(11-01-2010 08:57 AM)CitrusUCF Wrote:  Even though I love to loathe ECU, they are a much better candidate than Villanova/Temple. ECU, despite their small market, draws well and they televise well. If given a BCS opportunity, they'd instantly eclipse Wake and Duke (for football anyway) in NC and be on par with NC State. Plus their football is, you know, good...unlike Temple and Villanova (in terms of having to move up for them). Philly isn't a college town for football and Temple/Nova aren't going to change that. Better to take what ECU gets you in Raleigh and the Tidewater (which is at least something since MASN picks up their games).

No doubt. If I ran the Big East and was looking to improve the football side of things I would add TCU, Houston, UCF, and ECU.

In UCF, ECU, and Houston you'd be getting the teams that have won the C-USA championship the last 4 years (2 for ECU, 1 each for Houston and UCF). You'd be getting teams that have combined for 6 of the 10 appearances in the C-USA Championship games (2 each for the 3 schools). You'd be getting the top 2 highest attendance teams East of the Mississippi from non-AQ conferences (ECU #1, UCF #2). You'd be getting the current leaders of the East and West of C-USA (UCF and Houston).

In TCU you'd be getting a top 10 team that has been a top 10 team for several years. You'd be getting a team that has won 2 of the 5 Mountain West championships since joining the league.

With the 4 schools combined, of course, you'd be getting into the massive Houston and Dallas markets as well as the large Orlando market. This would also provide the conference double exposure in the football crazy, talent rich states of Texas and Florida. ECU would also help bridge the divide between the Northeast teams and Florida and give the Big East exposure in the growing state of North Carolina. You would also get the 2 highest ranked (in the BCS standings) non-AQ teams East of the Rockies (TCU #3, UCF #32).

Again, that's just what I'd do if I ran the Big East. If you're looking to add 4 football schools with some credibility that are at least somewhat geographically sensible, those would be the 4 best options.

We'll see what happens...but I'd be surprised if they went straight to 12. I think they will go to 10.

Good luck to all candidates!

"By adding TCU and Houston, the Big East would gain TV viewership in two significant markets (Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston) and give football programs a recruiting toehold in talent-rich Texas."

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/sports/college/f...z142mPAFEp

This quote from the article is dead on to what the conference is looking at. Notice they state "the BE would GAIN TV viewership in two significant markets", Not that the BE would OWN those markets. They don't have to.

(11-01-2010 09:53 AM)brista21 Wrote:  

(11-01-2010 09:41 AM)dgrace4cards Wrote:  I agree, at this point the only thing factual is a meeting is being held in Philly tomorrow....."most likely" that its about expansion, but details are all speculative coming from the NY Post.

FWIW as I said previously, Lenn Robbins is very good and very knowledgable. Unlike much of the Post their sports staff really does a great job and doesn't just sensationalize like the rest of the staff does.

Ok, sounds good, you will have a much more better grasph of what comes out of NY Post than I , being from the area. So I guess I can trust Lenn Robbins more when reporting.

I wonder who he is getting his nuggets from, the one AD maybe WVU's since he appears to be the most public about this to the media.

Whats still not sorted by Lenn is the big picture situation here of the conference splitting, growing to a larger hybrid, or somewhere in between (The All Sports division and Bball Division under one umbrella)

Will this meeting in Philly be "The Meeting" of all meetings for the BE...I hope Robbins is standing outside of Ballroom ? waiting for the answers.

(11-01-2010 09:29 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  I think it's going to be REALLY hard to go up to 20. Remember all of the Big Ten expansion news stories that talked about how expanding to 16 schools was almost a certainty (and I had some very knowledgeable people tell me that directly, too). When push came to shove, though, the conference presidents showed that they are very conservative by nature and they chose to add the bare minimum that will maximize revenues instead of the "world domination" schemes that bloggers (like myself) love to write about. Note that the NY Post article stated that the non-football members don't want to expand the overall league past 16, so jumping up to 20 is unrealistic. We may see 18 (TCU plus one other football school if Villanova doesn't rise), but even that can't necessarily be counted on if the non-football members are as dug in on capping the league at 16 as they seem to be. There's going to be a lot of give and take here if there's any movement at all.

Isn't that really a reflection of how tightly knit the Big Ten is? For example, Iowa not wanting to see OSU take extended breaks from its schedule? The Big East doesn't have this "problem" so to speak. They might welcome divisions. For example, I don't think St. John's would miss having USF of the schedule AT ALL... EVER. Even though it's a good game, would UConn really miss playing Cincy in basketball?

And it's only 20 for basketball. Football would still only be 12. I think the only major problem with 20 for basketball is getting a fair share of bids to the NCAA tournament.

(11-01-2010 10:05 AM)BullsFanatic Wrote:  We'll see what happens...but I'd be surprised if they went straight to 12. I think they will go to 10.

