How much of this Wichita hype is "flavor of the month"? The Big East went with Butler and they're a nobody in that league. Wichita has decent history, but they aren't adding a big market and they'd be an outlier.

(03-13-2014 10:48 AM)esayem Wrote:  How much of this Wichita hype is "flavor of the month"? The Big East went with Butler and they're a nobody in that league. Wichita has decent history, but they aren't adding a big market and they'd be an outlier.

Wichita has 450K TV sets, 67th nationally and about 2/3 the size of Louisville, Memphis and New Orleans. I bet college basketball gets great ratings in that city like it does in Louisville.

Wichita has always had great fan support. Even after a decade of mediocre to poor basketball in the 1990s (5 home losses a year), they averaged 7300 a game in 2000-01. Now they sell out at 10,700.

(03-13-2014 10:48 AM)esayem Wrote:  How much of this Wichita hype is "flavor of the month"? The Big East went with Butler and they're a nobody in that league. Wichita has decent history, but they aren't adding a big market and they'd be an outlier.

With the rumor of the American going to a twenty game conference schedule next season with eleven teams, I am not sure expansion is a great move.

Tulsa was the the hot mid-major of late 1990's and early 2000's with a two Sweet 16's and one Elite 8 to go with eight tournament bids from 1994 to 2003. The American is adding them next season. While they are currently a decent program they are not where they were years ago but could very easily get back to that level. The problem with VCU and Wichita State is that they are one coach away from becoming the current version of Tulsa. I am sure the American believes Houston, Tulsa, and Temple can recapture their former glory years.

(03-13-2014 11:07 AM)bearcatlawjd Wrote:  

(03-13-2014 10:48 AM)esayem Wrote:  How much of this Wichita hype is "flavor of the month"? The Big East went with Butler and they're a nobody in that league. Wichita has decent history, but they aren't adding a big market and they'd be an outlier.

With the rumor of the American going to a twenty game conference schedule next season with eleven teams, I am not sure expansion is a great move.

Tulsa was the the hot mid-major of late 1990's and early 2000's with a two Sweet 16's and one Elite 8 to go with eight tournament bids from 1994 to 2003. The American is adding them next season. While they are currently a decent program they are not where they were years ago but could very easily get back to that level. The problem with VCU and Wichita State is that they are one coach away from becoming the current version of Tulsa. I am sure the American believes Houston, Tulsa, and Temple can recapture their former glory years.

Temple had been to the tournament 6 years in a row prior to this year and is one of the top 10 winningest teams of all time. This year was an anomaly for the program. They will be an upper echelon team for the AAC on a regular basis.

(03-12-2014 10:50 AM)HawaiiMongoose Wrote:  

(03-12-2014 10:47 AM)BruceMcF Wrote:  Translation: "Fox Sports is not making enough money for them to want to invest in more Big East basketball inventory at this time."

^^^This.

Yeah, or "We want Gonzaga, but, seriously, people, look at a map!"

(03-13-2014 10:48 AM)esayem Wrote:  How much of this Wichita hype is "flavor of the month"? The Big East went with Butler and they're a nobody in that league.

I'm not sure I'd count Butler out after a single season ... being located in the largest city of a basketball crazy state is not the worst position to be in if you have to rebuild.

Quote: Wichita has decent history, but they aren't adding a big market and they'd be an outlier.

They'd be a clear geographic outlier in the MAC, to name another conference with a FB-only imbalance issue, but Tulsa in the AAC means they'd be less of a geographic outlier in the AAC. And the AAC has footholds in Philadelphia (4), Dallas (5), Houston (10), Tampa (13), Orlando (19), Baltimore (26), Hartford-New Haven (30), Cincinnati (34), Greenville-Spartanburg-Asheville-Anderson (36), Memphis (48), New Orleans (53)... they aren't exactly shy of markets. Their media value challenge is rather content to get the people in those markets to tune in.

So IMV the worry that they may be a long term middling program that just happens to be in the middle of a hot streak would be the bigger concern with Wichita.

Do people forget Butler had other good coaches before Stevens? That Stevens is only credited for five of those nine tournament bids they got since 2000? And even that shorts Collier his first two bids with the team in '97 and '98?

Stevens may have been on the Butler sideline for most of 21st century Butler basketball, but Butler's success is not all his.

(03-13-2014 09:59 AM)Tiger Rag Wrote:  Maybe a dumb question but has Wichita State ever thought about adding a football program? Any history of student interest or possible student fees?

Could make them much more attractive to the AAC. Also would put them at a solid #3 football school in Kansas.


Posted from my mobile device using the CSNbbs App

It often gets talked about but the previous president had zero desire to even look into it. There was a student government survey a year or two ago that showed close to 70% of respondents would approve of an increase in student fees to help reestablish football on campus. We do have a football stadium (Cessna) that seats 30,000 just sitting there. It's used for WSU T&F as well as the State track meet and some high school football. Butler CC played against Blinn College there a few years back and drew close to 10k.

