(03-28-2018 11:42 PM)stever20 Wrote: Except there is. Last year the average Big East tourney team spent 8,429,757. Last year the average P5 team that got to the sweet 16 spent 10,080,415. That is a divide of about 20%.
Also, P5 teams can account for things differently- like spending more on sports medicine etc- that doesn't get allocated just to one sport.
Finally, the money gap is now only starting to show up. Big Ten revenues will be going up by about 25% this year. And basketball is a sport that a small increase in resources can go a really long way.
To be clear, you are taking the average of the Big East Tournament teams - which included Providence, Villanova, Marquette, Xavier, Creighton, Seton Hall and Butler - and comparing them only against: UCLA, Kentucky, UNC, Oregon, Michigan, Kansas, Purdue, Arizona and West Virginia.
Boy, what a way to absolutely stack the deck in favor of your flawed argument. Each of the programs are blue blood/top-level P5 basketball programs - and spent more money than their counterparts even before the big boom of TV contracts within the past decade. You're absolutely cherry-picking here.
Until we see the day where schools like Penn State, Nebraska, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, Boston College, Clemson, Washington State, Oregon State and other men's basketball programs that are in the lower tier of the P5 can poach Big East coaches annually, this argument has absolutely zero basis on fact. Mack (Louisville), Holtmann (Ohio State), and Crean (IU) are got hired by big-time athletic programs (not just average P5 schools) with strong basketball tradition, top-notch facilities and a national college basketball brand.
Many Big East schools could poach a lower-tiered P5 coach, due to salary offerings, but don't because that's not how the membership values and/or hires coaches. They want coaches familiar with their respective programs, they know how to win there and don't need a brand name in order to continue winning. With the exception to Wojo, each and every new coach hired has had direct ties to the school, whether as a player or assistant coach. The model seems to be working pretty well thus far.