Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="champs99and04, post: 2473359, member: 488"] Aside from Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, are any of the other seven a shoe-in to find a safe landing spot if the Big 12 dissolves? You may know better than me as I'm not a conference realignment expert, but my impression would be no. Texas and Oklahoma are brands that would sell some tickets, but their appeal as basketball products is limited and save for KU and Iowa State, I'm not sure the sport is a priority for any of them (granted they've been very strong on the court lately despite this). So yeah, I do think the Big East would appeal to our fan base more. The two leagues are fairly comparable from a performance standpoint and the Big East would generate a lot more natural rivalries. Seton Hall, St. Johns, and Providence have made big strides as programs since the formation of the new league and obviously they're all next door. Georgetown is going to sell tickets regardless because they're Georgetown, Marquette is a known entity, and the newbies - Creighton, Butler, and Xavier - are respected, albeit lacking in sex appeal, programs that would probably command more intrigue as league games than they would have back in the day as OOC opponents. The only real throwaway is DePaul. The UConn/Big East thing will come to a head at some point. I also seriously wonder how much it would change the appeal of the job for a prospective coach in the event that we have to make a move. The questions are does the Big East want us and is UConn ready to abandon football. To the first one I say probably simply because the money will be too much of a factor. On the second, I still think we're a few years out. The investment the school and the state have made in the program is massive and the allure of joining a P5 conference is too much to pass up. I don't think Herbst and company could responsibly make that move right now. Over time, I think they will be open to going the independent route with football ala UMass if the athletic department continues to flounder. They're in a tough spot, though, because while the AAC has not been the primary reason for the basketball program's decline, it might be the primary obstacle to their recovery. You get the sense that if you meet with a big time coach the first thing they're going to want to do is clean up New England on the trail. That's far more likely in the Big East than the AAC and whoever the new coach is doesn't care about the P5 branching off in ten years, they care about right now. This situation is as messy as it is because a potential coaching change may occur in basketball way sooner than anticipated and now the school is going to have to determine whether a pivotal hire for the school's bread-winning sport is worth the end of the football dream. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach

Forum statistics

Threads: 164,755

Messages: 4,409,626

Members: 10,232

Latest member: Spartans1