Big East/ACC talking merger?
- Thread starter King Of All Message Boards
- Start date
As I have been saying, the ACC has to do something big. I just hope it's not an actual merger and we only take the high value schools: UConn, Nova, Gtown, SJU.
You can talk me into Marquette and Xavier but if you are going to add Xavier, you might as well add Cincy instead. Definitely NOT DePaul. Don't say it brings Chicago. It does not. No to Butler. No to Creighton. They are a coach, not a program and their market sucks. You also need to downgrade schools like SHU, Prov, and Creighton. Make them stay in a downgraded, 1 bid Big East with Duquesne, VCU, Fordham, etc. SHU, Prov, and Creighton have played a role in the downfall of Pitt, Syr, and BC
Haha Big East already failed once with catholic basketball only schools.
Although with the way college sports is changing I hate to say it but sign me up. Would love to see Uconn GTown St John’s Marquette and now Xavier & Creighton on the basketball schedule
Although with the way college sports is changing I hate to say it but sign me up. Would love to see Uconn GTown St John’s Marquette and now Xavier & Creighton on the basketball schedule
This would be a great thing for the ACC and for Pitt. Even if it’s some kind of scheduling arrangement, it’s a great thing for the ACC and for Pitt.
I'm not sure the basketball only Big East has really failed this time around. They have won 4 national championships and probably have sent as many teams each year as the ACC has since the split
The only way I can see how this benefits the ACC is if any arraignment helps to increase the pro-rata payout for the existing members.
The other issue I see is that UConn would likely gain a full share since they have an FBS program, but ESPN almost certainly wouldn’t give out full shares to Georgetown, St. John’s, and Villanova. Are those three willing to accept that?
The other issue I see is that UConn would likely gain a full share since they have an FBS program, but ESPN almost certainly wouldn’t give out full shares to Georgetown, St. John’s, and Villanova. Are those three willing to accept that?
Last edited:
Selfishly, one of the few reasons I’d like to poach the Big East is that it’d likely allow Duquesne to join via backfill. I’m partial to the Dukes due to family ties, and it’d be fun to have both the ACC and Big East represented in town.
I wish football were just separate from all the other sports and we could go back to the old Big East for basketball and everything else. Pipe dream, I know, but I really feel we have no identity in the ACC and the conference has lost its identity, too. I miss all the old rivalries. Playing the FSU’s and Georgia Techs of the world is nowhere close to playing the likes of Villanova and Georgetown in hoops.
Big East schools are getting roughly $7 million per school in the new Fox deal. I would assume that most of this value comes from UConn, Nova, Gtown, and SJU. It's $80 million/year for Big East hoops so let's say you are ESPN, what do you value those schools at: Lets spitball.
UConn: $16 million
Nova: $12 million
Gtown: $9million
SJU: $9 million
Marquette: $7 million
Xavier: $7 million
Butler: $4 million
Creighton: $4 million
Providence: $4 million
SHU: $4 million
DePaul: $4 million
These schools are getting $7 million/year. Lets say we add UConn, Nova, Gtown, SJU, using these numbers, that's adding $46 million in value and really, it's probably more than that because you are substituting UConn/DePaul and Nova/Prov games for Duke/Nova, UNC/Duke, and Syr/Gtown. But lets say that ESPN increases the ACC TV deal by $46 million per year, keep these 4 at $7 million per year until the next contract. That's $28 million. The other $18 million gets divided up. Is it worth it for Pitt or GT or BC to get an extra $1 million per year to bring in some Northeast markets? The answer is this yea. You do this deal even if you actually lose a little bit of money in the short-term.
I'd divide up the 22 teams based on basketball spending. If you want to be in the 1st Division, you need to spend X amount
20 game schedule. Play everyone once except 1 team, who you don't play.
Duke/UNC, UVa/VT, Miami/FSU, Cal/Stan, Syr/Gtown play twice per year. Those teams play 18 teams once, 1 team twice, and don't play 2 teams.
Last edited:
I always thought we’d eventually move towards a super league for football with other sports reverting to regionally-based conferences to reduce travel costs.
However, college soccer is moving towards creating a 32-team super league that’s separated from the NCAA among P5 programs, several of which are in odd conferences (e.g., Sun Belt). The reality might become the opposite of my vision, where the P5 split off in every sport and land in regionally-based divisions within a super league.
But I’m with you on that “pipe dream;” one way or another, I want to play our old Big East rivals again! Although I do like being associated with Duke, Stanford, etc. academically.