Good luck to all candidates!

Based on past reports 10 would seem to be the safer bet than 12. Only reason to go to 12 is if they have determined that a BE championship game would be a financially viable thing to do or if by adding all these markets the leagues finances would jump enough to make it worthwhile.

" The die is casted:!

(11-01-2010 10:01 AM)Bob Barker Wrote:  West Virginia AD, Oliver Luck is very familiar with Houston from his days running the Houston Dynamo and the Houston Sports Authority. His opinion will outweigh yours, TigerPete.

Great comeback Barker. So we can't have opinions...you have no idea who I am.

Last year Houston went 10-4 and averaged 25,242 in football attendance. By the way their basketball averaged 3,202. They don't support! But you and Oliver are right they are a great candidate:)

Not to say the BE won't add them....it would just be a mistake.

OH NOSSEEE!!! CUSA AND MAC TEAMS AS EXPANSION CANDIDATES WATER DOWN AND TURN US INTO CUSA!!!! BLUB BLUB BLUB BLUB BLUB !!!!!

FYI, Watch CUSA Showdown between UCF and Houston on ESPN friday night at 8PM in what will be a pivotal game in determining who has the leg-up to host the conference championship game...

(11-01-2010 10:11 AM)JunkYardCard Wrote:  

(11-01-2010 09:29 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  I think it's going to be REALLY hard to go up to 20. Remember all of the Big Ten expansion news stories that talked about how expanding to 16 schools was almost a certainty (and I had some very knowledgeable people tell me that directly, too). When push came to shove, though, the conference presidents showed that they are very conservative by nature and they chose to add the bare minimum that will maximize revenues instead of the "world domination" schemes that bloggers (like myself) love to write about. Note that the NY Post article stated that the non-football members don't want to expand the overall league past 16, so jumping up to 20 is unrealistic. We may see 18 (TCU plus one other football school if Villanova doesn't rise), but even that can't necessarily be counted on if the non-football members are as dug in on capping the league at 16 as they seem to be. There's going to be a lot of give and take here if there's any movement at all.

Isn't that really a reflection of how tightly knit the Big Ten is? For example, Iowa not wanting to see OSU take extended breaks from its schedule? The Big East doesn't have this "problem" so to speak. They might welcome divisions. For example, I don't think St. John's would miss having USF of the schedule AT ALL... EVER. Even though it's a good game, would UConn really miss playing Cincy in basketball?

And it's only 20 for basketball. Football would still only be 12. I think the only major problem with 20 for basketball is getting a fair share of bids to the NCAA tournament.

I think that is really a good point. While there are certainly some lessons to be learned from the B10's toe dipping into a 16 team league it is not a perfect analogy just as the WAC's 16-team league wasn't a perfect template for the B10. Every league is unique and every situation is different.

For a myriad of reasons, I'm still not sure that the BE will expand past Villanova much less to 12 teams, but I think it is folly to reason, "Well, this is what happened with the B10 so this is what will happen with the BE." It simply doesn't work that way.

(11-01-2010 10:27 AM)TigerPete Wrote:  

(11-01-2010 10:01 AM)Bob Barker Wrote:  West Virginia AD, Oliver Luck is very familiar with Houston from his days running the Houston Dynamo and the Houston Sports Authority. His opinion will outweigh yours, TigerPete.

Great comeback Barker. So we can't have opinions...you have no idea who I am.

Last year Houston went 10-4 and averaged 25,242 in football attendance. By the way their basketball averaged 3,202. They don't support! But you and Oliver are right they are a great candidate:)

Not to say the BE won't add them....it would just be a mistake.

Houston is looking at building a brand new football stadium with much higher capacity. Their current stadium doesn't hold much more if any more than that average. I wouldn't go to basketball games either if the league games consisted of teams like ECU and Tulane and Southern Miss. In the Big East, their attendance would increase as it has for every team added to the league.

(11-01-2010 10:27 AM)TigerPete Wrote:  

(11-01-2010 10:01 AM)Bob Barker Wrote:  West Virginia AD, Oliver Luck is very familiar with Houston from his days running the Houston Dynamo and the Houston Sports Authority. His opinion will outweigh yours, TigerPete.

Great comeback Barker. So we can't have opinions...you have no idea who I am.

Last year Houston went 10-4 and averaged 25,242 in football attendance. By the way their basketball averaged 3,202. They don't support! But you and Oliver are right they are a great candidate:)

Not to say the BE won't add them....it would just be a mistake.

There are 2 ways to look at these decisions.

1. Take the sure thing with a school that can deliver a smaller market.
2. Take the school in the bigger market because it has a higher ceiling for greater market potential.

Neither is right or wrong. If you're a salesman who likes a challenge & prefers the high risk/high reward option, you go for #2. If you prefer a more conservative approach, you go for #1.

