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Century (over 100 posts)
The foe long since in silence slept; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps.
Posts: 233
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Post by concord on Nov 7, 2011 23:07:43 GMT -5
This has gone from ridiculous a few months ago to completely absurd now. If this is the best the Big East can muster, we may as well go begging to the ACC for admission as a basketball-only school. That is never going to happen. 0% chance. The hoops-first conference would commence automatically if the Big East football side dissolves. Until then, it would be idiotic to throw away the TV money that Georgetown could earn from a BCS-level Big East TV deal, no matter how ridiculous the configuration of football schools needed to secure said deal. Remember, we don't have to deal with the teams or travel involved in the western expansion, beyond a couple of trips by the basketball team to Texas. And the TV money would keep not only our basketball team but many of Georgetown's other teams afloat and give us money to build the facilities that we need really, really badly. It would honestly be ridiculous and absurd for Georgetown to diverge from this gameplan.
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concord
Century (over 100 posts)
The foe long since in silence slept; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps.
Posts: 233
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Post by concord on Nov 3, 2011 22:45:30 GMT -5
Again, the disadvantage of the BE -- the reason why our commissioners have been powerless to stop the bleeding -- is the inclusion of several basketball-only schools, of which Georgetown is one. The present college sports landscape is 100% controlled by big-time football, and the possibility of Georgetown being one of those big-time football schools has been nil for a very long time. Georgetown fans who believe we have any real leverage in this situation are fully deluding themselves. The only way for a BE commissioner to keep football schools from leaving the BE for the ACC was to find a way to ditch all the basketball schools, and I'm glad that's not what went down. "Band together and form a stronger conference" in a world where college football means everything would mean ditching the basketball schools. How would that serve Georgetown's interests?
Why do optics matter at all? Do "statements and reaction" make any real difference? That's all just window dressing. As long as the BE hangs onto a major television contract, Hoya basketball (and our other teams that depend on the TV income) can continue to thrive and compete for national championships. As a Hoya basketball fan, that is ALL that matters to me. It sucks that some of our traditional rivals ditched us, but they clearly want to be part of all-football conferences and their decisions are driven by football, no matter what their esteemed basketball coaches may want. I think it's abundantly clear that there is nothing we could have done to head that off, unless you have a time machine and a master plan to keep the Georgetown football program a force through the year 2011.
If he is able to pull this off, and land a huge new TV deal -- and I think he has a fighting chance of doing so -- I'm pretty happy with Marinatto. It's not a done deal yet, but whatever universities need to be lined up to make it happen, however far-flung, they're OK with me. I would rather be playing rivalry games against BC and Cuse than traveling to SMU, but our former BE buddies lost interest in us right around the time that TV contracts became completely dictated by football and the realignment frenzy raised the possibility of four all-football super conferences with 64 schools in and everyone else out.
With this week's developments, we seem to be headed for an acceptable outcome. In the range of actually possible, realistic situations, this western expansion is one I can live with and frankly more than I expected from Marinatto. Adding service academies for political cover would be a great benefit as well. Long term, I think we have to expect that Georgetown will be on the outside looking in as all the football schools squeeze the basketball schools out. To catch up after decades of facilities mismanagement so that our basketball could continue to be seriously competitive in that scenario, Georgetown desperately needs to buy some time and bank some money, and I believe the conference leadership may be on the verge of making that happen for us.
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concord
Century (over 100 posts)
The foe long since in silence slept; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps.
Posts: 233
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Post by concord on Nov 3, 2011 21:34:30 GMT -5
Disagree, I won't be giving him very much credit. Whether you think the football schools should have been accomodated or not, the main reason the BE is in this mess is because, under his watch, it didn't do enough to build up football. If the other conferences wanted to, they could have taken Louisville, UConn, Rutgers, Cincy, Mrs. Marinatto, his dog, and anything else they wanted. How exactly was Marinatto supposed to build up football? Add another high-ranking team to the mix? He signed up TCU, and yet two of the league's oldest teams still bolted in a duplicitous manner. What did you expect him to do, land LSU and Alabama? The bigger picture here is that many schools are worried that when the realignment dust settles, there will only be four mega-conferences of 16 teams each (namely, the SEC, ACC, PAC-10 and Big 10) that will divide the BCS pie between them. Marinatto could not make the BE one of those four conferences because the BE is "saddled" (if you look at it from a purely football perspective, as most schools with BCS programs do) with the basketball schools, of which Georgetown is one. Marinatto himself comes from the basketball side and would never jettison Providence and the other non-football schools. We should be happy that a basketball-loyal guy is in charge of this conference or we could find ourselves in the Atlantic 10. Syracuse and Pitt jumped to the ACC because they saw a chance to be one of the 64 and didn't care about anything else beyond getting a piece of the big-time football pie. Other schools that have spent a ton of time and money building up their programs, like WV, Louisville, UConn, and even Villanova, didn't want to go down with a sinking ship. I don't think Marinatto was in a position to prevent any of this, because no big-time program was going to leave one of the four strongest conferences to join us. The weakness of his position wasn't due to any personal failings on his part but the structural disadvantages of the Big East that are directly related to the inclusion of non-football schools like Georgetown. However, we now have a real chance to be part of a league that is BCS-worthy by any statistical measure -- perhaps even more so than before -- and be in a position to land the largest television contract of any conference. Because of our own failure to develop a practicable on-campus arena, much less a practice facility, this is a position we desperately need to be in to maintain not only the basketball team but many Georgetown athletic teams that depend on that television income to survive. I think Cuse, Pitt and WV may regret leaving the Big East, but more importantly, I think Marinatto's maneuvers might have bought enough time to allow Georgetown to build some of the facilities we would desperately need to survive in a worst-case-scenario where we are no longer benefiting from our association with football schools and the TV networks who love them.
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concord
Century (over 100 posts)
The foe long since in silence slept; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps.
Posts: 233
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Post by concord on Nov 3, 2011 15:38:40 GMT -5
Props to Cambridge for taking notes on the Idaho conf. call.
In addition to the good news that BSU is IN pending the joint agreement of Texas schools and other western partners, there was also interesting stuff regarding the massive media contract the BE can expect to obtain in the future -- easily the most critical factor for GU hoops.
So it looks like 2013 is the year for the new-look BE, and that we're going to have a decent shot of staying in a BCS conference for the next decade. GU needs to keep banking that TV money for as long as we can and build some on-campus facilities! Marinatto might just pull this off despite the duplicity of Pitt, Cuse, WV et al.
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concord
Century (over 100 posts)
The foe long since in silence slept; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps.
Posts: 233
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Post by concord on Oct 15, 2011 2:06:34 GMT -5
It's been on the bottom scroll on ESPN for awhile now. Yes I'm watching MLS on this fine Friday night. I spent a little time sleuthing this out and it sounds like Andy Katz is the one reporting it. What kind of sources could that guy possibly have at Boise State?! The articles the Idaho Statesman is putting up tonight seem to indicate Boise State will jump at the BE invite, if extended early next week as expected. www.idahostatesman.com/2011/10/15/1840192/boise-state-reportedly-invited.htmlI really couldn't care less about college football, but it seems like an intact BE football conference is the only way the Hoyas can bank enough to survive down the line in a basketball-only conference, so hopefully this whole expansion thing works out.
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