(01-13-2019 08:58 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-13-2019 08:50 AM)Tigersmoke4 Wrote:  Any conference with UCONN, Memphis, cincy, Temple and Houston is not mid-major no matter what arbitrary line you've made up in your mind.

The AAC has been in every way a mid-major conference on the court the past 5 years.

That could be changing right now, this season, because the AAC certainly has the potential to be a 'power' league like the Big East, but so far, that's how it is been. The AAC has just not performed up to its potential. That's why it added Wichita State, to try and shore up the flagging basketball.

Here's a critical fact to bear in mind that your list of teams reminded me of: While schools like UConn and Temple and Memphis have strong basketball pedigrees, they are not blue-bloods, which means their national interest is highly correlated with performance.

Blue bloods like North Carolina and UCLA and Kentucky *always* matter. Their national brands are permanently elite, doesn't matter if they have a Final 4 team or are slogging through a mediocre, disappointing year. That's not true of Memphis/UConn/Cincy type teams. If they are "down", their profiles drop considerably.

So their mere presence doesn't guarantee power status from a brand POV either.

Bolded, if so, none of the new Big East programs meet that blue blood criteria either. Most are small, private schools with fan interest limited to their immediate metro areas.

This whole conversation about "power" conferences in basketball is nothing more than semantics. Power entered our lexicon as a descriptor for college football classification only.

The best programs in the new Big East and American are "high major" if you will--they expend resources, have facilities and a heritage of tournament participation and championships on par with the best basketball programs from the five largest football conferences. Those BE/AAC programs bear little resemblance to any in the mid-major group.