone. What seems to bug the majority poster here is Tulane & Memphis types. I can't explain that at all. But, I did love the Pension Fund king who basically told Billionaire Mall Owners that they were lucky to get into the business when they did; but, they better watch their ass.

 

[ZooCougar]

I think that UCF may be more valuable than USF over the long haul. I think they may already have a bigger revenue figure.

But at this point, I think the Big East is a shopping mall that is on life support. Banana Republic and Victoria's Secret moved out to the outdoor shopping district in a gentrified area of downtown. Barnes and Noble is closing down and moving next to the other shopping area next to the new MLS stadium and NASCAR track, but DON'T WORRY, Books A Million is probably coming to take it's place!

 

[whaler11]

Have you watched that campus grow?

Seriously. This ain't just about sports. If a school is a little piddly commuter type school & grows into a massive Institutionally significant campus; you should pay attention. Somethings are just pure inertia. They are going to be relevant because, damn it, they have the size/scale/balls to do it.

I don't think Steve Fischer is that great a coach; nor have they really rang the bell in football. Sometimes, though, you can't ignore when things are just done extraordinarily well.

And people have said the same thing about USF. Tens of thousands of students. Hundreds of thousands of local alumni. True attendance for the last game of season - 17,000.

Kids that go to schools like USF or San Diego State don't become lifelong fans of the program. It's no different than walking through a dorm at Central when the Blue Devils are at home and more kids are watching UConn on TV than at Detrick.

As the TV paydays drift further away for the haves than the have nots - the have nots are going to find it even tougher to compete and grow even less relevant. No one paid attention to San Diego State when they were playing schools that made geographic sense - I don't think some people are grasping just how unattractive these random cross-country games are. With the loss of Rutgers and Louisville this league does not have a single interesting rivalry.

What's the best rivalry - SMU/Houston? Navy/SMU? UCF/USF? Seriously when your best rivalries are the 6th and 7th best programs in Texas or the 3rd and 4th best programs in Florida you've got nothing.

Yes if you DREAM BIG and look at each of these schools in a vacuum you can argue about their upside. Lump them together and there is no catalyst to make them relevant. Nothing short of Pac 12 membership is going to make SDSU matter to anyone but a tiny fraction of people locally.

 

[zls44]

Have you watched that campus grow?

Seriously. This ain't just about sports. If a school is a little piddly commuter type school & grows into a massive Institutionally significant campus; you should pay attention. Somethings are just pure inertia. They are going to be relevant because, damn it, they have the size/scale/balls to do it.

I don't think Steve Fischer is that great a coach; nor have they really rang the bell in football. Sometimes, though, you can't ignore when things are just done extraordinarily well.

Well, I've spent time there, and have several friends who live within a few hundred yards of the campus, and all of us will agree that the SDSU market idea is a fallacy.

You old little .

 

[HuskyHawk]

Don't be an . It was working, and would have worked, had Delaney not torpedoed, both the ACC and the Big East.

On that I disagree. Once WVU, Pitt and Syracuse left there was no possibility of salvaging the league. No league with a coast to coast reach can or will survive. It was never going to work. It won't work.

We survived losing BC, Miami and VT by adding UL, Cinci and USF (and UConn). That wasn't a wash, but it wasn't devastating, mostly because Louisville got Pitino and Cinci built a good football program. But they compounded the mistakes by adding Marquette and DePaul. While Marquette has been good, we needed to prepare to split the FB and BB only schools. Any adds had to be for all sports. Adding TCU and maybe Tulsa or CFU, much earlier would have helped stability.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

One of the frustrating things about this board is that two of the most frequent posters are not just negative, but are openly rooting for UConn to fail.

 

[whaler11]

One of the frustrating things about this board is that two of the most frequent posters are not just negative, but are openly rooting for UConn to fail.

I'd say something a bit more frustrating is there are posters with the reading comprehension skills of a four year old who constantly intentionally misrepresent the opinions of others.

Here is a good example: Noting that San Diego State is never going to be a major player in college sports is not rooting for UConn to fail. It's really just pointing out what is obvious to anyone who isn't attempting to delude themselves into thinking UConn's situation isn't 5 levels beyond dire.

I guess when you are bashing the AD nonstop that isn't being negative - but when other schools are bashed that upsets you - as always you make perfect sense.

 

[Marty Jackson]

The Big East seems to be trying to be a poor man's B1G. They figure if they grab as many TV markets as they can the money will follow. The problem is nobody wants to watch Tulane/SDSU regardless of TV market. How can you expect a network to pay for this collection when there's always the underlying fact that at any time your only few valuable teams will be continually filing out the door?

Not now MattP, but in 2040 . think long term...

