(02-25-2013 12:36 PM)#41 Wrote: Fill in the blank:
The Big East's decision to turn down the $1billion TV deal was the dumbest sports-related decision since _____________.
That's actually a very hard question to answer depending upon your perspective and assumptions (and actually sets up a pretty interesting exercise in game theory). Obviously if you are talking about the Big East as an entity, it ended up being a terrible decision compared to where they are now. But who's to say they wouldn't have had the same defections (and been essentially forced into the same adds) even if they signed the original tv deal - which probably would have nullified the deal and put them in the same place they are now anyway?
But I still think if they could have held together at least the football schools and maybe made a couple of smart adds (e.g. TCU, Boise), each of the football schools might just have topped what many of them are getting now in the ACC in a new tv deal which would have made it a good decision to not sign the original deal and see the process out in the Big East (
provided everyone else did too). Obviously we'll never know though nor will we know what would have happened in re-alignment had Pitt and Syracuse not gotten the ball rolling when they did.
But since things didn't happen that way, for every school that landed in the ACC it was a great decision (at least in terms of isolated financial results comparison) for each of them. Same for those in the Big 10 and Big 12 again in terms of final financial result - although that money does come with some potentially very difficult trade-offs and who knows if things would have played out the same had the Big East signed the original tv deal.
I'd have to look at the terms of the original tv deal to see if passing on it was a good deal for the C7. I'm guessing it wasn't, at least under the conference method for splitting money among the non-football schools (didn't they essentially count basketball and football as equals which they financially arent'). On the other hand, they may have tried to change the financial methodology and the C7 has gained its autonomy to act in its best interests. Plus we don't know exactly what their new contract will look like (also exit fees and NCAA credits) so I think it's still to be determined whether not signing the original tv deal was ultimately good or bad for them.
Which leaves UC, UConn and USF as really being the only schools (C7 pending) for whom the decision was awful as far as how things have worked out so far. Perhaps adding to the UC pain, even though they weren't involved in the original Big East decision to pass on the tv deal, it is also shaping up as a great decision for XU, Butler and/or whoever else the C7 end up adding.
To me though, the primary catalyst in the demise of the Big East was Pitt and Syracuse leaving when they did (yes it was after passing on the original deal but much more importantly they left before finding out what they could have gotten in the new tv deal). In addition to incentivizing other Big East schools to leave, their move to the ACC incentivized other conferences to also expansion (both to strengthen and to be pre-emptive) which directly and indirectly all dominoed to decimate the Big East. I think if those 2 stayed at least until the new tv contract was finalized, there's a good chance the other schools would have as well. And depending upon the results of that new contract, we might have a VERY different conference landscape than we currently do.