(01-12-2017 09:36 AM)Tigersmoke3 Wrote: (01-11-2017 03:46 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote: (01-11-2017 01:36 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote: (01-11-2017 01:20 PM)billybobby777 Wrote: (01-11-2017 12:50 PM)RutgersGuy Wrote: ECU fans, when it comes to basketball look up the old saying about people in glass houses.
Oh ECU hoops suck. But we still usually get at least 4K to the worst games. We'd sell out every game if we had ACC and Big 10 teams coming to town. I'm going to be making noise until ESPN stops referring to programs not in 5 conferences as "mid-majors" as "non-power conference teams." Unless of course they are mid-majors truly like a team that gets less than 1k at a game. No one in the AAC, MWC or Rice, USM, and a few others in the MAC and CUSA is lesser than the subsidized conferences or what espn refers to as "non-power conferences". When ESPN stops damaging our programs intentionally by doing that crap, I'll shut up.
Cheers!
The American is not a Power Conference in basketball.
We have 4 Power Programs (UConn, Cincinnati, Memphis, Temple) and a bunch of mid-major programs. So ESPN is fully justified in saying that we're not a power conference.
At the same time, we're not exactly a mid-major either.
I guess "high major" would be the most accurate term for the AAC and would also apply to the MWC, A-10 and WCC. There are clear power teams therein (e.g. UConn, Cincinnati, Gonzaga, BYU, etc.), but they aren't power conferences overall. The Big East is really the only non-P5 league that claim to be a legit power conference *overall* for basketball purposes (as evidenced by the TV revenue that they're generating, the institutional branding, their markets covered, and the fact that even their dregs have a large amount of historical pedigree).
Just curious FTT. How many none power conferences have a national championship? Has the AAC been kinda down for a couple of years? Yes. Do we have dregs at the bottom? Yes, what conference doesn't. Your disdain for the AAC is so over the top until it borders on comedy. There's nothing wrong with you protecting the NBE, heck it is a very good league. In the past 4yrs the two conferences in question both have national championships. Does that make all the other conferences that don't just " High Major ". I think your assumption that 5 million means you're great until more data points can be added like maybe the second contract perhaps. You wouldn't consider the Pac or for a long time the Big as "High Major " for going through a low period so let us wait a few more years before you start using your homerism to anoint power and non power status.
I have no disdain for the AAC at all. It's simply not a "power conference". There is no one outside of AAC fans that would even consider the AAC to be part of a "P6" group as I've seen argued here.
If I had a definition for a power conference beyond revenue, it would be that it has value that is more than the sum of its parts. A power conference has a cohesive identity and top-to-bottom depth of institutions that go beyond adding up that School A is worth $x and School B is worth $y. This means that the conference *itself* has a value that goes beyond just its individual members.
The AAC certainly has valuable parts: UConn and Memphis basketball, Houston football and Cincinnati sports overall are examples. However, it's a collection of schools who are only together because they don't have a P5 option elsewhere. There's no identity for the league beyond that - they're not similar academic institutions, they're not geographically close to each other, and every one of its members would leave for the Big 12 even if that league lost Texas and Oklahoma. The league exists because it's the least worst option outside of the P5. As a result, there's no brand value to the *conference* itself. Now, that's not the fault of any of the members of the AAC since they have to deal with the dynamics of conference realignment with factors that are outside of their control, but that's the reality.
That's the difference that I see with the current Big East compared to the G5 leagues. They're not being paid more TV money just for basketball compared to any of the G5 leagues for both basketball and football because they actually think DePaul basketball is worth more than UConn or Memphis basketball. Instead, the Big East got paid more because there actually IS a tangible brand value to the conference itself: the league has an institutional cohesiveness where you KNOW what a Big East school looks like and the league name means something in the marketplace. Within its market sphere of non-FBS Division I schools, it is legitimately the clear #1 conference in terms of brand value where every other school in its sphere outside of the Ivy League (the ultimate example of a sports conference that has been leveraged into a non-sports identity) would accept an invitation to it immediately. (You actually couldn't even say that about the SEC or Big Ten with respect to FBS schools, as schools like Texas, UVA and UNC have legitimately turned them down.) Hence, the Big East is worth more than the sum of its parts - it's getting paid for the conference brand value
on top of the on-the-court product itself.
It's not an accident that the leagues with the strongest conference brand identities even at the P5 level (the Big Ten and SEC) get paid more relative to their peers - those leagues aren't just getting paid for the value of Alabama or Ohio State, but rather that the fans and alums of those schools actually live by each other and work together and have network effects that go beyond the field or court. You'll see clear contingents of Big Ten alums in a Chicago workplace, SEC and ACC alums in an Atlanta workplace, Big 12 alums in a Dallas workplace or Pac-12 alums in an LA workplace. For those P5 leagues and the Big East, their conference homes are a true *core* part of their respective identities even outside of sports.
That's something that the AAC simply won't ever have. The MWC and the other G5 conferences won't have it, either. There will be individual parts of those leagues that may be valuable, such as UConn basketball or Boise State football or when a particular program has a hot year or two like Houston football, but the value of those conferences' brands *themselves* are effectively zero. Those leagues really don't have any identity off-the-field/court outside of message board land. UConn, Cincinnati, Memphis and other AAC members won't ever make the AAC a part of its core identity in the way that Nebraska literally puts in its academic program ads that students are receiving a "Big Ten education".
The AAC is a conference marriage of convenience, whereas the Big East is a conference marriage by choice. That is the root difference in why the Big East's *conference* brand value on top of their individual schools is higher than the AAC's conference brand value. I don't speak of that as having disdain for the AAC as the members of the AAC are in that league because they really had no other better choices. The only critique that I have is when people try to pretend that it's something other that situation.
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Butler vs Georgetown 1M Plus Viewers On FOX
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Cash that check though