According to Mike DeCoursy in his Inside Dish he says that some members of the A-10 are considering a new conference consisting of Xavier, Dayton, Temple, Richmond, URI, Marquette, DePaul, and Charlotte.

Here is the link. http://www.sportingnews.com/voices/mike_decourcy/index.html

xu95

how many more automatic bids can the ncaa give out for the ncaa tournament. if the a10 splits , the big east splits, there could be as many as two more basketball conferences. the ncaa will probably have to take away bids from some more of the lesser conferences. it is about time the ncaa steps in and tells these conferences how to realign. they should tell them that they better figure out a way to stay together cause there will be no more automatic bids handed out. they all built their beds now they must sleep in them.

Whats up with this conference is it trying to be all basketball or is ti trying to get football and move to 1-A? Anybody know

_________________
The Bear may be dead but he still hates Tennessee. Roll Damn Tide

This would not invole 1-A football. It appears to me that the "power" schools from the A-10 are simply thinking that they could tweak their membership to gain the best non-football schools left out from all the football induced realignment, and if it takes a new conference to make that happen, so be it.

I would be surprised, however, to see two of those schools left out of a Gavitt-plan BE expansion. Either two of the above go to the BE, or the BE basketball schools will also be available, IMO.

When the last new conference came in (Mountain West) the BIG 6 conferences got together and forced the NCAA to create the play-in game because they did not want to lose one of the 34 at-large berths currently available. When you do the math on this it's because a 10 loss team out of a power conference will get a bid EVERY time over a 3-5 loss team that is champion of their lesser conference but lost in a conference tourney. The dreaded RPI number ALWAYS favors the power conferences.

It would make sense to go to an arrangement of 32 conferences and 32 at large berths. There is a symmetry here. Currently there are only 31 conferences. 32 seems to be an almost critical mass.

The current five year wait to get into a place where a NEW conference would qualify for an auto bid forces lesser schools to look to tag onto a conference. Only the power schools could form a new conference.

In this manner, remnants of a Big East break, C-USA break, or A-10 disintegration would be the only types of schools that could afford to create a new conference.
If you have Marquette, Xavier, DePaul, Georgetown, St.Johns, Villanova, etc. you are not going to need an auto bid because some of your schools are going to qualify on the basis of power. The fear is that the lack of an automatic spot will result in ONE less spot. Unless this fear can be allayed, new conferences will NEVER be developed because of the potential or perceived loss of revenue. Which is why we are where we are with a potential "Gavitt plan" solution to the Big East that helps NOBODY!!! (football or basketball)
8-)

daddywags, I am not sure what you mean by the comment that the fear is that the loss of the automatic spot would result in one less spot in the tournament. The league would get what ever number they were deserving. It could be three to five bids a year. I think theat the real problem with not having an automatic bid is that it provides a competitive purpose (as opposed to monetary) for having the conference tournament. Also to a lesser extent you have to consider the automatic bid for non-revenue sports.

What is surprising is that I have not seen the big east five mentioned in this proposed alignment. Does anyone feel that they stand a chance of being left behind?

Dayton Xavier Marquette
Charlotte Temple Richmond
Rhode Island St. Louis Memphis
DePaul Two others???

xj,

Perhaps I should have said "irrational, unfounded, and misguided" fear. ;)
I agree that spots should (and probably would) go to the deserving, but conferences seem to feel "safer" with the automatic bid.

The critical point is that the time is ripe for a new basketball conference featuring these schools in the east.

I can't see the bb schools of the BigEast passing this opportunity up, but there are factors associated with current conference arrangements that seem to be slowing this.

Call it the Big Atlantic Conference
or.............Conference Atlantic East
or..............Big USA Atlantic East 10 (and invite 12 schools) Conference :D

Just need to do it!

Marquette, DePaul
G-Town, Nova, St.Johns, S.Hall, Providence
Xavier, Dayton

all for sures...

then choose if you want to go All-Catholic...
St.Joes, LaSalle, Duquesne, St.Bonnie

or mixed...
Richmond, G.Washington (?), UMass, URI

Best of the three basketball only's in this conference (ignoring 1AA football).


8-)

daddywags, Don't even mention Duquense, LaSalle, or St. Bonaventure. They are examples of the problem with the current A-10. They are not willing to make a committment to compete at the highest level. By the way, there is nothing wrong with that, but other schools are making the committment. The A-10 had five bids just a few years ago, but now the Fordhams of the world are dragging it down.

By the way, the group of teams mentioned by DeCoursey is more midwestern based than Eastern, especially if the big east five sit on their duff.

The NCAA can issue as many automatic bids as they want without any conferences losing a bid. It will just mean more play-in games. Who knows? Their goal may be to form the core around which a bigger conference including all or some of the Big East bb-only schools would coalesce. I notice he said that "some members of the Atlantic Ten" . . . Well, Marquette, DePaul, & Charlotte arnot members of the Atlantic Ten, so this may be a preemptive strike by some Atlantic Ten schools now that rumors of bb schools leaving CUSA have surfaced. They may be trying to beat the Big East bb schools to the punch & consolidate power & membership rather than waiting on the largesse of others.


