For Funsies: Conference Reallignment/Creation

Cyniclone said:
VIRGILINIA POD
VCU, fur, Davidson, ODU, Marshall

MIDWEST POD
Dayton, Saint Louis, Loyola-Chicago, Northern Kentucky, Belmont

NORTHEAST POD
URI, Buffalo, Bona, St. Joe's, Hofstra

(stretching the rules to get to 15)

Wait-listed (in no order): WKU, UNCG, Charlotte, Charleston, Northern Iowa

Play everyone in your pod twice, everyone else once = 18 games.
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ODU and Marshall have football......and Marshall cares for football much more than basketball. ODU and Marshall in a weak azz conference. ODU basketball sucks and fur has Mooney. That has single bid, 16 seed autobid only written all over it. WTF!
 
Can I please contribute my amateur opinion? I went long winded when I typed. So I will truncate it (still lengthy and I apologize for that) at four of the eight talking points I had. Perhaps I can paste the remaining in the near future, but as a guest here, must remember to be respectful and not overstay the welcome ...

#1, I will first note the very valid concern that you all would have with joining a conference with football (AAC) as a driving force. And, yes, the stability is not guaranteed.

#2, I will say that the long term risk is not as great, however, in my opinion. Since VCU is the premier program in the A-10, an exit would not be via the door of no return. The A-10 is a scrappy smart league that maxes out the best it can. So I interpret they would roll out the red carpet upon your interest in coming back.

#3, and I probably should have spotted this as numero uno ... obviously when/if VCU is invited to the Big East, you jump on it. Perhaps that is more feasible now since UConn has joined. The prior "they don't want any public schools" rumors are now confirmed as bunk.

#4, will comment regarding the discussion above with being upper tier in a very strong league or remaining as a big fish in the smaller pond ... I firmly believe you take the improved league without any reservations. When the Big East suffered raid one from the ACC --- it was also set for instability (but not now as someone above correctly noted). Louisville, Cincinnati, South Florida, DePaul, and Marquette said "Feet don't fail me now, baby!" (lifted from legendary Memphis rasslin manager Jimmy Hart, haha).
 
BaNgMyPrOgRaM said:
Get smart. Stop the travel west of the Mississippi. Say no to SLU, Creighton, Drake, whomever. I'll shoot.

VCU
FURI
Cryers
Bonies
FUMASS
Xavier
Patriots? Colonials? FUR?
davison
villanova
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remeber though, no pulling from the big east. it needs to be focused around tea,s that would actually leave their conference and that we’d actually take in the new conference. Villanova is for sure not leaving the big east.
 
enonram said:
VCU and the other 9 best non-football schools that are geographically close.
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Do you have a potential list of teams? The interesting part about this is this are generally where me and my friends end up but there's always discussion about an east/west scenario. If they're geographically close, how is that measured? 3 hour plain flight? 2 hour bus ride? Which teams do you think fit this scenario that are not in the Big East or AAC?
 
wstwrdxpnsnRAM said:
West:
Gonzaga
BYU
SDSU
Utah State
Colorado State
San Fransisco
Boise State
Pepperdine
Nevada
UCSB

East:
VCU
Drake
Loyola chi
Dayton
SLU
Belmont
URI
Davidson
St Bonaventure
Buffalo

This is my idea of a nationwide super conference which would be really fun to see. Obviously this is only focused on basketball without respect to other sports. Two 10 team divisions where teams play every divisional member once, and 4 divisional teams twice and 4 cross division teams once for 18 game conference season then the top 5 or 6 teams in each division get seeded for the conference tournament and the rest get to enjoy early off season sadness.

Ncaa tournament earnings 40% kept for schools and 60% to be shared among the remaining members.
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This is exactly the type of thought experiment I was looking for. Its interesting because when discussing this outside the forum, my friends and I never considered a "mega" conference like this. We usually end up with a 10 to 14 team league that plays round robin style and either has divisions or stays geographically close. It is also interesting since I think Gonzaga would love to jump ship from that god awful conference they find themselves in. The problem for them is the Pac 12 will never see them as equals and there aren't really a ton of options for them. Save the last few years, I think their conference has been bad for them since they basically play cupcakes in to the NCAA tournament and then generally have struggles in the tournament.

What's the current A10 split? isn't it like 75% for the team and 25% for the conference? I've done no research on it so I don't really know.

Question: Instead of say UCSB, who while they had a good year this year isn't always the greatest, how about Saint Mary's? They seem, at least to me who's done no real research, to be a little more stable than UCSB.
 
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BradRamFan said:
ODU and Marshall have football......and Marshall cares for football much more than basketball. ODU and Marshall in a weak azz conference. ODU basketball sucks and fur has Mooney. That has single bid, 16 seed autobid only written all over it. WTF!
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The Virginia POD is weak, but I do like a number of the other teams listed. I think I would change around a few of the teams but a 3 Pod scenario is interesting.
 
squid1622 said:
The Virginia POD is weak, but I do like a number of the other teams listed. I think I would change around a few of the teams but a 3 Pod scenario is interesting.
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It is not weak, it is pathetic. For one, ODU would take years to recover from the harm that Football has caused them.

