I learned a lesson a couple weeks ago on this site. Someone said that you must play every team in your division if a conference championship is to be held. That is great in a 12 team conference. You get five divisional games and three cross divisional games. You get to play everyone every other year. That works just fine. However expand to 14 and it's 6 and 2. You see teams cross divisional far less. Go to 16 teams and it's a 7 and 1 (or 2 with 9 conf. games). At this point you see teams from the other side so rarely, why even have a conference? Am I way off base here? I think at this point I'd rather stick with 12 teams (that's if navy leaves after several years of 2-10 records). Would you rather be 12, 14, or 16?

I agree.

I kinda prefer the B12 with just 10 teams, you do a round robin and see everyone on your home turf every other season. I like their basketball schedule even more, home and home with everyone every year. It's so much easier to foster rivalries that way. But I digress, that was not your question, if I had to choose I'd say 12, but 14 is fine if we go to 9 conference games. Hate the idea of 16, other than making it easy to lay out some fantasyland playoff bracket to a National Title that will never happen, I've never understood the point of that many teams in one conference if they hardly ever play each other.

Prefer 12, as the pie is split less ways etc. but with 14 you have a little security if anyone leaves. The only positive with 16 is you can have a true East West conference split easier or west and Academies. Thus keeping the traditional Big East teams East of the Mississippi happy and vise versa with less travel etc..

I think the major proponents are the fans of teams in the west, particularly Boise State and San Diego State. They want some additional schools within their part of the country so they can travel.

I think 12 is perfect but in the Big East situation I can see why they would go to 14 in case down the road those with wondering eyes bolt . You are covered for your championship game still with defections of 1-2 teams.

16 is just ridiculous

The pod system works wonders if the divisions have flexibity and the pods can move from division A to B every other year or every two years, because you would play everybody over 2 seasons. Otherwise, you are stuck with a 7-2 split, and that is killing former rivalries in the SEC.

In a perfect world I like 12. When you go to 14 you need to play 14 conference games unless you view each division as its own conference. For example, the Big East's six holdovers join with Navy while all the other new members form another division.

I prefer 10 first, then 12, then 14, then 16. But 14 seems to be what we'll have.

It depends. Aresco seems to think BYU and Navy make the contract larger giving the members more money. If no one raised the profit for the teams in the conference than we would not be expanding any farther.
My guess is BYU adds value and 2 the academies together add value. Probably why he wants to get all 3 of them. Navy by itself is probably like Air Force by itself. I mean Air Force did not help the MWC contract and BYU did not stick around long enough to find out their value to that conference. My thinking is playing a MWC schedule without TCU and Utah actually lowered BYU's value.
I say BYU is important because Navy and SDSU football did not really add anything aside from market penetration. It basically took money from the other Big East school members. BYU helps get some of the money back and Aresco will have to get the 3 academies together in order to make the Navy invite financially viable.

I don't think Aresco has ever been quoted as saying he wants all 3 academies. Only the media have said that, but did not quote Aresco. I still think he's planning to add only one, preferably, for him, BYU.

(10-09-2012 03:55 PM)War Torn Ruston Wrote:  ..... and Aresco will have to get the 3 academies together in order to make the Navy invite financially viable.

Don't think thats the case at all.

(10-09-2012 03:57 PM)TripleA Wrote:  I don't think Aresco has ever been quoted as saying he wants all 3 academies. Only the media have said that, but did not quote Aresco. I still think he's planning to add only one, preferably, for him, BYU.

To add, I haven't seen in print where BYU themselves have said having all three academies would tip the scale. Could have been your standard blowing smoke up everyone's ass answer about the academies. No one ever says anything bad about them publicly, so for all we know BYU (if they said anything) could have been giving the standard cliché answer that every school gives. There's no context.

While I am not a big proponent of the permanent cross division rival thing (it does not make sense for most of the Big East), it can be done rather easily with nine conference games. Play your permanent rival every year, and play two games cross division each year, and you play everyone every third year. Or, the better option, make permanent rivals only as needed/wanted. And before the schedules are finalized, give teams the option to trade cross division opponents. It can be done. It is not as symetrical as 12 teams with nine games, but it can be done.

(10-09-2012 04:04 PM)Lord2FLI Wrote:  

(10-09-2012 03:57 PM)TripleA Wrote:  I don't think Aresco has ever been quoted as saying he wants all 3 academies. Only the media have said that, but did not quote Aresco. I still think he's planning to add only one, preferably, for him, BYU.

To add, I haven't seen in print where BYU themselves have said having all three academies would tip the scale. Could have been your standard blowing smoke up everyone's ass answer about the academies. No one ever says anything bad about them publicly, so for all we know BYU (if they said anything) could have been giving the standard cliché answer that every school gives. There's no context.

