Big East Linkage: May 25
by Patrick_the_Ruminator on May 25, 2011 6:19 PM EDT
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PrintBig East Linkage is a news roundup feature on BECB. Feel free to send us any relevant links, stories or posts you think might be interesting to readers at bigeastcoastbias at gmail dot com.
Sure you heard about Dana Holgorsen's visit to the casino....and the statement about it, but there was other things going on around the Big East too.
Rutgers lost their only 2012 basketball commitment today when Jordan Goodman changed his mind.
Initial Reports Were Wrong: Florida running back Mike Blakely will not be following his teammate Chris Dunkley to South Florida. Instead, Blakely will now go to the Auburn Tigers. He has to sit out the year and will be able to play on scholarship in 2012.
Starting Our Own March Madness: The Big East basketball coaches would like all 17 teams in the Big East basketball tournament next year. We need to just split the football and basketball teams add 15 more basketball teams and start our own post-season tournament. TCU and DePaul as the default play-in game has already been suggested.
Reset the Days Without an Arrest Counter: Pittsburgh's backup quarterback Anthony Gonzalez was arrested for marijuana possession. Gonzalez was suspended indefinitely by Todd Graham. Syracuse wide receiver Jarrod West was also cited for underage drinking at the same time as Gonazlez.
Bulls Scare Off the Gators: That's the story we are sticking to. In any event, South Florida won't be playing Florida in 2015. The teams are still under contract to play but a new date has not been said.
Expansion, UGH: From the Twitter of Brett McMurphy of CBS: "One way to keep Big East from splitting? Source tells me by adding Navy, Army as football members. Story soon." Big East Coast Bias' response is to sack John Marinatto as commissioner right now. He's done. McMurphy followed the tweet up with a story. A source told McMurphy "I believe the will approach the service academies first and if they turn the Big East down, then they'll approach the other candidates." "Other candidates" such as Houston, UCF, East Carolina and Villanova should be contacted first as far as we are concerned.
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Rutgers
Do you think this decommitment opens up the door for Momo Jones to transfer in from Arizona? Food for thought
House Of Sparky: An Arizona State Sun Devils blog
SBN Arizona: The ultimate destination for Arizona sports coverage
According to Dermon Player, Jones also received interest from
Seton Hall, UConn, Hofstra and Iona. Rutgers might as well make a run at him too.
by Patrick_the_Ruminator on May 25, 2011 6:56 PM EDT up reply actions
According to Player
Momo also is receiving interest from Siena as well
by OJthecuseman on May 26, 2011 12:27 AM EDT up reply actions
At first I thought WTF
But then I remembered that all that matters when adding teams is money. And Army/Navy could be the perfect teams to bring in money. Fans with no rooting interest in the Big East at all might tune into a game just because they would want to see them win. On top of those viewers, there would also be the viewers that are strictly fans of other schools, but are veterans of Army/Navy. Where they would have no interest in Big East football previously, they would now at least care when Army/Navy is playing.
Also, neither team has been to the BCS. I would be willing to bet there would be a lot of viewers watching and hoping that either of these teams would win to go to a BCS game. UConn going to their first BCS game? Meh. Army or Navy going to their first BCS game would be special.
Service academies = prestige
I’d think twice about comparing the academies unfavorably to the CUSA dreck people are proposing. ECU, Houston, UCF… vomit.
The best available option for TV markets and football prestige is to add BYU as all-sports and stay at 10/18. The next best [in my opinion] is to add all three academies, thus bringing the entire C-in-C trophy under the league’s umbrella.
If neither of these things can happen, stay at 9.
If you want to destroy whatever is left the league’s football brand and add several extra unprofitable mouths to feed, call Houston & ECU.
at this point
I have trouble figuring out what is the crazier idea: adding Nova or adding Army/Navy. They’re all bad additions, with bad football (Navy has been decent lately but still poor for an AQ; and even Navy would torpedo the Big East’s AQ calculation numbers), low levels of prestige, and little reason to think any would likely improve all that much (Nova is a fairly small church school [undergrad pop < TCU]; service academies will always have trouble recruiting due to being service academies). Honestly, I don’t see why staying at 9 is so hard to swallow.