This is the problem with exercises like this, people tend to include the "latest and greatest" teams, based on their success of late. But I don't want the team that was good last year, just because they were good last year.

The very best comparison is GMU and VCU. One just had a good year, based on a couple of players. They could not duplicate that success, and still can't. VCU, on the other hand, built on the success, and move up based on total move, not just the one time pop. So, we need to include teams that are not just a flash in the pan, but are good established programs. Sorry, but Drake? Not really.

Most of these programs are one coaching change from falling right back to mediocrity.
 
squid1622 said:
This is exactly the type of thought experiment I was looking for. Its interesting because when discussing this outside the forum, my friends and I never considered a "mega" conference like this. We usually end up with a 10 to 14 team league that plays round robin style and either has divisions or stays geographically close. It is also interesting since I think Gonzaga would love to jump ship from that god awful conference they find themselves in. The problem for them is the Pac 12 will never see them as equals and there aren't really a ton of options for them. Save the last few years, I think their conference has been bad for them since they basically play cupcakes in to the NCAA tournament and then generally have struggles in the tournament.

What's the current A10 split? isn't it like 75% for the team and 25% for the conference? I've done no research on it so I don't really know.

Question: Instead of say UCSB, who while they had a good year this year isn't always the greatest, how about Saint Mary's? They seem, at least to me who's done no real research, to be a little more stable than UCSB.
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You make a good point about Saint Mary’s. I think they could probably swap with UCSB. I was trying to fill in with top 100 KenPom from this year. As far as the A10 split I’m not sure but I seem to remember it’s pretty darn good for the non tournament teams share and that was a big reason we joined but I could be wrong.
 
I recall the vast majority of the A10 NCAATournament $ went to the team(s) that actually played in the tournament. Thought that and much better at large possibilities drove our conference move.
 
VCU
Harlem Globetrotters
Mike Ditka
Monstars
Chuck Norris
Daaaa Bulls
Uncanny Xmen
Algonquin Roundtable
Brieante Weber & his 4 clones
 
If I was in charge, I'd take the top 7 A10 teams, which are below:

VCU
Dayton
SLU
SBU
Davidson
Rhode Island
UR (barely makes the cut, primarily because they do invest a lot of money in their program)

I would then cut the remaining members of the conference. I would then search for basketball-only programs that are better than the ones I cut. Ideally, Wichita State would be my first choice, but for this mental game the rules say I can't include them. In that case, I'd look at the following teams to add:

College of Charleston
Loyola-Chicago
Drake
Winthrop

Those four teams would almost certainly join our newly-formed A10. Of the 12 teams, 8 would be on the east coast, but all would be in the eastern half of the country.
 
I like your list including Winthrop. It will be interesting to see how they fare since Pat Kelsey seems to finally be genuinely exiting (UMass would need consultation). I would also add Murray State and Belmont for consideration.

#5, I think the prior Big East's issues are rather exaggerated --- it was simply the victim of an unavoidable power grab from the ACC. Just like Utah grabbing the Pac-12 invitation, an unavoidable totem pole situation that did not reflect poorly at all on the Mountain West.

#6, this will run counter a bit to #5, but I say without a doubt that the biggest blunder in the history conference membership decisions was made by Tulane when they voluntarily exited the SEC in the 1960's. They could have rode the bus and cashed huge checks for decades more like Vanderbilt. Then firmly believe that most/all of the Big East departures were self inflicted via the second biggest blunder in rejecting Penn State in 1979 and again in 1981.

Did Penn State have a rich hoops history? No, but as one can see from ESPN 30 for 30's Requiem for the Big East, most were also floundering programs until they chose to unite. PSU has by far the largest fanbase, $$$, and TV attractiveness of any in the Northeast. JoePA tried for years to form an eastern league that included Gtown, Nova, and all sports. They should have had their cake and ate it, too.

#7, it the grand finale ... or grand fail ... :-)
Realignment is also laced with cannibalism. Damage your competition while you also improve yourself. There are three conferences in battle with the AAC for at-large bids outside P5 and Big East: A-10, Mountain West, and WCC. I will omit the impact of football since not an issue here (though I do think it is of moderate assistance to Wichita State to have conference branding and publicity prior to November).

Four 4-team pods mainly just playing each other over and over in volleyball, etc-non-revenus, until conference tournaments--- in hoops, 18 games playing pods twice and others once.

I really believe that the dormant third game of Big Monday would be revived with these four in the West pod. It would be neat to stay up to see VCU at Gonzaga ... the three service academies would be football only, spelled by the best hoops programs that might be attainable. In a perfect world, I would also like to have Dayton and St. Louis:

East: Temple, Cincinnati, ECU, VCU/Army
SE: UCF, USF, Tulane, Memphis
SW: Houston, SMU, Tulsa, Wichita State/Navy
West: San Diego State, BYU, Boise State, Gonzaga/Air Force

Thanks!
 
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