(04-18-2018 07:39 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  Here is a wild thought: what if in the 2003-2004 alignment circus by the ACC that was originally targeting Miami, Syracuse, and BC that in turn became Miami, VT, and Syracuse, then just Miami and VT in hopes of luring Notre Dame until finally settling on BC if someone in that room said "let's be really forward thinking and add Syracuse and Pitt and then see if that's enough to lure Notre Dame and if it does we go to 16 but if not we've got a pretty solid group"

The Big East is then in a funny place. they've got the Catholic 5, Notre Dame, UConn, Rutgers, WVU, and Temple football. Would the first 6 be willing to rebuild a football league for their 3 football schools and a Temple program that was getting booted? Could those 4 find a home in C-USA? If they do that means UCF and Marshall stay in the MAC and Tulsa/Rice/SMU/UTEP stick with the WAC.

The end result is a much different landscape going into and beyond the 2010-2013 realignment.

This is a very interesting scenario because in my opinion, Syracuse was always the lynchpin. Without Syracuse, I'm not sure the Big East Catholic schools would have cared enough to stay. On the other hand, being enticed with adding basketball powers Louisville and Cincinnati may have convinced them to hang around at least for a while.

My gut is that they may have stuck together for a while and added Louisville, Cincinnati, Memphis, Marquette, DePaul, USF, and Houston and still dumped Temple. The problem is Notre Dame probably would have been looking around and if and when they decided to leave, I'm not sure the marriage would have stayed together.