I Bleed Blue and White

They might want to worry about their kids taking the SATs in a proper manner before they worry about moving into another conference.

I understand the idea behind having USF in the conference for football purposes (recruiting, mostly), but they aren’t up to snuff in basketball at all.

The Big East should drop USF to add Memphis.

If they can lure BC back, they would probably replace DePaul (or another weak-link bball-only school). If not, they need to look into the feasibility of having one or two basketball-only schools enter the conference for football. That PROBABLY would mean schools that currently sponsor FCS football (unless Notre Dame could be convinced to join a football conference, but if they did that they would surely join the Big10).

Only three non-football members of the Big East conference sponsor football outside the conference: Notre Dame, Villanova and Georgetown.

Notre Dame isn’t interested in being a football member (and losing a number of annual rivalries in other conferences). Villanova doesn’t have the enrollment, interest or facilities. As for Georgetown football… it is a LONG way away from being competitive even in a lesser BCS conference.

If the Big East wants to get serious about football, it means abandoning basketball or waiting a long time for the issues preventing Villanova, Georgetown and the other non-football schools from participating to clear up.

A school like DePaul might need some prodding, but they certainly have a large enough enrollment for a FBS program to be feasible. They wouldn’t be able to start up overnight, however. Maybe Marquette could as well. Most likely, however, they won’t.

The glue that holds the conference together is basketball. The CUSA raid attempted to deny that fact by bringing on USF.

without calipari, my hatred for memphis has fizzled into relative apathy.

Brian ‘06 –

All fair points, but I think Villanova IS actually a viable football option. Talent wise, they are plenty good enough to go D-1.

Really, one of the main things holding them back in the Stadium Size, which of course leads to other problems like funding and revenue because from what I’ve heard the football program doesn’t generate much.

Then again, joining a BCS conference changes the money issue drastically because of revenue sharing.

So, really, to me anyways, the last big hurdle is the stadium. I really don’t have a good answer for that.

The football program loses Millions, annually. I’d rather have them cut the entire team and put it towards basketball.

In their defense, they did just allow “tailgating”, so maybe they’re taking steps in the right direction.

As I said though, joining a BCS conference really helps with the money issue, even if you aren’t good, because of revenue-sharing.

I still think the main problem is support (students/alumni) and finding the capital to either rent out The Linc or expand the current stadium (which can be done).

VU has been spending a lot in the last few years, so it would probably take a big alumni donation or two.

I think one of the problems about expanding the current stadium is the neighborhood. From what I’ve heard, a lot of the current residents around the stadium complain on a consistent basis regarding noise, lights, etc. Thus, I don’t know if expanding could occur, but if this issue can be resolved, I’m all for it.

The neighborhood is the root of a lot of problems in expansion, not just the football stadium.

VU is gonna run out of land, and they aren’t allowed to build UP. That’s a big problem when you’re talking about increasing the enrollment.

I don’t think that you would have to increase enrollment to participate in BCS football. We already have a bigger enrollment than Wake Forest, for example, and we aren’t dramatically far behind Notre Dame or BC (in fact, we have very similar undergraduate enrollment, those two just have larger graduate populations).

The problems are (1) the stadium/parking/the neighborhood and (2) attendance.

We need to average about 15,000 per game to be a I-A school. We can get the stadium on campus to that number, most likely, but not without raising hell with the neighbors. We also won’t get a lease on the Linc. Even if we did have that kind of seating, we’d still need to attract the crowds.

Memphis will become a Big East member school, after Rutgers is offered and accepts membership in the Big Ten.