This makes sense to me. Stay connected with Uconn, Cincy Temple and Memphis as long as possible, but build the conference around great basketball. This is a good basketball conference and can survive future football defections should they occur. Any of the football schools leaving will not destabilize the conference in the future and we're still the Big East.
I'd substitute St. Louis for Dayton to get a much bigger TV market, but the rest looks good (I think G'Town and Nova would be in the same division though). As for the West Coast (assuming this is for BB only and not all sports), I'd include San Diego St., Creighton and BYU. However, I think when the Pac 12 expands to 16, they're going to grab both San Diego St. and BYU along with UNLV and Fresno St.
I get this mindset, but who cares? Let the games on the court dictate that. If we have a league where 10/12 teams are NCAA quality, isn't that a good thing? If we beat each other up a bit, even if we only end up with 7-8 bids, that's still damn impressive. And if the league is really that good, look back at 1991. Didn't the Big East get 7/9 or 7/10 teams into the Big Dance?
We need a quality product to sell, and if 70-80% of our games are good enough to draw national attention, that's a product worth selling, as opposed to only having Marquette/Georgetown to sell 2-3 times per year.
BrewCity77,
Well, I tried what you suggested and offered some opinion on that other site that shall not be named. I think I've filled my quota for now.
Why would UConn, Cincy, etc. want to be in a conference with basketball schools driving the bus? As it stands, there will be a conference of the following schools. Temple, Memphis, Houston, USF, UCF, UConn, Cincy, SMU, and Tulane. Assuming they move ECU to full membership, that's a 10 team conference. Why would they park their other sports in another conference???
Honest question:
How important is football to Temple and Memphis? Maybe they park football in that conference, then play the rest of their sports in the Big East. Also, how much TV money would that conference attract? They could have the best of both worlds by getting tv money in that conference, and hoops money in the Big East.
To me, if I am running a school that is playing football, you have to be all-in. That is your primary money earner. So you stick with your football partners.
While Temple has reached a couple recent bowl games, I don't think it's very important. They've been to 4 bowl games in their history. The last time they were in the Big East they simply couldn't compete and were booted because of it. And in the past 3 years, they've had 2 coaches depart to bigger jobs. There is absolutely no way anyone will look at adding them for their football quality. The ACC may take them if they have to, but they're pretty bad. I think playing in the MAC or C-USA is far more their speed.
Memphis had a few good years, going to 5 bowl games in 6 years from 03-08. Since then they've fallen fast, and I'm pretty sure the FedEx dollars are going more to the basketball side than football. They're a mid-tier C-USA team at best and will probably be a Big East bottom feeder even with the questionable additions. I can only see the ACC taking them as a desperation move. It'd have to get pretty bad before that happened.