tkalmus wrote:
louisvillecard01 wrote:
True, but most of the nBE & Aresco were not onboard, and some are still not officially, when the former ESPN offer got rejected by the BE. UCONN, Cincy, and USF were a part of it though.
It's the final stage of the long-delayed breakup that followers knew would not be pretty. The real victims may be the new batch of former CUSA schools. But they had to know to a significant degree potentially what they were heading into.
Houston, SMU, and UCF jumped first and might now be regretting the move (but still over 1 million more a year in a higher profile league isn't exactly hurting them except in travel) but Memphis, Tulane, ECU and Navy (and possible soon Tulsa) knew what they were getting into.
Hard to feel sorry for the 7 of them (including Tulsa) that left 5 of their former conference-mates UAB, Marshall, SoMiss, Rice and UTEP to play with Temple, USF, UConn, Cincy and Navyfb.
The timeline of the one cluster moving was relatively tight, but impacted by major activity such as the WVU announced departure. The Boise State/SDSU plan with UCF, SMU, and Houston committing; Navy agreeing for fb on Jan. 24, 2012-though entrance delayed till 2015; followed by Memphis agreeing on Feb. 9th; Temple March 7th, after WVU departure announcement. The assumption by the incoming schools may have been that the BE would have no more departures, including the C-7 would remain happy. Still, all of them knew the risk factor was not zero. Then BE Commish, Marinatto, may have convinced them they were poised for stability and the nation-wide stretch would be a huge monetary enhancement, and the "BCS level" status would be secured with more reinforcements. Yet, the big conferences had already progressed in the movement towards a play-off and replace the BCS format, though at the time no specific plan had been agreed upon.
There was a lot of delusional thinking going around. When they leave others behind, they see it as they deserve the opportunity and possess attributes the others miss. The problem is escaping to something that also has a disrupting history. For TCU it worked! Keep jumping until you eventually land
where you really want to be. For Louisville, the BE was a stepping stone. Not sure the BE now is much of any kind of real stepping stone, though schools such as UCONN and Cincy retain expectations that further conference re-alignment shall grace them. The monetary devaluing of the nBE/BE has already hit and they will dwell among the "have-nots"--no more buffer status, sitting between the "haves" and the "have-nots".
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