The Salt Lake Tribune's BYU beat writer, in response to Brett McMurphy's report that the Big East was looking at BYU, Air Force and Army, wrote that having all 3 service academies would be a carrot to BYU (albeit in conjunction with the real shotgun of home TV rights):

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/blogsbyuspo...l.html.csp

(10-09-2012 03:26 PM)army56mike Wrote:  I learned a lesson a couple weeks ago on this site. Someone said that you must play every team in your division if a conference championship is to be held. That is great in a 12 team conference. You get five divisional games and three cross divisional games. You get to play everyone every other year. That works just fine. However expand to 14 and it's 6 and 2. You see teams cross divisional far less. Go to 16 teams and it's a 7 and 1 (or 2 with 9 conf. games). At this point you see teams from the other side so rarely, why even have a conference? Am I way off base here? I think at this point I'd rather stick with 12 teams (that's if navy leaves after several years of 2-10 records). Would you rather be 12, 14, or 16?

http://csnbbs.com/showthread.php?tid=577135

I asked the same question and feel it's stupid unless you're just trying to create a league of super powers, I mean the bluebloods and/or programs that play in front of at least 80,000 like A&M, Texas, Michigan, Tennessee, Ohio State, etc...

Otherwise, it just throws off the balance of the league, hurts/kills rivalries and that extra market you're adding is not as helpful when the pot is thinned because two extra teams are coming in. That's why on one hand it made sense for the ACC to add Norte Dame but not Pitt and syracuse, granted that was very much a cause and effect scenario.

(10-09-2012 04:17 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(10-09-2012 04:04 PM)Lord2FLI Wrote:  

(10-09-2012 03:57 PM)TripleA Wrote:  I don't think Aresco has ever been quoted as saying he wants all 3 academies. Only the media have said that, but did not quote Aresco. I still think he's planning to add only one, preferably, for him, BYU.

To add, I haven't seen in print where BYU themselves have said having all three academies would tip the scale. Could have been your standard blowing smoke up everyone's ass answer about the academies. No one ever says anything bad about them publicly, so for all we know BYU (if they said anything) could have been giving the standard cliché answer that every school gives. There's no context.

The Salt Lake Tribune's BYU beat writer, in response to Brett McMurphy's report that the Big East was looking at BYU, Air Force and Army, wrote that having all 3 service academies would be a carrot to BYU (albeit in conjunction with the real shotgun of home TV rights):

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/blogsbyuspo...l.html.csp

So it's the coach that likes the idea? How does this translate into a carrot for the school itself? Some people are making some pretty serious assumptions.

Expanding for the sake of expanding is rarely a good idea unless you literally need to add members in order to function as a conference.

I think 16 members is certainly possible if the Big East gets all of BYU, Air Force and Army. Other than that specific scenario, though, I doubt that we would see a 16-team league unless (1) the Catholic schools split off and (2) it becomes an all-sports league with a geographic east/west alignment for every sport. I know that looks unwieldy at face value, but a geographic alignment would ease travel concerns considerably for all sports (it would almost be like 2 separate leagues for the East and West).

(10-09-2012 04:33 PM)Lord2FLI Wrote:  

(10-09-2012 04:17 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(10-09-2012 04:04 PM)Lord2FLI Wrote:  

(10-09-2012 03:57 PM)TripleA Wrote:  I don't think Aresco has ever been quoted as saying he wants all 3 academies. Only the media have said that, but did not quote Aresco. I still think he's planning to add only one, preferably, for him, BYU.

To add, I haven't seen in print where BYU themselves have said having all three academies would tip the scale. Could have been your standard blowing smoke up everyone's ass answer about the academies. No one ever says anything bad about them publicly, so for all we know BYU (if they said anything) could have been giving the standard cliché answer that every school gives. There's no context.

The Salt Lake Tribune's BYU beat writer, in response to Brett McMurphy's report that the Big East was looking at BYU, Air Force and Army, wrote that having all 3 service academies would be a carrot to BYU (albeit in conjunction with the real shotgun of home TV rights):

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/blogsbyuspo...l.html.csp

So it's the coach that likes the idea? How does this translate into a carrot for the school itself? Some people are making some pretty serious assumptions.

BYU definitely has a strong relationship with Air Force specifically. I don't know of any real history between BYU and Army.

(10-09-2012 04:35 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  Expanding for the sake of expanding is rarely a good idea unless you literally need to add members in order to function as a conference.

I think 16 members is certainly possible if the Big East gets all of BYU, Air Force and Army. Other than that specific scenario, though, I doubt that we would see a 16-team league unless (1) the Catholic schools split off and (2) it becomes an all-sports league with a geographic east/west alignment for every sport. I know that looks unwieldy at face value, but a geographic alignment would ease travel concerns considerably for all sports (it would almost be like 2 separate leagues for the East and West).

In fact there was pod system discussion when the CUSA-MWC combination was still being discussed. Pods of four or five with some cross over games and permanent rival games as I recall. That 'conference' would have had 20 plus teams.