Yea, great, like an elephant mating with a cat…..an admission of complete failure by the ACC.
Thanks, this was the financial breakdown I was hoping to see but couldn’t articulate well. Even if it’s a minimal bump for Pitt, I’d be fine with adding those four (and only those four; I’m not sure I’d even want Marquette). Long-term, we could move the ACC tournament to MSG as well.
ACCT at MSG
I'd invite 18 teams:
Monday Night
15 vs 18
16 vs 17
Tuesday
9 vs 16
12 vs 13
10 vs 15
11 vs 14
Wednesday-Saturday as normal.
New Big East
SHU
Prov
Xavier
Butler
Creighton
Dayton
DePaul
VCU
SLU
St. Joe's
GW
Davidson
Not sure Duquesne makes the cut. If they did, I wonder if RMU could get into a new A10?
It takes success from both programs for rivalries to feel like that. Playing Syracuse used to be a huge deal. We still play them, but it feels like an exhibition game these days. Conversely, if we'd been a top ten program for the majority of our ACC stint thus far, I'm sure we'd have had some fun battles with Duke, UVA, etc.
All in all, I can't complain too much about the ACC. Its performance has been down, but I'm just talking about the schools themselves. I'd definitely choose being in it for all sports over being in the Big East for basketball and independent for football or something.
Ultimately we already have somewhat of an idea of how it would work because we kinda do it with Notre Dame. They get a full ACCN share, and a partial T1 share.
In the event that something gets worked out with some of the Big East schools, I think it would be a similar theory but obviously a smaller T1 share because there’s no partial football inventory like ND brings to the table. And I’m assuming that all of the Big East schools would be entitled to a full ACCN share because they’re all either in new markets and/or new states, or they increase saturation in those markets and states. ESPN won’t care because they’re getting those schools’ inventory back and it adds to the overall ACCN pie, but I think the existing schools should go along with it, too, even if the revenue bump is de minimus because it would increase the strength of the conference.
I, for one, feel much better about being the “poacher” and not the “poached” this time around…
If the $ works, then do it. I miss some of the original BE matchups and playing in MSG.
What they do for Notre Dame is pool all the TV money and break it into 2 piles. 80% goes in the football pile. 20% goes into the basketball pile. ND gets $0 for football. But they get 1/18 (counting SMU, Cal, Stan for simplicity) of the basketball money, which if I remember correctly, is a little less than what the Big East schools are making.....but its an old deal.
I don’t think this is right. They get a full ACC Network share, which is about $12M a year. I suspect that Notre Dame being a non-football member was a factor in getting the network off the ground. Every school - not 100% sure about Cal, Stanford and SMU because the reporting has been a little unclear - gets a full ACC Network share. Then, Notre Dame gets about 20% of the T1 revenue share, presumably to compensate them for the heavy percentage of their away ACC games that end up on ABC or ESPN. That, along with the NCAA championship distributions and other ancillary revenues, works out to their total payment from the ACC of about $22M.
The Sun Belt isn't really odd for soccer. The SEC does not have men's soccer. The SEC schools that play men's soccer play in the Sun Belt. Those are the teams that that proposal contemplates playing in this league.
Which, for the record, isn't going to happen any time soon.
Sorry Joe, I gotta disagree. When Kentucky, S. Carolina, UCF, and WVU share a league with Marshall, Georgia Southern, and Old Dominion, I’d call it odd. It’s the same thing as when OU, Mizzou, and other P5 wresting programs competed in the MAC.
IMO, those days are going by the wayside. Moving forward, you’ll see more power conference programs coming together in Olympic sports rather than having affiliate memberships with G5 conferences. It’s just another way to consolidate power (and $$) amongst themselves.
I agree that the league is weird. But the super league proposal that includes Sun Belt teams isn't weird. Because the Sun Belt teams that it includes are SEC and Big 12 teams. They couldn't just say "we are discussing this with the Big Ten, ACC, SEC and Big 12" because the SEC and the Big 12 don't play men's soccer. But that's all they are doing.
In that case, I think we’re on the same page. The point I was trying to make was that in today’s collegiate athletics landscape, hodgepodge league such as the Sun Belt are obsolete and the P5 programs within them will inevitably break off.
The way I see it, with revenue sharing on the horizon, schools need to figure out how to generate money in Olympic sports. It makes no sense for them to share a league with mid-majors when they could break off, create their own tournaments, and control 100% of the revenue. If schools are investing this much into the athletic department (for now), they shouldn’t have to worry about competing with the Akron’s or Vermont’s of the world.
