Val Ackerman on Big East Expansion: “Is 11 Teams Enough In This Environment?” | Page 2 | The Boneyard

Val Ackerman on Big East Expansion: “Is 11 Teams Enough In This Environment?”

True. UConn has regained respect the last couple of seasons. The BE not so much with the low amount of bids for the tournament which I viewed as not fair. It appears the power conferences are going to pull away. Unfortunately BE is not a power conference.
 
GoConn said:
We've won 2 national championships and get to play our conference tourney in the worlds most famous arena where its easy for fans to get to.

Yes, I want to join a power conference too especially to help out football program but the Big East has been a fine home for now.
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I love the Big East. It just doesn’t work for football and football is a must for survival.
 
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In many respects the NEWBIE is a mirror image of the WCC. Modest size. A power program and a couple of other good ones with a bunch of glorified mid-majors. The NEWBIE of course has DePaul. (If they had a game and the opponent didn’t show up would they still lose?). They only have 9 members vs 11. Or 10 if you don’t count DePaul as a real D1 program.
 
freescooter said:
In many respects the NEWBIE is a mirror image of the WCC. Modest size. A power program and a couple of other good ones with a bunch of glorified mid-majors. The NEWBIE of course has DePaul. (If they had a game and the opponent didn’t show up would they still lose?). They only have 9 members vs 11. Or 10 if you don’t count DePaul as a real D1 program.
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I'll never understand why you do this.
 
freescooter said:
In many respects the NEWBIE is a mirror image of the WCC. Modest size. A power program and a couple of other good ones with a bunch of glorified mid-majors. The NEWBIE of course has DePaul. (If they had a game and the opponent didn’t show up would they still lose?). They only have 9 members vs 11. Or 10 if you don’t count DePaul as a real D1 program.
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Fetch Mean Girls GIF
 
superjohn said:
I'll never understand why you do this.
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Considering how wrong it is. WCC is a 1-3 bid league with a heavy stretch on 3. NBE while it has its weak sisters is a much more potent league
 
superjohn said:
I'll never understand why you do this.
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I’m thinking a merger would be worth exploring. Somehow a sentence got left out. More or less a merger of equals. 20 teams. Mostly comparable. Mostly Catholic. We could shift One of Creighton, Marquette, Butler or DePaul to the western division. We might have to play the conference tourney in LA on occasion but would that be so bad? Or maybe Chicago. Again, not an awful option every now and then. In todays environment where leagues are national in scope it sort of makes sense as the best match. Certainly compared with just adding Gonzaga.
 
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Patman said:
Considering how wrong it is. WCC is a 1-3 bid league with a heavy stretch on 3. NBE while it has its weak sisters is a much more potent league
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The NEWBE is a 3-5 bid league with 2 more teams. It is marginally deeper.
 
Jetskies said:
wasn't this the same group of schools that kicked uconn louisville rutgers USF, and the like, all out to be their own thing? and now they wanna grow? that's rich.

Uconn let's get the hell out of the big east and pay what we gotta pay/do what we gotta do, to be where we ought to be. Big East is not it.
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Not at all what actually happened, and what makes it bizarre is that we ended up separate from the Catholics EXACTLY for the reason you want us to be separate now. Because we want to play big time football in addition to hoops and the Catholics don’t want their future intertwined with northeastern big time football.
 
freescooter said:
I’m thinking a merger would be worth exploring. Somehow a sentence got left out. More or less a merger of equals. 20 teams. Mostly comparable. Mostly Catholic. We could shift One of Creighton, Marquette, Butler or DePaul to the western division. We might have to play the conference tourney in LA on occasion but would that be so bad? Or maybe Chicago. Again, not an awful option every now and then. In todays environment where leagues are national in scope it sort of makes sense as the best match. Certainly compared with just adding Gonzaga.
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You don’t want to be associated with DePaul but you’re o.k. With the bottom half of the WCC? Sometimes your search for misery goes so unbelievably off the rails ….
 
I think playing each other member twice is perfect for hoops.
 
uconnbill said:
I don't trust Val and don't think she has UConn's best interest at heart.
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She doesn’t. She has the best interest of the conference at heart, as she should. No doubt, she values us as a member.

I can say that I love the Big East and would absolutely love to see it expand back into a viable football conference. I still see the possibility that it happens. Syracuse, BC, UConn, Wake, Duke etc could possibly find themselves in a situation where a reconstituted Big East makes sense. At the same time, the Catholics could see that without football, they will be relegated to a lower tier.

