(09-15-2013 10:00 PM)NJRedMan Wrote: (09-15-2013 09:43 PM)Melky Cabrera Wrote: (09-15-2013 09:09 PM)NJRedMan Wrote: (09-15-2013 08:03 PM)Melky Cabrera Wrote: (09-15-2013 07:33 PM)gosports1 Wrote: would the BE still have round robin home and home in 12 team league? if so then gonzaga would need to come east at least 3 times. a
No, they will not have home and home in a 12 team league. No one does. They seem to be interested in an 18 game schedule. That only requires 3 road games with East Coast teams. That can be handled in one road trip during January intercession.
It's no big deal.
Why do you keep saying that? They will have 9 away games to travel for in BBall. Saying they will only play 3 of the east coast schools a year on the road is silly.
No, it isn't. Since you've descended to name calling, I'm not going to bother explaining it. I'll leave it to you to figure it out.
Obviously you don't understand scheduling or how leagues challenged with long traveling distances can manage that. But it's not rocket science. It's been done before and it's being done currently in other leagues. And it's easier than ever, given that modern travel allows for 2000 mile trips to be completed faster than 400 mile trips in the days of bus travel.
Well since i didn't call anyone a name how about you calm down.
Get over this weird obsession you have. The presidents and AD's don't think it's so easy since they already passed on them and will do so again. Remember that the Xavier AD mentioned four teams by name and none were Gonzaga.
If it's so easy then why would we be the first cross country conference?
WVU is having issues and they aren't traveling nearly as far as Gonzaga would.
Calling my ideas "silly" is disrespectful to a fellow poster and makes me not want to bother responding to you. Te fact that I have a different point of view doesn't make the idea silly. And if it is indeed silly, why bother responding? Just ignore it.
Your repeated advice to me to drop the idea and your labeling it a "weird obsession" is both demeaning and condescending. My idea seems to bother you intensely as reflected by your desperate efforts to get me to stop talking about it. You're the one who needs to calm down and get over yourself.
I think it's an idea worth exploring. If you don't that's fine with me. Just ignore it.
With regard to the points you raised. Unless you have an inside contact with the Big East offices we have no idea if the presidents have passed on this idea. They may simply have thought that it wasn't feasible in the initial phase of a 10 team league. We have as much evidence for saying that they're not ever going to have a 12 team league because they've already passed on that idea.
This whole new Big East was thrown together extremely quickly. Practically overnight. I can see the presidents saying that they couldn't buy into a Gonzaga partnership immediately but that the idea was one of many that was worth studying. Get back to us with the specifics, i.e. sample schedules, possible travel partner(s), etc. In other words, it would require an in depth feasibility study. Heck, they didn't even have a commissioner and league office to conduct such a study until now.
We also have the fact that Fox is now a partner with the conference. They are paying the bills, so they will have significant input. An idea like this takes time and discussion. The short time frame to get the conference off the ground didn't allow for that. The 5 year window allows plenty of time for all ideas to be explored.
The fact that the Xavier AD didn't mention it means absolutely nothing. He made it clear that he was not offering an expansion list, that he was simply using as examples schools that had a,ready received a lot of speculation. It would have been foolish and unprofessional of him to offer public remarks about anything that is not a.ready out there in the public discourse. He would be raising issues that would generate new questions for presidents and the commissioner to have to answer that they either are not prepared to answer at this point or simply would prefer not to answer. If he wants to keep his job, it would be very dumb have him to open the door to any such issues.
Why hasn't a coast-to-coast conference been done before? Because the21st century makes things possible that were never done before. That's the simple reason.
There are lots of reasons. There is always a lag between the time something is possible and the time it is actually implemented. Most conferences were formed 50-100 years ago or more. Most of the time, we simply repeat models that are already in existence until circumstances create the need or desire for something new. I'm saying this is an idea whose time has come and the big money now available in college sports makes it feasible to do so.
Realignment has often shocked us with the emergence of new arrangements that would have been thought impossible.
- The Big Ten which was geographically a Great Lakes conference now stretches for NY/NJ to Nebraska.
- The ACC's Tobacco Road now stretches from Boston to Miami and west to South Bend and Louisville.
- The West Coast's PAC 12 now stretches inland to the Great Plains and Mormon Utah.
- The Southeastern Conference now includes Texas A&M and Arkansas, two rib rock programs of the old Southwest Conference. East meets West.
- The Big XII now stretches east to West Virginia.
- the WAC now spans 2000 miles for Seattle, WA to Brownsville, TX and previously stretched from Hawaii to Louisiana.
- We were within milliseconds of seeing a PAC 12 that had a similar span from Seattle to Houston. A "Pacific" conference including members from Texas and Oklahoma? Unthinkable, right? It may yet happen.
I can remember when the argument against including Penn State in the Big East was because it was too remote and couldn't be easily accessed for week night basketball games. There was no airport, so it meant flying into another city and then traveling hours by bus. That was only 30 years ago.
Times have changed. Things that were considered impossible before are now possible. The Big East members are all in major transportation hubs, making long distance travel relatively easy for them - certainly much easier than From Ruston/Monroe, La or Edinburg/Brownsville, TX to Seattle.
See the movie "Glory Road". The travel challenges tha UTEP had to meeti in its historic run to the 1966 NC were far worse than anything Gonzaga would have to meet today.
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If the Big East really wants to go big time . . .
