RE: Big East vs AAC Attendance
Steve, I will also miss the old rivalries. In fact, at UConn we will miss them a lot more than you will at Georgetown because we have none of them left. (We don't have any real rivalry with Cincinnati or USF.)
This mess was all created by the desire of the power football conferences to control all the money in college sports and by the inability of eastern football to ever get its act together. They didn't want to be associated with you or any of the other Catholic schools, Or UConn either, So I say f***k them.
There's really no way to turn back the clock. Those days are gone forever. I won't really miss the recent Big East monstrosity. It was way too big. Many schools will come to regret these super conferences that are really only bargaining conglomerates for TV money.
Having been around for the entirety of Big East history, the league was at its best when it was smaller. There were really only 5 very good programs when it got started - Syracuse, Georgetown, St. John's, Villanova, and BC. One of the things that was fun was to watch Providence, Seton Hall, and UConn build their programs until the conference truly became a free for all. That really wasn't able to happen when the conference expanded.
College basketball has grown so much in the last 35 years. Football conferences like the SEC, the Big 8, and the Southwest Conference who didn't care about basketball (with the obvious exceptions) now are deep in good basketball programs and truly are power basketball leagues. It's a much more competitive landscape.
That was discouraging back in the '90's when it seemed that the little guy was getting squeezed out. But the past decade has been much more encouraging. Instead of just UMass, UNLV, and Cincinnati getting to the Final Four from outside the power conferences, we saw CUSA rejuvenated for a while, the Big East strong once again, and true mid majors like George Mason, VCU, Wichita State, and Butler getting to the Final Four. All that's been missing is a mid major winning a national championship - unless we consider the pre-football UConn NC teams to be outside the power football conferences.
The new Big East for me represents an opportunity. That's it. An opportunity. By bringing together most of the best non-football, basketball-first schools in the country, they can hopefully command the dollars they need to compete. My only disappointment is that they were too selective in whom they included. If it really is going to be the best basketball conference in the country that doesn't play football, they needed to get VCU in there. That is an emerging program that has success written all over it. Like everyone else, I dream of Gonzaga as well. If only they were 1000 miles closer.
Those are the reasons why I'm upbeat. I'm hoping that history can repeat itself. Basketball has always been the sport for the little guys in college sports. Nowhere was that more evident historically than in the East. Other regions of the country had the same old schools winning championships in the early tournament years that are winning them today. Ohio State was runner up in the first NCAA and they were back in the Final Four 2 years ago. Kentucky, Kansas, Morth Carolina . . . It gets boring.
But the East was always about someone new and interesting. Some school on a campus that you didn't necessarily need a bus to get around. Schools like Temple (a private school back then), LIU, St. John's, Holy Cross, Seton Hall, and LaSalle. CCNY, a commuter school, was the 1950 version of VCU. The Big East brought it all back in the '80's with Georgetown, Villanova, St. John's, and Syracuse. UConn emerged. It was mostly the new kids on the block, not the same old faces. They were fresh.
Ten came the football issues. Ugh. I wish they had all just gotten on the same page and gone off in their own all sports league. It would have spared everyone a lot of pain. They might have been the ones poaching the ACC instead of the other way around.
So, I like this new league because it's what I've always liked about Eastern basketball. New, fresh, and interesting. The little guys taking on the big guys.
IMO, the AAC. Is nothing but a bunch of power football wannabe's who are deluding themselves into thinking that they can actually achieve that. They can't. The game is rigged. The deck is stacked against them. A few like UConn, Cincinnati, Memphis, and Temple have a history of basketball-first and understand that is their ticket to national recognition. But they are being tempted by the siren song of football. I'm sure that there will be those among them who compromise their basketball mission in an effort to chase the football dollars and who will fail at both in the process. Hopefully one or two of them can be the Kentucky and/or the Kansas of the group and keep basketball as their priority. But I believe that the AAC will be what the SEC and the Big XII once were - football-centric leagues that don't care about basketball with only one or two exceptions.
Give me the Big East. That's where true college basketball fans in this region will be able to enjoy the sport.
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