 

[junglehusky]

You simply cannot tell me that a UCF/USF with 50-60,000 students & massive Institutional growth/development is not going to be something when they grow up. And, then tell me that BC in that little bandbox is always going to be a player. In our years since 2003, we have watched several of our Programs grow tremendously in stature. Rutgers? Look how far those twerps have gone. What seems to bug the majority poster here is Tulane & Memphis types. I can't explain that at all. But, I did love the Pension Fund king who basically told Billionaire Mall Owners that they were lucky to get into the business when they did; but, they better watch their ass.

UConn has grown by leaps and bounds from where it was. But there's no guarantee that UConn or any school will "grow up" to full matuity (somewhere in the neighborhood of B1G per-school revenue). If you compare UConn and Louisville and as why they got the ACC's rose and we didn't there are two reasons - 1) they had Tom Jurich and we had Jeff Hathaway 2) look in the mirror - our fanbase issues are well-documented. There were a couple good years at the Rent, loud sellouts on ESPN, but the product needs to step up.

Here I agree with zls - thanks to Hathaway we really missed out on building a big time donor base specifically for football, at a time when we could have been investing in a stadium expansion and upgrading the football product. Like zls I admit in hindsight that would have been the right path. This is the main reason why we're not in a major conference whether that be the ACC or B1G (and let's be honest - we're probably going to wind up in the ACC despite any fan's personal feelings about that conference).

Getting back to the "growing up" question - you can look at historical trends, demographics, etc. But when it comes to football you can't project those out to the future because those institutions are not operating in a vacuum, they are operating in a competitive environment. Aresco is trying to sell a product that nobody wants and is getting less and less marketable, and you're pretending it's getting more and more marketable. If we were in a "buy and hold" position where we could hang on for 10 more years and wait for the value of the league to go up, that would be fine. We aren't. We need the payday now (admittedly, not as badly as Rutgers and Maryland need it). UConn just can't afford to wait 5 years for UCF and Tulane to become household names.

If the ACC is an old mall that's about to lose revenue because the trends are changing, the Big East is the strip mall filled with junk food and massage parlors. But no "happy endings".

 

[HuskyHawk]

And people have said the same thing about USF. Tens of thousands of students. Hundreds of thousands of local alumni. True attendance for the last game of season - 17,000.

Kids that go to schools like USF or San Diego State don't become lifelong fans of the program. It's no different than walking through a dorm at Central when the Blue Devils are at home and more kids are watching UConn on TV than at Detrick.

This is exactly the way it is. I spent time in San Jose, and have several friends who went to SJSU and Santa Clara. All of them are either Cal or Stanford fans, although the Santa Clara folks are pretty loyal Santa Clara fans for basketball. It's the same in Florida, and Ohio, and Missouri, and everywhere really.

People in the northeast don't always grasp this because our oldest and best institutions are all smaller private schools. The SUNY's don't even participate on a major level. So we argue about what schools from outside the state bring in the NYC audience. UMass has almost no reach in Boston. BC does have some, but it is nothing like the reach U Illinois has in Chicago (despite the presence of Northwestern). In almost all the states outside the northeast, most of the state pulls for the state U, or one of the two if there are two major ones. UConn is lucky, at least in basketball, men's and women's it has achieved that level of support...and no other northeastern public university, not Rutgers, can make that claim (unless you count PSU as northeast). There are tons of folks on this board who didn't go to UConn. Do you think anybody on the USF board isn't either student or alumni? Hell, most of their alumni probably go to and watch UF and FSU games first. Cinci is really no more popular statewide than Kent State, or Ohio, or whatever other MAC school.

To me that is why UConn is on a different level than every single remaining and proposed Big East school. And that's why I am so dissapointed.

 

[mavblues]

One of the frustrating things about this board is that two of the most frequent posters are not just negative, but are openly rooting for UConn to fail.

Oh, there are way more than two on this board...

But that's a topic for my "these people can suck it" ™ thread once this all shakes out.

 

[Marty Jackson]

This is exactly the way it is. I spent time in San Jose, and have several friends who went to SJSU and Santa Clara. All of them are either Cal or Stanford fans, although the Santa Clara folks are pretty loyal Santa Clara fans for basketball. It's the same in Florida, and Ohio, and Missouri, and everywhere really.

People in the northeast don't always grasp this because our oldest and best institutions are all smaller private schools. The SUNY's don't even participate on a major level. So we argue about what schools from outside the state bring in the NYC audience. UMass has almost no reach in Boston. BC does have some, but it is nothing like the reach U Illinois has in Chicago (despite the presence of Northwestern). In almost all the states outside the northeast, most of the state pulls for the state U, or one of the two if there are two major ones. UConn is lucky, at least in basketball, men's and women's it has achieved that level of support...and no other northeastern public university, not Rutgers, can make that claim (unless you count PSU as northeast). There are tons of folks on this board who didn't go to UConn. Do you think anybody on the USF board isn't either student or alumni? Hell, most of their alumni probably go to and watch UF and FSU games first. Cinci is really no more popular statewide than Kent State, or Ohio, or whatever other MAC school.

