(09-26-2013 08:54 AM)stever20 Wrote: I think one major question is does the Fox contract require the Big East to be up to 12 schools by a certain year? I've seen some posters indicate this. That would kind of eliminate #3 and change everything.
I highly doubt that there's a *requirement* to that effect. There's a litany of negative legal issues that arise for the Big East and Fox to actually put it into a contract, so I don't think that their respective lawyers would be crazy/dumb enough to include that type of provision. What's more likely is a look-in or a commitment by Fox that they'll keep the per school payments at the same level if there's expansion (so any expansion decision would be revenue neutral).
However, there are certainly some reasons to expand outside of the TV context. For instance, adding some scale by going up to 12 teams can even out the results of the league year-to-year. Final Fours are nice for the league, but aren't as important as making sure that 3 to 5 schools from the league are making it to the NCAA Tournament every single year. As we saw with the Pac-10 prior to expansion (where their headliners of UCLA and Arizona hit a rough patch at the same time a few years ago), there's no margin for error in a 10-team league when your marquee programs falter. 12 schools give you more of a buffer (even if those additional 2 schools aren't world-beaters). Exposure in other new markets and recruiting areas is another factor in expansion.
Here's the thing: if you ask fans, players and coaches, they'll probably overwhelmingly tell you that they love a 10-school conference where you can play a double round robin. It's incredibly desirable for pure
on-the-court interests. The problem is that this concept increasingly looks like a relic in today's world where realignment is driven by
off-the-court interests. Virtually every interest off-the-court (TV networks, university presidents looking for more institutional exposure, sponsors, Madison Square Garden, etc.) are going to have very heavy incentives to expand to 12. If there's one thing that we should have learned by now in conference realignment, it's that the voices of the fans, players and coaches are basically irrelevant in the decisions. This is about the interests of university presidents and TV network executives off-the-court (and they, as a rule, take a "bigger is better" approach).
To be sure, getting bigger isn't better in and of itself, but all things being equal, there's still more risk in being too small than being too large. This is today's college sports reality. That's why I don't think the Big East will end up waiting very long for expansion. It will happen sooner rather than later.