(04-27-2019 10:49 AM)Kit-Cat Wrote: (04-27-2019 09:59 AM)DavidSt Wrote: (04-27-2019 08:02 AM)Kit-Cat Wrote: Another hypothetical situation. There is FBS split and the Big East if they want to stay on board has to add FB.
The Big East by rule would need 8 existing FBS schools to join it. For arguments sake I will say existing AAC schools are off the table with the 1 billion dollar deal the AAC has. This is where the BE will have to be looking then for new members.
UMass (rival for Providence)
Buffalo (5 NCAA games in 4 years)
ODU (Tidewater is a nice market)
Ohio (13,000 seater for BB)
Miami (Nice rival for X and Butler)
Toledo (Has the facilities)
WMU (2016 Cotton Bowl)
NIU (2012 Orange Bowl)
Big East schools will not add FBS football. They would be happy being the big fish in a small pond. This would force schools like Little Rock, Wichita State and UTA to add football. I could see the MVFC schools join forces. That would make men's besketball stronger. Same with CAA football schools UMass. could join them, and VCU may add football to join them.
What if it means staying in D1 or having to be regulated to D2?
Before the new AAC TV deal they could have dangled an offer out to Memphis, Cincinnati, UConn, Temple to start up another hybrid FB conference. Those schools however are now locked up.
While this is definitely a hypothetical proposal, the likelihood of such an event is absolutely and definitively zero.
The March Madness contract runs through 2032, thus any "separation" to the basketball-side would not happen for at least another ten years. March Madness, for the networks, is a near-perfect content provider to the national audience - it offers a wealth of different schools and programs, provides many unpredictable upsets and intrigue and are all played in a relatively short time period. College Football, as it attempts to duplicate March Madness with its own College Football Playoff, will simply never be able to replicate or duplicate College Basketball's format on the same stage. In the CFP, realistically, there are only five, maybe six, teams that can conceivably win a national championship in a given year; for college basketball, while that number is not realistically 68 teams, it certainly has a greater number of possibilities and teams that can win a national championship.
Under this far-fetched and unlikely scenario, the networks would be "freezing out" a number of non-FBS programs that have experienced national success such as the Big East programs, Gonzaga, VCU, Wichita State, Loyola, Dayton, Davidson, Wofford, UMBC, among various others over the years; eliminating such a significant number of well-publicized teams would be devastating for ratings/interest of the tournament. As much as "power conferences' would probably like to incorporate a P5-only tournament, such a move would kill college basketball - and they definitely realize that.
Even if such a proposal ever went through far enough, the Big East would absolutely not add football programs just to be included, nor to sacrifice their institutional identity. There would remain a number of non-football conferences, which they would undoubtedly group together with, and form their own coalition. Ultimately, the P5 do not want to play against each other exclusively, since that would mean many at the bottom would soak up all of the losses (and, in turn, lose value in the long-run).
Put simply, college basketball is different structurally than college football.