BTW, I can't find any reference to this in DeCoursy's Inside Dish - only a mention of Big East going to 16 members by adding, Louisville, Cincinnati, Marquette, & DePaul. ???

The A-10, with just a little restructuring, can easily be a formidable basketball league.

First, I would add Charlotte from C-USA as that conference is likely to shed all of its basketball schools. St. Louis is a little too far away, and Marquette and DePaul appear to be headed to the Big East.

Second, the league should jettison some of its dead wood:

St. Bonaventure should have gotten the boot when they refused to play games, after they were caught using an ineligible player all year. It offers no market and is only intermittently competitive in basketball. The cheating and quitting should have been enough to show the Bonnies the door.

LaSalle used to be a good basketball school. It's not anymore. And the league doesn't really need three teams in one city. You would have to prefer Temple and St. Joseph's over the Explorers.

Fordham fits the Patriot League profile more than the A-10. They already play very competitive football in the PL. It would be nice for the A-10 to have a New York team, but Fordham is really deep in the shadow of St. John's. Duquesne needs to shape up, but they function as a bridge between the Eastern Seaboard schools and the two Ohio schools. It's possible that Fordham might choose to join the PL full time and take this decision out of the A-10's hands, but I would choose one school or the other to stay and one to leave.

This is what you get. A 10-team basketball loop with an 18-game conference schedule.

Charlotte
Dayton
Duquesne or Fordham
George Washington
Massachusetts
Rhode Island
Richmond
St. Joseph's
Temple
Xavier

The subtraction of LaSalle, St. Bonaventure and Fordham or Duquesne, along with the addition of Charlotte creates, I think, a very competitive conference, a worthy rival to the Big East hoops schools, even if the BE were to add Marquette and DePaul. (BTW if the BE balks at these two schools the A-10 should try to snap them up).

There is also a very healthy institutional balance here, with four Catholic schools (Dayton, Xavier, St. Joe's and Duquesne or Fordham), two nonsectarian private schools (Richmond and GW) and four public schools (UMass, URI, Temple and Charlotte).

I have no idea how the A-10 would be able to "subtract from within," but yes, certain schools seem, much more expendable than others. As for the issue of Fordham, they were charter members of the PL (for basketball) but left in 1995 after the PL would not allow them to resume issuing basketball scholarship as a matter of league policy. Note that now, several PL schools are no longer in accordance with this policy, as it essentially a "dead letter regime." I know that American and Holy Cross now offer scholarships, and if I remember correctly, Lehigh and another school (Colgate?) are in the process of reinstating scholarship basketball. Consult John Feinstein's book on the PL or other more recent sources for that information. Often times, conference realignment is the result of circumstance. If only Penn State had not briefly exited the then-Eastern Eight for a brief period in the late 1970s/early 1980s, Saint Bonaventure would never have been chosen as their replacement (1979) and would have become a member of the MAAC (founded 1980). Also, don't forget that Duquesne voluntarily left the A-10 for one year (to MCC, 1992-93) and then the A-10 readmitted the Dukes the following season, despite a blatant lack of competitiveness throughout the history of the conference, kind of makes you wonder...

Oh, and as long as Temple continues to operate under the pretense that they are fielding a I-A football team, they should always be considered a "wild card" in issues of future A-10 (basketball) alignment. What if the MAC were to mandate all-sports membership as a condition for entry and/or Temple (or UCF, for that matter) was needed as the 8th all-sports school in accordance with new minimum standards for maintenance of a I-A conference. It is not beyond the bounds of reason to argue that there are at least a half dozen MAC schools who cannot overwhelmingly be assured that they will be able to meet new I-A requirements for years to come (e.g. Akron, Ball State, Bowling Green, Buffalo, Eastern Michigan, Kent). Yes I am aware of how Bowling Green has performed the last few seasons, but unfortunately, that will not be directly represented when their conditions for continued membership in I-A will be evaluated...

Here's an article from the Cincinnati Enquirer speculating that Saint Louis and Charlotte could get invites to the A-10 after the Big East raids C-USA: http://www.enquirer.com/xavier/2003/09/20/wwwxu1a.html

I keep reading this thread and wanted to comment isn't the A-10 just a minor Big East like the MAC is to the Big 10 and Sunbelt to the SEC.

_________________
The Bear may be dead but he still hates Tennessee. Roll Damn Tide

Footballgod, A-10 ranks as either 7th, 8th, or 9th league depending on the year. If that is minor to you, that is your opinion and so be it. They had three top ranked teams who received tournament bids last year. Recent years, they have had as many as five. They had national player of the year, David West last year. St. Joe. will have perhaps the best backcourt in the country this year.

Yes, the A-10 is usually a little behind the Big East, but a big part of that is the perennial bottom feeders Fordham and Duquense who simply do not invest in their programs.

But the discussion is not really about where we have been, but where we are going. When you add St. Louis, Charlotte, Marquette, DePaul, and perhaps Memphis to that group and subtract anywhere from two to five of the lower teams which will happen, then you have a powerful league.