To me that is why UConn is on a different level than every single remaining and proposed Big East school. And that's why I am so dissapointed.

I would say that Umass would have a reach into Boston if they had something for their alumni to cheer about.
Being around boston during the Camby years showed how many Umass alums live in the eastern part of the state. Umass was the talk of the town. the majority of people finally had a chance to root for their school instead of having BC pushed down their throat.

But you can't sustain a healthy fan base with a once in a generation push at the national level.

What's very frustrating is that people outside the state, with little ties to Uconn want to turn the school into Central CT. Where Uconn students watch Ohio State play BC in their dorms while Uconn plays Tulane at Gampel. Where kids in CT grow up watching 'big boy' basketball on TV and thinking that Uconn is never going to be on that level. That's the future of Uconn if they don't get out of the Big East.

 

[UConnDan97]

It's become a hobby here - we grab the fifth or sixth best program in a given state and then set about polishing that turd.

Sit tight for next week's installment, "East Carolina, the Sleeping Giant of Pitt County".

2012 SDSU: 9-3, receiving votes in both the AP and Coaches' Polls. Co-champs of the MW along with Boise and Fresno.
2011 SDSU: 8-5, went to a bowl
2010 SDSU: 9-4, went to a bowl

When analyzing all the acquisitions that we've made for the Big East in the past year or so, I'll take this promising "shiny turd" any day of the week...

(For those of you that haven't figured it out yet, SDSU isn't the problem...Memphis and Tulane are the problems...)

 

[nelsonmuntz]

This is exactly the way it is. I spent time in San Jose, and have several friends who went to SJSU and Santa Clara. All of them are either Cal or Stanford fans, although the Santa Clara folks are pretty loyal Santa Clara fans for basketball. It's the same in Florida, and Ohio, and Missouri, and everywhere really.

People in the northeast don't always grasp this because our oldest and best institutions are all smaller private schools. The SUNY's don't even participate on a major level. So we argue about what schools from outside the state bring in the NYC audience. UMass has almost no reach in Boston. BC does have some, but it is nothing like the reach U Illinois has in Chicago (despite the presence of Northwestern). In almost all the states outside the northeast, most of the state pulls for the state U, or one of the two if there are two major ones. UConn is lucky, at least in basketball, men's and women's it has achieved that level of support...and no other northeastern public university, not Rutgers, can make that claim (unless you count PSU as northeast). There are tons of folks on this board who didn't go to UConn. Do you think anybody on the USF board isn't either student or alumni? Hell, most of their alumni probably go to and watch UF and FSU games first. Cinci is really no more popular statewide than Kent State, or Ohio, or whatever other MAC school.

To me that is why UConn is on a different level than every single remaining and proposed Big East school. And that's why I am so dissapointed.

This is true until it isn't. San Jose State can and should be a mid-major powerhouse. It is located in one of the most important areas of the country economically, culturally and technologically. While Stanford is about 20 miles away and Cal is not that much further, that is a huge region of the country and Stanford and Cal's distinctive cultures don't exactly appeal to a very broad population, as evidenced by the dismal attendance at the UCLA/Stanford Pac 12 title game.

I agree with your points about state schools. This is the argument I always make about UMass. If UMass was brought into any semi-credible conference, its appeal in Massachusetts would dwarf that of BCU.

 

[UConnDan97]

One of the frustrating things about this board is that two of the most frequent posters are not just negative, but are openly rooting for UConn to fail.

This has been my problem lately also. It is beyond frustrating when I have to defend UConn against "UConn fans". The negativity on this board reeks. What's worse is that those posters will not allow anyone to even imagine the prospect of a decent future, because if you do, they immediately go after your supposed lack of intelligence. Half the time, I feel like I'm trolling the BC board and just forgot that I typed in the wrong webpage...

 

[CL82]

You know, I'm not going to act like Pudge and say I'm perfect. I was in the "why expand the stadium when it isn't consistently selling out" camp until all this. Now? Nope. Expand the bastard to 55,000. Who's paying for it, is my main concern- but make no mistake, I am full-on the other way and in favor of expansion. Absolutely willing to admit I was wrong on that.

I may be on the other side of this flip. Until we have a new head coach and the program is generating some excitement it makes zero sense to expand. We'll see how season ticket sales are this coming year. I suspect it will be a blood bath.