The basic idea with the #2 strategy is that you can't sell your product in a market that you're not in. Well . . . you can, but it's much harder. So, those who prefer #2 want to get into the market & then develop their product to the level that they have a shot at selling it to more people, winning more fans.

These decisions are made with long term implications decades down the road. Some people just don't want to be locked into the limitations of a smaller market when things change. Who could have predicted the explosion of college basketball 30 years ago when the BE was formed, for example? At that time membership decisions were made on where the big arenas were because live attendance was the audience. TV came along later, which is when the advantage of being in big markets paid off. No one really knows how each of these decisions will pay off or place limits over the coming decades.

It's not a simple decision one way or the other. There are valid arguments for both sides.

(11-01-2010 10:33 AM)buckaineer Wrote:  Houston is looking at building a brand new football stadium with much higher capacity. Their current stadium doesn't hold much more if any more than that average. I wouldn't go to basketball games either if the league games consisted of teams like ECU and Tulane and Southern Miss. In the Big East, their attendance would increase as it has for every team added to the league.

I think Houston would rather play in Reliant Stadium for a few years first and rebuild the base before building a stadium. The reason they moved back on-campus was the declining numbers in the Astrodome as a result of the collsapse of the SWC.

If the BEN is going to be created, it has to offer other/new major markets for viewership. We know and the BE knows that it won't own any of them, but there will be value in creating the BEN if it will offer new markets.

(11-01-2010 10:06 AM)buckaineer Wrote:  "By adding TCU and Houston, the Big East would gain TV viewership in two significant markets (Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston) and give football programs a recruiting toehold in talent-rich Texas."

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/sports/college/f...z142mPAFEp

This quote from the article is dead on to what the conference is looking at. Notice they state "the BE would GAIN TV viewership in two significant markets", Not that the BE would OWN those markets. They don't have to.

(11-01-2010 10:33 AM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote:  

(11-01-2010 10:11 AM)JunkYardCard Wrote:  

(11-01-2010 09:29 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  I think it's going to be REALLY hard to go up to 20. Remember all of the Big Ten expansion news stories that talked about how expanding to 16 schools was almost a certainty (and I had some very knowledgeable people tell me that directly, too). When push came to shove, though, the conference presidents showed that they are very conservative by nature and they chose to add the bare minimum that will maximize revenues instead of the "world domination" schemes that bloggers (like myself) love to write about. Note that the NY Post article stated that the non-football members don't want to expand the overall league past 16, so jumping up to 20 is unrealistic. We may see 18 (TCU plus one other football school if Villanova doesn't rise), but even that can't necessarily be counted on if the non-football members are as dug in on capping the league at 16 as they seem to be. There's going to be a lot of give and take here if there's any movement at all.

Isn't that really a reflection of how tightly knit the Big Ten is? For example, Iowa not wanting to see OSU take extended breaks from its schedule? The Big East doesn't have this "problem" so to speak. They might welcome divisions. For example, I don't think St. John's would miss having USF of the schedule AT ALL... EVER. Even though it's a good game, would UConn really miss playing Cincy in basketball?

And it's only 20 for basketball. Football would still only be 12. I think the only major problem with 20 for basketball is getting a fair share of bids to the NCAA tournament.

I think that is really a good point. While there are certainly some lessons to be learned from the B10's toe dipping into a 16 team league it is not a perfect analogy just as the WAC's 16-team league wasn't a perfect template for the B10. Every league is unique and every situation is different.

For a myriad of reasons, I'm still not sure that the BE will expand past Villanova much less to 12 teams, but I think it is folly to reason, "Well, this is what happened with the B10 so this is what will happen with the BE." It simply doesn't work that way.

Excellent point. The BE is in it's infancy. The Big Ten is 115 years old. At the same stage of its development that the Big East is at, the Big Ten included the University of Chicago, which was later to leave, & hadn't yet added Michigan State, Penn State, or Nebraska. Ohio State wasn't even part of the league initially & was only added a dozen years down the road.

(11-01-2010 10:41 AM)DFW HOYA Wrote:  

(11-01-2010 10:33 AM)buckaineer Wrote:  Houston is looking at building a brand new football stadium with much higher capacity. Their current stadium doesn't hold much more if any more than that average. I wouldn't go to basketball games either if the league games consisted of teams like ECU and Tulane and Southern Miss. In the Big East, their attendance would increase as it has for every team added to the league.

I think Houston would rather play in Reliant Stadium for a few years first and rebuild the base before building a stadium. The reason they moved back on-campus was the declining numbers in the Astrodome as a result of the collsapse of the SWC.

Forget Houston. Don't even think about them for the Big East.

Houston's attendance in the Astrodome was always lousy. Awhile back someone posted a link to a media guide with their reported historical attendance figures. Even in the 1970s when they were winning the SWC and going to the Cotton Bowl, they only had good home attendance when they hosted Texas or Texas A&M and (sometimes) Arkansas. Otherwise they were reporting under 20,000 per game.

