I just wanted to bring a few thoughts together in one place.
1. I really like the rumored expansion. If you bring in those six schools, you have maximized the value of the football conference with markets, national prestige and recent strength. Is it, to a large degree, making lemonaide out of lemons? Heck yes. But with Navy, Air Force and Boise for football only, and UCF, SMU and Houston for all sports, you now have a 12 team football conference that is light years ahead of any other non-BCS conference and, while without any traditional power schools, is not on a different plane than all BCS conferences not named the SEC and Big XII. The conference, in just five years, will have five members who played in BCS games and 3 who have BCS game victories. How does that compare to the ACC? The Pac Ten? Without any doubt, this would be a stronger conference on the field, and with more big markets, than what we have today. Is there a loss of prestige? Yes. Hoops? Yes. But not football on the field.
2. That having been said, this lineup, if we can pull it off, should get the Big East a TV contract in excess of what we're getting now and less than what the other 5 BCS conferences get. How close to them will we get? That will depend on how much some network other than Disney wants to be in the college sports business. But with a BCS berth, and the catholic schools markets, and still a major basketball league, this will be o.k.
3. Furthermore, look at what this does beyond rebuild. Now you're Swofford. You have twice tried to eliminate the Big East and, while you've probably reestablished yourself as the #1 hoops league, you still have a viable, BCS competitor in markets that overlap with yours more than ever with the additions of Navy and UCF to the Big East and the ACC's first real entry into the Northeast. The long term viability of a geographically rival conference, and a basketball competitor, has to, has to, hurt your long term value to ESPN. But, you can probably kill the Big East, once and for all, by pulling one more pick up stick from the pile and watching it collapse when the Catholics say we don't need you anymore and we are going to block expansion so take your football and go elsewhere.
4. We, ladies and gentlemen, are that pick-up-stick. EVen if adding us reduces the per team TV take a little (and it's hard to see how it would reduce it by much, as certainly we will provide material revenues), look what taking us accomplishes. It greatly increases basketball strength. It kills your geographic competitor in football, and for NYC markets in hoops, once and for all. It increases the chances that ND does come calling (whatever those chances are). And, it gets you off the hook with ESPN for whom you've solved a problem that one of your ADs created with its governmental partner. I don't know what the ACC will do. I don't know how much the southern tier is focused solely on football prestige. But this rebuild plan puts us in a position where our value to the ACC will almost certainly never be higher than it is at this moment.
So, for me, the rumored plan is a real win, win. If the Big East goes forward with it, we've done the best we can in a tough situation and I think it should be good enough to avoid real significant damage. If the ACC says no way, the way for it to block the rebuilding of the Big East is to offer us, which (despite speculation on this board) is what both the University President and the Governor have clearly stated they want. How much are we responsible for this, as opposed to it just being the concensus? Who knows.
I just hope that we have time to let this all sink in to Swofford's member institutions before we actually have to sign up for the increased exit penalty, but not so much time that the rumored expansion falls apart.
Real, real guts ball being played.