They don't care at all about men's soccer. That's why Vermont, Akron, and Marshall can win Natty's. And, really, it's why Pitt can be consistently good. It's kind of like pre-WW2 college football when only Pitt and a couple schools cared. So W&J or the Coast Guard were actually good in D1. Ohio State can flip a switch and win the next 10 soccer natty's if they want to but they don't care to spend on it.
I do think that a college soccer super league has a chance to perhaps rival USL in terms of interest if done right.
- 1 game per week (no weeknights, bad for attendance)
- season run August to Memorial Day with a winter break in Dec, Jan, probably start up late February.
- warm weather Spring games/NCAAT games. A Pitt NCAAT on May 15 would be a huge seller.
I think it’s less about caring and more about the fact that they’ll recognize that, as a P5 brand, they could easily break off from NCAA soccer, start their own division/championship, and keep 100% of the money generated.
Like I said before, as schools look for ways to better monetize Olympic sports, they’re going to come to the conclusion that they shouldn’t be sharing tournament revenues with any schools not in the ACC, Big 12, B1G, or SEC.
Edit: To tie this back to the OP, that’s why I believe the four Big East schools would jump at the chance of joining the ACC; if the financials are even “only” close, it’ll ensure their (likely) survival in the inevitable new era of collegiate athletics.
Frankly, I never understood why schools are in the same conference for all sports. It doesn't make sense to me that the just because the football team is in the ACC, that the basketball team can't be in the Big East, and the olympic sports in an Eastern 8 type conference.
There's no money generated from Men's soccer. There is 1 reason and 1 reason only for doing this:
The NCAA allows something like 23 match dates per year but those must be broken up into about 17 in the fall (which count as the "season") and 6 in the spring (which are essentially scrimmages). The big schools want those 23 matches to be played once per week from August to May to allow for proper recovery time. With the amount of running that takes place, soccer players should not be playing matches twice per week, every week but that's what they must do in the condensed fall season. The US Soccer Federation also wants to see this move to a 2 semester sport because it's better for the players and they have a vested interest in college soccer being better. The small schools voted this town primarily because they don't have enough staff to work Spring soccer games when baseball, softball, and other sports are taking place.
No they don't need to do something "big". Added more basketball schools is a dumb idea.
I get why they’re (in favor of) doing this for men’s soccer, but you don’t see why the P5 schools would want to take control of the national tournaments?
Even if the tournament money is low compared to other sports, they can pool 100% of the profits from their own tournament that’d otherwise be split amongst all of Division I and 100% of the sponsorship money that’d otherwise go to the NCAA. This article lays out how even for the Olympic sports, there is considerable money to be had by taking control away from the NCAA and putting them on the open market. That’s where I think this is all headed.
Controlling their own tournament is a very minor reason to do this. Yes, it's a nice added benefit. Maybe they can do 2-leg series like the UEFA Champions League. Maybe they can have a group stage format. Or just the traditional single-elimination. And yes, they can sell the TV rights to a Spring Tournament for much more than the current fall one but still, this is very little money.
Never going to happen, due to football. Pitt and most of the ACC leftovers will either join the Big 12 or the ACC will pick off the Big 12 before its more valuable brands depart for the big two.
It would be nice, however, to see an east division and a west division within that conference.
Meh, wouldn’t mind it at this point. Fb basically out of reach now for Pitt. I mean it was more in reach the last 30 yrs and they drove in circles.
With NIL and media deals the SEC and Big 10 have put a strangle hold on football. I'd love to have Big East BB back. I love that style of play. It was great to watch UConn win it all last year. They looked like a Howland/Dixon era Pitt team.
You raise an interesting point. If the ACC has Duke, Georgetown, Louisville, North Carolina, UConn, and Villanova, it ensures we won’t be left out if the Big Ten and SEC ever decide to split off; they’d lose out on too much money with the brands we’d provide. If we could ever get KU and Arizona from the Big 12, even better.
Since those two have a stranglehold on football, the ACC going all-out on basketball isn’t the worst strategy for that reason alone. The goal should be to do whatever it takes to survive until whatever happens next.
The SEC has actually downgraded football with NIL and put a larger emphasis on basketball. The ACC is much closer to the SEC in football than it is in basketball.
Latest posts
-
-
-
-
My guess as to why this site is STILL in 'no mans land' at the moment
- Latest: ChiefJusticeMarshall
-
