ESPN (McMurphy/Katz) post article which mentions Xavier, Butler and Creighton "have withdrawn from their current leagues as of Friday morning."

Message board panic & Twitter chaos ensue.

ESPN corrects story, saying Xavier, Butler and Creighton have NOT withdrawn from their current leagues as of Friday morning.

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Mark Blaudschun blog article discussing future of BE BB/CathCon 7 now that BE divorce settlement has been officially announced at http://ajerseyguy.com/?p=5608

ESPN article(previously posted in another thread)reporting that BE BB/Catholic 7 plans future announcements regarding its plans at http://espn.go.com/college-sports/story ... ource-says

NYTimes article(previously posted in another thread)discussing Fox/BE BB tv deal situation at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/12/sport ... html?_r=1&

Mark Blaudschun blog article regarding todays BE/Catholic 7 meeting at http://ajerseyguy.com/?p=5731

Lenn Robbins at NYPost with "unconfirmed" report that BE/Catholic plans to invite Butler,Xavier and Dayton for next season and Creighton and St Louis for 2014-15.Link at http://www.nypost.com/p/sports/college/ ... 0rZSxkf8IM

Unconfirmed or not, and if it would happen, the A-10 would have 13 schools, and at an unfair pairing basis as well. I believe that all of those "possible candidates" (Butler, Xavier, Dayton, Creighton and Saint Louis) to join altogether for the upcoming season.

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The A-10 is currently 14 teams for BB.

Losing Xavier, Dayton, Butler would put them at 11 for next season.
Losing St. Louis in 2014 would take them to 10.
Creighton is in MVC, so no effect on A-10 there.

Likely all 4 schools will announce their departure to the A-10 office by June 30 of this year (or maybe as soon as like... next week !).
If SLU is hanging around for another year, their deadline for notification is Junes 30th, or their exit fee would bump up.

My expectation (but only an opinion, and you know what they say about opinions.... "... everyone's got one !") the A-10 will likely go searching for 2 new members
to come aboard in 2014 for a 12-team line-up.
The 4 teams departing are all out on the western flank, so afterward, all remaining teams will be east of Duquesne (Pittsburgh).
I don't see them going back out west.... I'm expecting the additions to be in the east - New England - Mid-Atlantic - maybe as ar south as Davidson....

Looks like the new Big East would be VERY hybrid when it comes to geographic regions. Isn't it supposed to be focusing within the East region, regardless of its schools being Catholic (except Butler)? I won't mind that it'll go to the eastern Midwest (Great Lakes), but going beyond that, well that's another issue.

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Florida State Seminole fan for life (mostly on football, basketball and baseball)!

Yeah, St. Louis and Omaha (if the SLU / Creighton rumors are true) are west of the Mississippi, but it's not a silly as having Boise, Idaho or San Diego, California in the Big East, for crying out loud.

(then again, some people were advocating they invite Gonzaga).

If they add:
Dayton (Dayton)
Xavier (Cincy) and
Butler (Indy)

to:
DePaul (Chicago) and
Marquette (Milwaukee)

That looks OK, but at some point Dayton and Xavier will complain if they go to 12 by adding SLU and Creighton and split Dayton and Cincy into separate divisions.
Neither of them are going to want to go to the eastern division, so you MIGHT see them invite only ONE of SLU or Creighton + an eastern school.
OR
they will have to come up wiht a scheduling gimmick to let Dayton and Xavier play each other home-and-awy every year.

In cases that happens, and assuming that the new Big East goes upto 12 teams, and splits into 2 divisions, but adding possibly Richmond and VCU to make it 14, it'll be possible for Dayton and Xavier to possibly compete within a same division.

Should it be 2014-15, the division format would consist into the following:

East Division: Providence, Seton Hall, St. John's, Villanova, Georgetown and Dayton
West Division: DePaul, Marquette, St. Louis, Creighton, Butler and Xavier

Should it be 2014-15 (or beyond), with VCU and Richmond (or 2 other northeastern private/Catholic schools), the division format would consist into the following:

East Division: Providence, Seton Hall, St. John's, Villanova, Georgetown, Richmond and VCU (or 2 other northeastern private/Catholic schools)
West Division: DePaul, Marquette, St. Louis, Creighton, Butler, Xavier and Dayton

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Florida State Seminole fan for life (mostly on football, basketball and baseball)!

First--If its true that Dayton is coming early then the A-10 will probably consider negotiating to release St Louis early so as to avoid having an odd number of teams and an extreme geographic outlier. With Dayton and St Louis both in for 2013 then the impetus is on Creighton to get out of the MVC in time.

Second--I don't think anyone should get caught up with division alignment problems associated with having 7 Midwest members and 5 East Coast members. The solution is simple--don't have divisions, just have an understanding that rivals ans schools in geographic proximity will always play twice a season in bb:

Group A--Creighton, St Louis, Marquette, DePaul
Group B--Providence, St Johns, Seton Hall, Villanova, Georgetown
Group C--Dayton, Xavier, Butler


Based on an 18 game conference schedule:
Schools in group A always play each other twice (11+3=14 games, meaning each school in that group needs to play 4 other teams a 2nd time)
Schools in Group B always play each other twice (11+4=15 games, meaning each school in that group needs to play 3 other teams a 2nd time)
Schools in Group C always play each other twice (11+2=13 games, meaning each school in that group needs to play 5 other teams a 2nd time) As the group in the geographic center these 3 schools can double up on a rotating basis with 2-3 teams in A and 2-3 teams in B.

Being in the unofficial "swing division" is probably a good thing for those 3 schools because it would give them more east coast exposure than they would get as a member of the Western Division.

even if the A10 has 11, they can still add 2-4 schools and bring 1 or 3 in 2013 w/ the other in 2014.

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Within 7-10 days the Catholic 7 will announce its new members for the Big East

Yep, if Butler/Xavier and possibly Dayton all pay the early exit fee, the A10 can easily help its incoming school pay their early exit fee (which would likely be less) in the form of simply waiving their entry fees or what have you.

Its easy to say just everybody up and move already from the perspective of the conference at the top of the food chain but the conference losing people don't like it, and of course the schools don't want to pay early exit fees either.

The Big East is cherry picking the best addition for next year because the 30-40 million will only be split 10 ways for 1 season instead of 12 meaning each of those 10 will get an extra 500-750K (assuming the incoming schools get a full share of the TV money off the bat) or that money would compensate the new members for pay an early exit fee.

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