It's not official yet, but it probably makes too much sense not to happen soon one way or another. Football drives the financial bus and if you don't have a football program, your interests don't necessarily align with those that do and you've got to take a different approach. Apparently:

Quote:The seven Catholic, or basketball, schools will target three schools to join them in a 10-team league. Xavier, Dayton and Butler are the leading candidates. Each now resides in the Atlantic 10 but would be very interested in joining a league with Midwest regional rivals like Marquette and DePaul and an opportunity to come East and play Georgetown, St. John's and Villanova instead of George Washington, Fordham and La Salle.

Aside from Butler not being Catholic, that scenario makes a lot of sense and would be a legitimate force of a conference in basketball. With 10 teams they could probably do home/home with everyone or especially if they got any bigger (still room for a ND or a Philly school, maybe St. Louis, etc.) could go to divisions with a pretty clear geographical split to start from:

East: Gtown, St. J., 'Nova, Providence, Seton Hall
West: Marquette, DePaul, XU, Dayton and Butler

This would be an early Xmas for XU if it goes down like that.

They could also add St. Louis and Richmond too, if they wanted to go to 12.

Even if the basketball only Big East schools break away they are in the same boat everyone else is ... they need to maximize their revenue. I'm not sure how adding 3 schools that are within a 50 mile radius of each other is in their best interest. Not to mention, Dayton isn't exactly the biggest TV market. Wouldn't they be better off adding St. Louis, Duquesne (Pittburgh market), or St Joes (Philly market) instead of Dayton.

(12-13-2012 01:08 PM)nachoman91 Wrote:  Even if the basketball only Big East schools break away they are in the same boat everyone else is ... they need to maximize their revenue. I'm not sure how adding 3 schools that are within a 50 mile radius of each other is in their best interest. Not to mention, Dayton isn't exactly the biggest TV market. Wouldn't they be better off adding St. Louis, Duquesne (Pittburgh market), or St Joes (Philly market) instead of Dayton.

The "new market" thing is biggest when you have your own network that isn't shown everywhere and you are trying to get/push/force cable services in "new markets" to get/push/force all of its customers to pay for the new channel as part of an expanded tier e.g. the Big 10 and Big 10 network.

Basketball mostly just wants people who like basketball to watch it whenever it is televised on their channel (e.g. ESPN). Audiences aren't as big in person or on tv, but there are a lot more games and they are on every day of the week. Sure markets matter, but basketball fans want to see good teams play in good matchups (see UC fans and UC attendance for reference). That conference makes for a lot of good basketball games with interest both regionally (e.g. rivalries) and nationally (talent). Keep in mind too, that without football to pay all the bills, travel expenses for sports beyond basketball add up and keeping "clusters" allow for multiple matchups close to home in those sports (e.g. creating 2 divisions as shown above).

Dayton is a basketball hotbed (it's a big factor in why they always seem to host a round of the NCAA tourney; also I haven't checked but I bet their average home attendance beats UC - probably by a lot), but as I noted above, there's also the opportunity to add schools especially in the remaining big cities in the midwest and east.

Different group here:

Quote:Brey also said the discussion among the Catholic schools was to make it a national Catholic conference with Xavier, Saint Louis, Dayton, Creighton, Gonzaga and possibly Saint Mary's, as well.

St. Louis in as we mentioned. No Butler though as this version is all-Catholic. Gonzaga is a great team, but I'm not sure the move way west with them and others is wise.