Well I don't happen to feel that way. So your saying that if I don't agree with your POV then I am being disingenuous? Yes opinions can be exchanged without beating someone down. Im well aware of the past. Rehashing it is not going to change the present, and in your eyes Im guilty of not discussing past events which then in turn invalidates me as genuine. So I assume you are setting the guidelines for how things work or don't work here..in which case I have to call you crazy. My thoughts are U Conn for the p5, development of U Mass athletics, and the advancement of New England's three football playing members at the national level. There does not always have to be a right and a wrong. Cheers.
I'm O.K. with an Eagle that gets it. Unless B.C. is in a region that develops some worthwhile football competition it will become marginalized in the ACC. It already has been in many respects. Other than hockey, B.C. has been uniformly not competitive in sports. Unfortunately, the ACC doesn't have a hockey conference let alone care one iota about it.
The real and only issue for P-5 consideration is football --- it drives the financial bus of inter-collegiate sports. Let's face it the northeast is going to struggle against the south and the southwest for football notoriety as it is. We don't need to be divisive among ourselves, but let's be real about the current P-5 members from the northeast for a moment. Do you think that B.C. will ever consistently thrive in the ACC competing against FSU, Clemson, VT etc. in the long term, if it remains an isolated outpost of D-1 football in New England? What are the chances that B.C.'s position will be enhanced by the presence of Syracuse, Pitt, Rutgers in the northeast? You'll see that Syracuse brings good hoops to the ACC (they were second to UConn in the BE for years.) In football - not so much, heck the upstart Huskies beat them 5 straight years (2007-2011) by average score of 35-15! Pitt? A genuine national champion in football --- 37 years ago! And not much of anything since. Rutgers --- well, enough said!
The biggest problem the northeast D-1 schools are going to have in the future is maintaining relevance in the national conversation about football. BB will be fine and the ACC will be the best hoops conference in the country (until the B1G takes UConn), but I don't think hoops matters a lot. If it did, UConn would have been the first one poached from the old BE. It's football, football, football! Until the schools in the northeast, as a group, become more competitive then northeast football will languish. (I don't care what conference you're in.) For that purpose all D-1 schools from the northeast should support the development of region-wide competence in football. Only then will recruiting become easier and the schools will be more attractive to kids from the football rich south and southwest. The recruiting numbers don't lie. In all of New England, approx. 15,000,000 people, there were 21 D-1 scholarship kids. 10 from CT and MA each and 1 from RI. That's it! Add NY, PA, and NJ (population of approx. 41,000,000) you add 146 for a total of 167 D-1 players from the northeast (56,000,000 population base). Compare that to the numbers from TX, Fla, GA -=- 346, 332 and 184 respectively - total of 862 D-1 players from a population of roughly the same - 56,000,000.
You say enough with numbers. However, you can see that you have to convince kids from the south to come to school in the north to have any shot of developing northeast football at an elite level. The only way to do that is to have a thriving, competitive regional presence and an exciting brand of football. This will help create a national buzz about the sport in the northeast and that will attract athletes. Daunting task? You bet it is! But how the hell did Nebraska do it? A state that loves football, but works off a population base of 1,500,000 with only 5 D-1 recruits state-wide this year. It gets players from other football rich regions.
It will take awhile, but I think it can be done. The only question is whether the effete northeast fan base can embrace college football like it has been elsewhere. It did before --- this is where college football got its start.