The city of Houston is an NFL town first, a Longhorn town second, and an Aggie town third. The Houston Cougars couldn't get any traction with football fans in their city even when they were playing in a major conference and had one of the best teams in the country.

(11-01-2010 10:45 AM)Villecard Wrote:  If the BEN is going to be created, it has to offer other/new major markets for viewership. We know and the BE knows that it won't own any of them, but there will be value in creating the BEN if it will offer new markets.

(11-01-2010 10:06 AM)buckaineer Wrote:  "By adding TCU and Houston, the Big East would gain TV viewership in two significant markets (Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston) and give football programs a recruiting toehold in talent-rich Texas."

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/sports/college/f...z142mPAFEp

This quote from the article is dead on to what the conference is looking at. Notice they state "the BE would GAIN TV viewership in two significant markets", Not that the BE would OWN those markets. They don't have to.

and any expansion candidates must offer new markets to the league by the commish's own words. Why-because tv markets are the key to increasing BE revenues which is the first or second most important part of expansion.

(11-01-2010 10:27 AM)TigerPete Wrote:  

(11-01-2010 10:01 AM)Bob Barker Wrote:  West Virginia AD, Oliver Luck is very familiar with Houston from his days running the Houston Dynamo and the Houston Sports Authority. His opinion will outweigh yours, TigerPete.

Great comeback Barker. So we can't have opinions...you have no idea who I am.

Last year Houston went 10-4 and averaged 25,242 in football attendance. By the way their basketball averaged 3,202. They don't support! But you and Oliver are right they are a great candidate:)

Not to say the BE won't add them....it would just be a mistake.

Never said that you couldn't have an opinion, I said that Luck's opinion would outweigh yours. It'll outweigh mine and outweigh everyone else on a message board.

This year, Houston is having an average season after losing Keenum and has sold out the stadium each game. Granted, it's a small stadium, but 32k is much better than last year and season ticket sales more than doubled this year.

Announcements about lead donors for the new football stadium are expected in November and the basketball arena will be refurbished. All but 2 UH games are on TV this season (Texas State and SMiss not on TV) and it's TV dollars that's driving today's collegiate landscape.

Last year's basketball attendance was bad as people voted to not support Tom Penders. There's a new coach and staff in place this year. Will that lead to a jump in ticket sales? I don't know. Rome wasn't built in a day, but it's a new era in UH athletics and we're building something special.

I would love to see ECU in the Big East. They can play with anyone in the league, but does ECU bring in enough TV dollars to justify membership? No.

(11-01-2010 10:56 AM)Wedge Wrote:  

(11-01-2010 10:41 AM)DFW HOYA Wrote:  

(11-01-2010 10:33 AM)buckaineer Wrote:  Houston is looking at building a brand new football stadium with much higher capacity. Their current stadium doesn't hold much more if any more than that average. I wouldn't go to basketball games either if the league games consisted of teams like ECU and Tulane and Southern Miss. In the Big East, their attendance would increase as it has for every team added to the league.

I think Houston would rather play in Reliant Stadium for a few years first and rebuild the base before building a stadium. The reason they moved back on-campus was the declining numbers in the Astrodome as a result of the collsapse of the SWC.

Forget Houston. Don't even think about them for the Big East.

Houston's attendance in the Astrodome was always lousy. Awhile back someone posted a link to a media guide with their reported historical attendance figures. Even in the 1970s when they were winning the SWC and going to the Cotton Bowl, they only had good home attendance when they hosted Texas or Texas A&M and (sometimes) Arkansas. Otherwise they were reporting under 20,000 per game.

The city of Houston is an NFL town first, a Longhorn town second, and an Aggie town third. The Houston Cougars couldn't get any traction with football fans in their city even when they were playing in a major conference and had one of the best teams in the country.

The University of Houston is making major strides and has a lot of money to spend (i.e. to build a new stadium). They are on the BEasts radar so it doesn't matter what we think here. Many BE areas have pro teams in them. Pitt, Cincy, USF, Rutgers, etc. etc.

(11-01-2010 08:57 AM)CitrusUCF Wrote:  Even though I love to loathe ECU, they are a much better candidate than Villanova/Temple. ECU, despite their small market, draws well and they televise well. If given a BCS opportunity, they'd instantly eclipse Wake and Duke (for football anyway) in NC and be on par with NC State. Plus their football is, you know, good...unlike Temple and Villanova (in terms of having to move up for them). Philly isn't a college town for football and Temple/Nova aren't going to change that. Better to take what ECU gets you in Raleigh and the Tidewater (which is at least something since MASN picks up their games).

We have eclipsed Duke and Wake a long time ago. We are the #3 team in NC.