Unless the league can somehow sell Notre Dame on becoming a football member (VERY doubtful), there’s little incentive to add anyone on the table. Maybe they could make BYU work, but that’d be logistically difficult, and everyone else remotely on the table looks like a very bad idea.
From a non-football performance standpoint adding Army and Navy both make plenty sense.
And these days, on the field performance might not mean as much as having recognizable names and a Championship game. The hope will be that the on-the-field performance rises with greater exposure (ala UConn and USF).
Adding Army/Navy is not a good idea, no matter what you say :)
A point was made about Army/Navy drawing viewership to the Big East. There are approximately 2-3 Army & Navy games televised each year…when they play each other a week after everyone elses season and conference championships have ended (so of course people will watch the only game) and when they play Notre Dame. When you watch these 2-3 games, you wont be thinking about a great Big East matchup or a Big East team taking down Notre Dame.
Chances are by joining the conference, the Army/Navy game will have to be played sooner as the Big East has to finish its season according to the ESPN television contract and conference bowl tie-ins. If its up against other championship games, which game will you watch…an exciting SEC championship or Navy beat Army for the 10th straight time? While everything around the Army/Navy game is great, is it really a great football game that everyone can say they have watched from start to finish? No not really.
By adding more teams, the conference now needs additional bowl tie-ins. By adding teams that will not improve the top portion of the conference, the bowl games that will come along with this will be total crap. Yes, it will be like the BBVA Compass Bowl and the Beef O’Bradys Bowl. Ouch.
Also, by joining a conference, Army and Navy are not going to improve as football teams. They are not going to get better football recruits because they now have a chance at a BCS berth. That is not why someone goes to Army or Navy, nor should it be. However, non-AQ schools would improve in this aspect. They would attract different players who want to play in the BCS and not in C-USA or the MAC. The expansion teams would become better, and the football conference as a whole would become better.
Exactly
this isn’t the video game. Army and Navy aren’t going to the BCS on their own and wouldn’t do it in the Big East unless you forced the other teams to sandbag to make it happen. I wrote an article on going to 12 and having a championship for yahoo today (not published yet) on how not having that extra game can screw you. This year, Oklahoma has to go undefeated and hope everything else works out now that the Big 12 lost their title game.
Beyond the Army and Navy issue, the other teams the Big East is looking to add won’t bring value right away. We aren’t going to get schools that would because we aren’t going to rob another BCS conference of a school. Every BCS conference has bad teams so I’m not worried about the Big East’s AQ status. I know not all of you are numbers people but looking at the four- year F/+ averages, adding ECU, UCF, and Houston is adding the 55th, 57th and 64th best teams. Purdue, Minnesota, Northwestern and Indiana are all worse than that. So are Kansas State, Baylor and Iowa State. And: Washington, Colorado and Washington State, Duke and Vanderbilt. Louisville (66th) and Syracuse (88th) are also worse. I know Mr Pac Ten has different numbers but I haven’t seen your team rankings, maybe you could point me to them?
The value (and I don’t just mean monetary) of having a conference championship, which would have to be an on-campus game due to travel issues, is well worth it to me.
by Patrick_the_Ruminator on May 26, 2011 5:14 PM EDT up reply actions
my 2010 numbers
I’ve got 2009 and 2008 numbers also, though I change my system every offseason so what I wrote in 2008/2009 may or may not apply any longer. I also did a “top 120 teams of 2004-2009” feature last offseason; I’ll probably update that again this offseason now that I have data going back to 2001. If there’s interest, I may do some kind of “program ranking” feature where I put together 3 or 4 year averages by team.
PS CCG’s are great for the financial bottom line, though for national title purposes I think it’s about a wash. You can get situations like Florida 2006 or LSU 2007 where clearly they had a chance to play themselves in, or Oklahoma 2003 where a loss didn’t stop them from going, but you also get 2001 Tennessee, 2007 Mizzou, etc. where they played themselves out.
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