(02-14-2012 11:00 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote: [ -> ] (02-14-2012 10:52 AM)mikeinsec127 Wrote: [ -> ]What I want to see is the BE bring in two more Western schools for football. At this point I don't care which two it is. Let's just get to twelve as fast as possible, before the only remaining school is NMS. We need to get a CCG now, not wait until Navy in 2015. I'd even be happy having to scrape up a few complete bottom feeders so that we can go to 14 or 16, if that's what it takes to get us Temple in the East and a second Cal school in the West.
What the BE will probably do is nothing. The front office will likely sit on its hands and watch all the moves be made around it. It will take another school leaving for the BE to do anything past waiting for Navy and reassuring Nova that a place is still being held for it should they ever find the will and money to move up.
Why expand just to expand? Expanding to 12 or more with schools that you don't really want doesn't make sense compared to staying at 11 for a year or two with schools that you actually want. The Big East can poach from the Alliance whenever it wants to - none of those schools are going to the Big 12 or SEC. It's not like USC or Ohio State is a free agent right now and the BE needs to pounce. The TV networks aren't excited by anyone in the Alliance outside of Air Force, so the BE doesn't have a need to add any of them except for backfilling purposes.
Well Frank here's why.
First, no school in this present conference was anybody's first choice. RU was only brought in to the original BE, to put a football presence in the NY metro market. We never did anything to earn that invite. It was about location and potential (Gee, that sounds familiar). We still haven't done enough to become anybody's first choice. That's why RU is the only original member left in the BE 3.0, with no prospect of getting out any time soon.
Back in the day, daU asked the BE to expand by one more school. It wanted a conference mate further South. A school with a history of playing original BE members that was located between VT and daU. Only ECU has ever fit that bill (Yes we have been spurning ECU for over a decade now). The BE refused to act in any way, which resulted in the eventual lose of three of the top original schools to the ACC.
Second, nobody wanted the three replacement schools from the original C-USA. If we did, they would have been brought in before the first ACC raid. They were simply the best available school not in a major conf (Ville), an under achiever located in a major market and large state (Cincy) and an up and comer with lots of potential located in a football hotbed (USF). Again that all sounds really familiar.
At the time most of us BE fans were like WTF is this? Those were desperate moves made by a desperate conf admin. Fortunately they worked out for the better, as all three did well in the BE and the conference improved as a whole. We even slipped in as a BCS conference. But the BE fell back into its old ways, and buried its head in the sand, while the world around it continued to change.
Third, no offense to the new members, none of them were our first choices either. The eight football schools wanted one or two semi-eastern schools to help improve the conf and solidify its BCS status in a time when the other BCS conferences were expanding and adding a CCG. We've been debating expansion for years. There has always been the thought of, "Why expand for the sake of expanding, all the usual suspects will be there if we ever want them." We said that about ECU, UCF, USM, Temple and Memphis, when we all thought that the BE would try to keep some sort of geographic identity.
In the mean time, the BE fiddle-dicked around with competing factions either trying to expand or split or keep the status quo. Finally the BE did something right by going completely off the reservation and inviting TCU. That's right, a desperate move to try a quick counter to all the moves made by the other BCS conferences. Bring in the best available nonBCS school (Sounds like a familiar tune). It was a brilliant move. The problem was that the BE didn't go far enough. It still needed to bring in that under achiever in a big market (Memphis) and the up and comer in a football hotbed (UCF). That would make eleven. To get to the magic number, the BE should have let TCU pick the twelfth. It didn't and we ended up loosing four schools because of it.
Fourth, once things settle down around here, we are going to see that the new guys are rising up to the level of competition and probably improving the league. You'll be sitting here saying, see we don't need those other guys from that galactic alliance thing. Besides, if we ever do need them, they will be waiting right there for our call. Guys like you are going to be willing to wait three full seasons for Navy to come into the league, so we can finally stage a CCG. In the mean time, the Texahoma conf may decide to expand back to twelve and pick off Ville and Cincy. ND may finally decide to move into the BIG, which could lead to RU being drafted as the counter balance. The SEC and the ACC will probably both go to sixteen, which would probably result in four of the leftovers from BE 2.0 jumping ship.
Then what will happen? Three years from now the BE will be back to making desperate moves to save itself. Those moves will be quite predictable. THe BE will call up all those schools that weren't good enough for it three years prior, or three years prior to that and ask a few of them to join. It will find the best available, the underachiever in the big market and the up and comer in a football hotbed and try to recruit them. I have a crazy idea that the BE should just figure out what three those are now, and invite them in now. That way while we all wait for Navy, we can stage the CCG two years early, allow the eventual invitees to get a jump on building BCS calibre facilities and programs, and hedge against loosing a school or three to other conferences.