All of that said, I’m all in on the B12 if they come calling. Basketball will be great (I prefer the BE for basketball, but we can’t have it all) and football will immediately improve.
 
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freescooter said:
I’m thinking a merger would be worth exploring. Somehow a sentence got left out. More or less a merger of equals. 20 teams. Mostly comparable. Mostly Catholic. We could shift One of Creighton, Marquette, Butler or DePaul to the western division. We might have to play the conference tourney in LA on occasion but would that be so bad? Or maybe Chicago. Again, not an awful option every now and then. In todays environment where leagues are national in scope it sort of makes sense as the best match. Certainly compared with just adding Gonzaga.
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Yeah, let's play even more crappy teams even further away.
 
No worse than Georgetown and DePaul. Probably better than the Demons. St Mary’s is equal to most NEWBES. Probably Providence or St John’s ( oh yeah they are a final 4 team. I forgot. ). USF=Seton Hall, Santa Clara=Butler. People over rate the NEWBE teams because they remember what they used to be. If you were born in the last year St John’s got past the first weekend of the tournament , you’d be 25 now. 24 the last time Seton Hall did. 17 for Georgetown. 40 years dice Georgetown won its championship. These teams are only relevant because they are local.
 
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Patman said:
Considering how wrong it is. WCC is a 1-3 bid league with a heavy stretch on 3. NBE while it has its weak sisters is a much more potent league
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How many bids did the conference receive for the 2024 tournament.

As much as many of us would like to disagree, his comment there pretty much matches the way the P4 view the conference as a whole.
 
FfldCntyFan said:
How many bids did the conference receive for the 2024 tournament.

As much as many of us would like to disagree, his comment there pretty much matches the way the P4 view the conference as a whole.
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Big East since 2013-2014- 50 NCAA tournament bids and 4 national championships, UConn won what would've been a 5th national championship for the Big East in '14 but they were in the AAC then.

WCC since 2013-2014- 19 NCAA tournament bids and 0 National Championships

The Big East and the WCC are nothing like each other in results, stature of programs/stature of league, tournament bids, hardware etc.

I think you and freescooter are the only people who view the conferences as mirror images of each other.
 
SJ,

Do you truly believe that any BE member other than UConn currently is viewed as a high level program by those in power conferences?

When asked how a major conference school that won 20 games and finished well over 500 in their conference (referring to Seton Hall) was left out of the tournament, the response was "no 20 game winner from a major conference was left out". That basically says everything many here are trying to deny.

Outside of BE fan bases the only schools that recently had any gravitas on a national basis were Nova and us and it appears Nova has squandered most of that since Jay retired.

Many of us refuse to see it (and yes, the conference has done very well remaining afloat while outside forces continue the effort to sink it) but as each season passes it will become more and more difficult for BE schools to remain truly competitive.
 
FfldCntyFan said:
SJ,

Do you truly believe that any BE member other than UConn currently is viewed as a high level program by those in power conferences?

When asked how a major conference school that won 20 games and finished well over 500 in their conference (referring to Seton Hall) was left out of the tournament, the response was "no 20 game winner from a major conference was left out". That basically says everything many here are trying to deny.

Outside of BE fan bases the only schools that recently had any gravitas on a national basis were Nova and us and it appears Nova has squandered most of that since Jay retired.

Many of us refuse to see it (and yes, the conference has done very well remaining afloat while outside forces continue the effort to sink it) but as each season passes it will become more and more difficult for BE schools to remain truly competitive
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This is exactly my point. Major conferences viewed Villanova in the same way they see Gonzaga. And yes I know Gonzaga hasn’t won anything. But you know what I mean. A power program in a lesser league. That has now transferred to us as Villanova seems to have returned to the pack with Jay Wright’s retirement. We have now replace the Wildcats as the power program.

Those of us who were around for the original Big East have a hard time understanding that St John’s Georgetown, and Seton Hall are no longer nationally relevant. Marquette, Creighton and Xavier are what they are. Nice programs with good fan bases but no national appeal and limited success.

I think an expansion of the NEWBE by adding the WCC makes some sense. You get a power program. You get a group of good, not great teams to play that will be good matchups for the middle of the league. Maybe the 2 bottom feeders will improve with more exposure. After all both are relatively new to the league. And finally it gives you national reach which is becoming the thing. You have teams on the east coast, Midwest and West coast. Of course there are issues over scheduling but the Big 10 and the ACC and even the Big 12 are figuring those out. No reason the NEWBE can’t too. Plus I’m not sure it would be any worse than adding a bunch of A-10 teams as others have proposed. VCU-Dayton isn’t going to move the needle.
 
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