The new president hasn't shot down the idea of football, but it's not the top priority. He's aggressively working on updating the school (new dorms being finished now and a new business/tech facility ready to begin in the fall) as well as growing enrollment. WSU had about 14,800 students this past fall and that's expected to grow to at least 15,500 next semester. The goal is 22k by 2020. I think once enrollment hits 18k or so that President Bardo may take up the football question and see if it makes sense for the university or not. He was a season ticket holder for WSU football back when he taught here in the 70s.

I do think if a conference like the AAC were interested in adding us and wanted us to add football that we would take it up knowing that we had a solid home for everything when we got it up and running. And while there may not be a ton of football talent at the HS level in KS, it's still decent, we have one of the top JUCO leagues in the country to pull from. While we may not get the best of the best, there's a lot of talent in the Jayhawk that I think we would benefit. And all of our sports pull talent from OK and TX so I'm sure we'd find some success there as well.

But football is obviously no guarantee and we currently don't have it. But outside of softball, all of our other programs are doing quite well.

(03-13-2014 10:48 AM)esayem Wrote:  How much of this Wichita hype is "flavor of the month"? The Big East went with Butler and they're a nobody in that league. Wichita has decent history, but they aren't adding a big market and they'd be an outlier.

Outlier, maybe on a map but in scheduling the "travel partner" idea could work well with WSU as they are very close to Tulsa.

Say you are UCF. You have to fly to play pretty much anyone not named USF. What travel partner scheduling does is it allows you to go from:

Fly to Tulsa, play game, Fly Back
Fly to ECU, Play game, Fly Back
with 2 expensive roundtrips

and replace it with

Fly to Tulsa, Play game
Take a cheap bus to Wichita
Play game, fly back.

You replace 1 expensive round trip with a cheap bus ride.

If the AAC could add 3 teams in non-fb it would allow them to save a lot. Imagine if they could swing it and get WSU, VCU, and Dayton...

WSU-Tulsa
SMU-Houston
Memphis-Tulane
Dayton - Cincy
Temple-UConn
ECU-VCU
USF-UCF

Once paired with smart scheduling that helps limit costs for the entire league.

So while WSU would definitely be on a little bit of an island it wouldn't be a factor where it counts- travel cost.

We aren't adding 3 mouths to feed on a $2M per school TV deal.

We might add 1 strong hoop program, but probably not until the current TV deal is up in 2018-19.

(03-13-2014 04:14 PM)CougarRed Wrote:  We aren't adding 3 mouths to feed on a $2M per school TV deal.

We might add 1 strong hoop program, but probably not until the current TV deal is up in 2018-19.

Hoops schools would get considerably less than a full member. Yes you'd probably lose a tiny bit in tv money but I do think you'd make it back up with tournament money and travel savings if not come out ahead.

Certainly little need for more than 10 in BB. No interest in divisions or disrupting the double round robin. Leave well enough alone.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomvanriper/...oks-ahead/

excerpt:

Quote:But, Ackerman notes, the Midwestern markets are good ones – the league is planted in major metros like Chicago (DePaul), Indianapolis (Butler), Milwaukee (Marquette), Cincinnati (Xavier) and Omaha (Creighton). Add in the traditional markets of New York, D.C. and Philadelphia, and the Big East is firmly planted in urban centers where basketball’s roots lie. The downside: all but Omaha and Cincinnati are NBA markets, too. Not places where fans necessarily live and die with college spirit. Still, Ackerman believes that the combination of Fox Sports with shear market size makes for a pretty good formula. “We’re in big cities, and we’ve got the Big East on every night,” she says. Helping the 10-team conference gel and grow is the plan for now – expansion can wait. “Things seem quiet right now after all the tumult. We like the number we have.”

For right now, she’ll be glad to see a successful conference tournament run through Saturday. St. John’s would end up losing the afternoon nightcap to Providence, joining Villanova and Georgetown on the sidelines by the second day. That means Saturday’s final will match a Midwestern school against Providence or Seton Hall. If the Garden is rocking for that one, we’ll know that Ackerman and the 10 school presidents are onto something.

Adding more teams to the Big East would do absolutely nothing for the tv contract. In the words of Tim Brando (the few that I ever tend to agree with), for television ratings college basketball has become a 3 week sport.

(03-14-2014 12:47 PM)LSUtah Wrote:  Adding more teams to the Big East would do absolutely nothing for the tv contract. In the words of Tim Brando (the few that I ever tend to agree with), for television ratings college basketball has become a 3 week sport.

Brando is missing the point if he is just comparing CBB regular-season ratings to CFB's regular season. The most attractive CBB leagues have some value to TV because they draw more viewers than almost anything else that would be shown on those channels in the same time slots in January, February, and March. Same reason that TV pays to televise MLB games even though MLB's regular season has nowhere near the TV ratings of the NFL or even the NBA.

(03-14-2014 12:47 PM)LSUtah Wrote:  Adding more teams to the Big East would do absolutely nothing for the tv contract. In the words of Tim Brando (the few that I ever tend to agree with), for television ratings college basketball has become a 3 week sport.

I can't agree with that though it is true for most teams. I would much rather watch a top 25 basketball game over watching Ice Hockey.