Tuesday, December 4, 2012

The Big East's next realignment move--Tulsa or UTSA

The Big East recently lost Rutgers and Louisville in the Thanksgiving realignment and picked up Tulane for all sports and East Carolina for all sports, however it's believed that East Carolina will likely get promoted to full member status once this round of realignment sorts itself out.

As it stands now the Big East of 2014 will have 16 full members ( 9 of whom play FBS football) and 3 football affiliates.  However if Navy does indeed join as a football affiliate in 2015 then the league will be unbalanced at 13 football schools and will need an additional school to reach equilibrium.

BYU, Air Force, and even Fresno St are not interested.  They aren't coming, plain and simple.  It is time for Mike Aresco to consider other western options that will hopefully keep football affiliates Boise St and San Diego from darting.

The schools Aresco should be considering are UTSA and Tulsa.  Both would fit nicely in a western division alongside San Diego St, Boise St, Houston, Southern Methodist, Tulane, and Memphis.  Tulsa is a private school that has a history of success and some history with SMU and Houston from their WAC and C-USA days.  Memphis, UCF, and Tulane were also members of C-USA during Tulsa's tenure there.  The media market they would bring is a modest one, the 61st largest but the school has a loyal following.  The Golden Hurricane also bring with them a respectable basketball pedigree having a history of success in the NIT in years that Memphis carried the C-USA banner at the big dance.

Another option out there is a start up program with a ton of upside--the UTSA Roadrunners.  Yes, their football team is brand new and they have zero pedigree to speak of but they are in the 37th largest television market in America, a market that, aside from the Spurs, is devoid of professional sports competing for attention with UTSA.  It's a program that could grow from nothing in much the same way that USF and UCF did.

The addition of either of this programs, alongside the promotion of ECU to full member status, would bring the Big East up to 18 members.  At this point for basketball the Big East should consider divisional play, rather than full round-robin and playing a rival twice.  Basketball divisions could be:

North---Providence, UConn, St John's, Seton Hall, Villanova, Temple, Georgetown, DePaul, Marquette
South--Cincinnati, ECU, USF, UCF, Memphis, Tulane, Houston, SMU, Tulsa

This would keep the C-USA legacies together and preserve the Northeastern and Catholic bonds among the remaining Big East founders.  This would also probably result in more games with television appeal as their would be more clashes against regional rivals who have history together.

No comments:

Post a Comment