Lash and TS2, I am rooting for the NBE to succeed and remain a BCS conference. I agree that the NBE will be more balanced, but I have a hard time with the notion that the NBE and old BE are about equal.

Using the CFN Preview 2004 Three Year Program Analysis (http://www.collegefootballnews.com/2004/Preview/ProgramRankings_Conference.htm) look at the numbers.

Subtractions (Rank/School/Score):
1 Miami 94.33
20 Va Tech 61.17
29 Boston Coll 55.44
102 Temple 13.96

Additions (Rank/School/Score):
43 Louisville 50.70
58 USF 40.15
62 Cincinnati 37.73

Now that Troy University beat Mississippi State three years ago and pulled off a home victory against a ranked Missouri team last night, I am just waiting to hear people start exclaiming them as excellent candidates for the NEW BIG EAST. Troy will replace Marshall as the new darling of potential schools some want in a BCS conference. Troy now owns back-to-back season victories over Marshall.

Someone is going to tell us how many TV sets exists in the Montgomery, Dothan, and Mobile triangle, and how competition could be undertaking for the north Florida/Pensacola recruiting and viewer market. We will hear how the NBE, by taking Troy, will challenge the SEC's Auburn, and the ACC's Florida State, for viewership, new recruits, TV contracts, etc. We will hear about how Troy would make a great travel partner for South Florida.

Then someone is going to tell us about Troy's modest stadium size, and how they need to expand seating capacity. There will be concern that Troy will have to do more to surpass being the State of Alabama's perceptual #4, behind U. of Ala., Auburn, and UAB. And of course the ultimate! We will get told where Troy falls as maybe a third or fourth tier, or whatever, out of the US News & WR lastest rankings, and how academically they would not qualify. ;D

^Southwest Missouri State does have alot of potential. Football program is in a pretty sorry shape right, ala sort of what Mizzou has been in for the last 20 years. But if they got it going good, then it is scary to think how good there sport programs could be. Already they are a women's bb power, men's program has been down lately but has good history, and baseball has taken off recently. If they get the name change to Missouri State, which should be happening soon, got D-1 football and good conference with reveune that sports program would be the best in the state, even better than Mizzou.

The reason I menionted C-USA as possible homes for these MVC teams is that if they did get ever decide about football then C-USA has a history of football programs starting up in there league, ie. UAB, USF.

Also another reasoning behind this IMO Memphis is the big dog in the conference. To keep Memphis happy is to keep them strong in bb. The RPI ranking of the New CUSA overall will be 76.645. With Memphis' division would be 78.006. With the MVC teams the overall rpi would be 77.355 and in the Memphis division 79.405. Its not a big difference but the MVC schools have a better future especially if they were in C-USA.

Wichita State discontinued football following the 1986 season...the last "official" season of MVC football was in 1985, although the 1982 purging of I-A reduced the MVC to a hybrid I-A/I-AA conference for its final few seasons. New Mexico State (to PCAA), Tulsa, and Wichita State were the I-A members and Drake, Illinois State, Indiana State, Southern Illinois, and West Texas State were the I-AA members. Note that Wichita State is the only school listed above that no longer fields a football team...

Baseball is not a priority in conference realignment, especially as far as I-A conferences are concerned (note that Cal State-Fullerton is not a MWC or WAC member)...

Neither SMS or SIUC has a larger following in the Saint Louis area than SLU..."the big three" of radio/tv coverage are (alphabetically) UIUC, Mizzou, and SLU...yes, Saint Louis does host the MVC offices and its conference tournament, and the tournament (in and of itself) receives a fair amount of coverage every March...SLU is not UMKC...

6/5 rule aside (UAB and ECU), I also fail to see what advantage these schools would receive by aligning themselves with the western two-thirds of C-USA. The RPI of C-USA (2005) and the MVC should be comparable, no matter what John Calipari says...as both should be "modified" one-bid conferences (before the conference switched to a "unilateral" schedule, division winner Memphis was sent to the NIT)...why jeopardize the conference affiliation of SIUC/SMS football and alter a fairly reasonable (MVC) travel itinerary...

Cybercat, I love statistics when used in the correct context. That is why my company uses Six Sigma as opposed to pure statistics to get a better account of defects. I wont go into what Six Sigma is as most fortune 100 companies are probably using these methods for measurements. The same philosopy holds up in sports statics.

Part of the problem is you are comparing apples and oranges in the above scenerio. The teams you compare of BCS membership and the new teams coming in will become BCS. The primary reason the ACC expanded with Big East teams was to acquire current BCS members to reach 12.

You need some additonal method to better compare the future that just assumming the teams will perform the same in requiting, exposure, etc as they did in the previous conference.

Neither of us can say for sure based on statistics that the 3 teams comming in will perform better than the 3 leaving as members of the Big East.

The other side of this arument, none of us can say for sure they will perform any worse. This is the common thinking that every uses based on current statistics to make a future prediction of how well the BE will perform.

I dont think anyone needs statistics to debate Miami performance over the last few years as this school is very predictable.

After Miami, the new and old teams are dangerous to compare statistics on how well any of them will perform or degrade in the new respective conferences.

Lash, I am well aware of Six Sigma metrics, including defects per million (DPMs). What the future holds, neither of us knows for sure. All we can do is look at the current statistics and model the numbers using our best assumptions to project the future. Using current statistics IMO is a lot better than some of recent subjective statements made on this thread: “Top to bottom the new Big East is better than the old” and “VoTech with Louisville (break even)”. I would be interested in any modeling projections that you could make, especially ones that project that the NBE will be just as strong in the future as in the past. BTW, I hope that you are right.

I disagree that the ACC took the three schools primarily because they were BCS schools. Many other factors including on the field performance, scholastics, geographic location, political pressures, and discontent with their current conference all played a major role. IMO, the ACC chose the best three schools available at the time, under their environmental constraints.

Miami and the acc commish wanted to kill the BE.However,they did not succeed.Votech was a gift the acc did not want but got through the power of the va gov.Hopefully miami and flast will kill each other off or their glorius recruits will get them on probation.Hopefully ,their playoff series will make less money than expected and they will be forced to take funds away from equal shares of the weaker programs in the acc.

Cybercat, nice to know you are working with Six Sigma. Really good concept to help flush out metrics.

I think we are saying the same thing about the ACC expansion with current BCS teams. All the subjects you mentioned are areas the BCS members concentrate on such as attendance, academics, etc.

Of course there were non BCS Big East teams that meet some or all of those requirements, however, it was just easier to go after BE teams. Primary because BC and then Syracuse would follow Miami for the security of the ACC.

School budgets are good indication and Lousiville was a prime expansion target for the Big East and could have made a great canidate for the ACC regardless of academic reputation.

As far as the future, the BE has basketball and all sports to fall back on and this is the key to any major conference to maintain revenue levels.

If the BE would some how have to compete someday for a BCS bid with current non BCS conferences, the conference will remain a leg above due to attendance, academics, and TV markets. Which is basically what you descibed above as benefits of ACC.

These very issues are why the BE will most likely not expand with any more members unless Notre Dame would decide to leave which is very unlikely.

Attendace for all sports including major revenue sports of basketball and football will be key to the health of the conference. This area is where the Big East is ahead and should be able to build more with attendance in all major revenue sports.