Memphis & Cincy To Leave AAC for Big 12

@McMurphyESPN: Every person I spoke to today that’s from Big 12 or Big 12 school: league is not expanding
 
I never understood why St Louis wasn't invited to the Big East, always seemed like a perfect fit to me especially with the St. Louis market
 
If the Big10 would foolishly take Rutgers, they would foolishly take UConn as well.

Short term thinking: We got lotsa eyeballs on our network!

Long term outcome: Nobody wants to watch awful football.

The UCONN AD is a former U of Michigan football player.

I am confused. I thought this was about the Big 12 (think Baylor and TCU) adding these teams. Not the BIG.

Big 12 makes sense so they can have 14 teams, split them in divisions, and have a conference championship game. That bit them in the arse this year.

Big 12 only has ten teams now. The Big 10 I believe has 14. Makes a lot of sense. I miss the old Southwest Conference.
 
I never understood why St Louis wasn't invited to the Big East, always seemed like a perfect fit to me especially with the St. Louis market

Pretty sure it's a done deal. The league just wanted to stagger invites over a couple years.
 
I never understood why St Louis wasn't invited to the Big East, always seemed like a perfect fit to me especially with the St. Louis market

Pretty sure it's a done deal. The league just wanted to stagger invites over a couple years.

What's the rush?
 
@McMurphyESPN: Every person I spoke to today that’s from Big 12 or Big 12 school: league is not expanding

Hopefully everyone he asked is a liar, and not that the league is that stupid. If they had a conference championship, OSU wouldn't have leapt the Big 12 champ.

They'd better expand soon or risk losing the Longhorns.
 
No power conference will take Texas because Texas doesn't want to share the proceeds from the Longhorn network. Pac-12 turned UT down when they wanted to much revenue split. OU, OKst, and A&M were going to join if Texas was going to share.
 
@McMurphyESPN: Every person I spoke to today that’s from Big 12 or Big 12 school: league is not expanding

Hopefully everyone he asked is a liar, and not that the league is that stupid. If they had a conference championship, OSU wouldn't have leapt the Big 12 champ.

They'd better expand soon or risk losing the Longhorns.


I'd agree they need to expand to get a conference championship but Memphis and Cincy would be awful. Just awful. For football at least.
 
I never understood why St Louis wasn't invited to the Big East, always seemed like a perfect fit to me especially with the St. Louis market

Because balance of power would shift to the Midwest, but unfortunately that's where our like-members are located.
 
@McMurphyESPN: Every person I spoke to today that’s from Big 12 or Big 12 school: league is not expanding

Hopefully everyone he asked is a liar, and not that the league is that stupid. If they had a conference championship, OSU wouldn't have leapt the Big 12 champ.

They'd better expand soon or risk losing the Longhorns.


I'd agree they need to expand to get a conference championship but Memphis and Cincy would be awful. Just awful. For football at least.

They should have tried to steal FSU, Miami, Clemson, and Louisville for starters, and created a 16-team league with an Eastern-ish division.

Then hoped the SEC would steal Va. Tech and N.C. State and kill the ACC.
 
I still hope that the football stuff shakes out leaving UConn without a chair at the football big table, that they park their football program someplace and return to the BE for hoops.
 
Dayton
St. Louis

This is what it will end up being, but UConn and someone like Memphis would have been much sexier.

I hope you're wrong. I have zero interest in having Dayton in the BE. As it is, Xavier has a sizable enough task competing with OSU and Cincinnati for Ohio region talent, and elevating an "un-sexy," basically mid-major program like Dayton to the BE would only make things tougher for the Musketeers. Leave Ohio to Xavier and avoid the risk of watering down their talent pool. As for St. Louis, they leave me cold regardless of fan support. As I see it, we have enough Midwest-based teams as is. Let's keep the Big East firmly entrenched in the East. And if that means possibly taking back the much-hated UConn Huskies, so be it. (And let's face it, we hate them because they've been consistently much better than we've been for a long time.)
 
Dayton
St. Louis

This is what it will end up being, but UConn and someone like Memphis would have been much sexier.

I hope you're wrong. I have zero interest in having Dayton in the BE. As it is, Xavier has a sizable enough task competing with OSU and Cincinnati for Ohio region talent, and elevating an "un-sexy," basically mid-major program like Dayton to the BE would only make things tougher for the Musketeers. Leave Ohio to Xavier and avoid the risk of watering down their talent pool. As for St. Louis, they leave me cold regardless of fan support. As I see it, we have enough Midwest-based teams as is. Let's keep the Big East firmly entrenched in the East. And if that means possibly taking back the much-hated UConn Huskies, so be it. (And let's face it, we hate them because they've been consistently much better than we've been for a long time.)


See but there is a difference between longing for teams like UConn and discussing teams that are actually a realistic possibility. To me Dayton is not "un-sexy" as you say. They have an amazing fan base and a great home court advantage. The battle for Ohio would be a great thing for the big east with Dayton/Xavier playing twice a year. An incredible rivalry that I think recruits in area will want to be a part of and thus making both teams strong.

St Louis again is another great fan base that fits into the conference perfectly. In a perfect world all of these teams would line up the east coast to fit the name, but teams like Texas A&M are in the South Eastern Confernece now. We must make moves for the better of the conference and for its future.
 
For UConn to join the BE again i think they would have to drop their football program or go to 1AA or whatever its called nowadays. They were trying to go to the ACC behind the scenes before the Big East split and were left at the altar when everyone else found a new home. I think they would be looking to jump ship at the first opportunity hey got if they came here and still had big time football.

And lets be honest, their football program has been an embarrassment of enormous proportions - if they dropped it or made it 1AA, would it really matter to them?

The fan base would be foaming at the mouth to rejoin the Big East for basketball after playing in the AAC this year. UConn/Nova, UConn SJU and UConn GTown just has way more juice than UConn/Temple, UConn/Memphis and UConn Cinci.
 
Back to the football...I'm reading where IF the Big 12 expands, Boise State and BYU would be the most likely to join because of Boise's success and BYU's national fan base. Air Force is also an option. Several other schools mentioned...but no Memphis or Cincy. It's all about the football dollars...not great basketball.
 
And lets be honest, their football program has been an embarrassment of enormous proportions - if they dropped it or made it 1AA, would it really matter to them?


Yes and No. About ten years ago when they moved to 1A, the uconn fanbase in the beginning disliked the idea of having a 1A program because they thought the school should focus on the basketball programs which at that time did not have a practice facility. Then when the football program started experiencing success with an appearance of the fiesta bowl in 2011 ppl started jumping on the bandwagon. The state of Connecticut would be the one who would not be happy if they dropped to 1aa because they built the stadium for the school specifically because uconn was moving to 1A. They also invested in a new coach last year and built a football practice facility
 
Well, UAB came to their senses. They dropped football when it became economically infeasible.
When you are not in a power 5 conference, it nearly is just that. Now with the cost of attendance being discussed another 100 football players on scholarship with these figures of around $5K per athlete
you are going to be underwater very soon. Besides the power conferences will embrace these costs and use them as a recruiting tool. That is why Val Ackerman stated the Big East will duplicate the costs of the power 5, whatever they are so they will not lose recruits. This thing is still not settled but a lot of
machinations are going on.at these conferences. UCONN is in trouble if Memphis and Cinnci do leave.
 
Back
Top