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Message: [QUOTE="sun, post: 4704508, member: 11664"] 1. Just because a conference is small or doesn't offer football doesn't mean that they don't want to increase their revenues to share among its members. The Big East offers some prestige which a member school can use to improve its recruitment to help upgrade its programs so that they can possibly be selected for March Madness to earn money. VCU's MBB has an RPI rank of #25. St, Louis MBB has an RPI rank of #55. 2. The Big East Conference will soon need to negotiate a new TV contract with Fox & every school is part of a media market that may influence TV contract negotiations. The more viewers a conference can attract the better. VCU is in the Richmond-Petersburg TV market which is ranked #56 in the US. The St. Louis TV market is ranked #23 in the US. 3. I'm not totally sure how it works but the NCAA does share its revenues with every NCAA conference which I believe is for all NCAA sponsored sports & not only BB. That would lead me to believe that the more schools & students & sports that a conference represents then the conference can potentially earn more revenue. The schools & conferences have expenses, and they have an interest in at least maintaining their revenues & growing them if possible. Just because the fans don't pay much attention to how college sports is funded doesn't mean that the smaller schools & conferences don't plan on how to survive financially. Even fan attendance can be a factor for some small schools. Revenue growth is better than revenue shrinkage & growth in the size of a conference could be better than it shrinking. Every situation is different & conference realignment seems to currently be a hot button issue. There's also rumors about conferences merging in the future just to survive since so many schools consider switching conferences & maybe even forming mega-conferences. Then the more value that a conference offers the better the chance for a future merger. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach