I'm a big fan of college football but I'm even a bigger fan of college basketball. I never thought I'd see the day that basketball only schools will be frowned upon. Doesn't matter what you say because that is what the power conferences are doing. Let's make five power conferences with 12 teams each with a total of 60 schools. Has anyone read the Charlotte article? It's a great read and will make you think.

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/sports/colleges/5988680.htm

I've thought about realignment the last few weeks and I've decided that the mid-majors need to make some changes now to avoid getting shocked later. Let's face it, the big boys have given up on the little guys. Nobody really knows how stable anything is in the NCAA anymore. People are talking change as big as the "university/college" split, which is before my time but I have talked to several people about it so that I'm somewhat educated on it.

I've come up with a rough draft of a new conference. The conference would consist of Wichita State, SW Missouri St., Southern Illinois, St. Louis, Oral Roberts, Valparaiso, Butler, Western Kentucky, Arkansas-Little Rock and Illinois-Chicago for a 10 team league. Now I know for fact that I want to make it a 12 team league and I make some changes to my preliminary decisions. I'm looking to build a basketball-only conference that has a major focus on men's basketball while also having a focus on saving schools money on travel.

Some of you may have already seen this idea so I won't keep sounding like a broken record. I have a message board I created located at http://www.voy.com/148588/ if you are interested in reading some of the information I have posted. The conference would have markets such as St. Louis, Chicago, Indianapolis, Tulsa, Little Rock, etc. I'm going to make a change or two this week so just keep an eye out. Feel free to make suggestions either on this board or the board I created.

I'll be back to see what is going on, this subject is going to become very serious in the near future.

http://www.voy.com/148588/

No they will not survive unless you form your on league with no football schools? anyone agree?

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

I say what about Austin Peay, Butler, Belmont, Georgia St., Mercer, ETSU, Murray St., and Morehead St. They are all kind of good. I don't think that there will be five super conference that will form their own division and change the way March Madness is.

Where did you get Butler from?

Wait, why did I even feel the need to respond to that post?

I think that this article is absolutely right in its premise that the BCS conferences want to control all of big time college sports & get as much of the revenue stream as they can. And I think that they are well on their way to doing that. It used to be that schools were known either as football schools or basketball schools. The assumption was that you couldn't have 2 championship caliber programs co-existing on the same campus. The exceptions were few & far between. That has been changing. In regard to basketball, it is interesting to see what has happened just over the past two decades.

In the past 10 years, only 4 non-BCS schools have reached the Final Four: UMass in '96, Utah in '98, UConn in '99 (NC), & Marquette in '03. UConn will be in a BCS league in a year & Utah would like to be. The excitement in the past decade for those who like to cheer for the little guy has been to route for the occasional Kent State ('02), UConn ('02, '98, & '95), Tulsa ('00), Gonzaga ('99), St. John's ('99), Rhode Island ('98), Providence ('97), Louisville ('97), Cincinnati ('96), or Georgetown ('96) just to get to the Elite 8. The Final Four has become the impossible dream for programs of this caliber - which is why UConn's national championship in '99 & Marquette's run to the Final Four this year were such shockers. Such occurences used to be routine. You might notice, in fact, that no non-BCS school got even as far as the Elite 8 in 2 of the past 3 years.

In the previous 10 years, ignoring the fact that in those pre-Florida State days the ACC was really a basketball conference plus Clemson (not really a BCS type conference), look at all of the non-BCS schools that went to the Final Four: Houston in '84, Georgetown in '84 (NC) & '85, Villanova (NC), St. John's, & Memphis in '85, Louisville in '86 (NC), Providence & UNLV in '87, Seton Hall in '89, UNLV in '90 (NC) & '91, Cincinnati in '92.

That's a decline from 13 non-BCS programs with 4 national championships in 1984-'93 to 4 non-BCS programs with one national championship in 1994-'03. And the decade of the mid '80s through the early '90s was not a fluke. If you look back in previous decades, you'll see the same thing - many opportunities for programs without big time football (15, 16, & 16 non-BCS programs each decade in the next 3 decades back). In fact, when the 4 Final Four teams of the past decade are combined with the 12 others who made it to the Elite 8 in that span, the 16 teams are just fairly typical of the number who used to make it all the way to the Final Four in a decade! It's the past 10 years that is the aberration - & it just may be the start of a trend.

Notwithstanding the fact that neither fielded a football team at the I-A level that was in a BCS conference at the time of their respective NCAA runs, why do you contend that BIG EAST members UConn ('99) and Providence ('97) were anomalies in that they were "non-BCS?" They will be non-BCS after 2004, but they weren't then (well, actually Providence was because there was no BCS in 1997, there was still the Bowl Alliance).

Why doesn't providence have a football team. Heck they have a tv show ;D

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

Football/basketball schools (all-sports) will obviously survive. But basketball-only schools will also survive. They just won't be able to survive in the same conference, and the trouble the BE is having is reconciling themselves to this unavoidable fact.

Basketball-only schools could start a whole new movement in college athletics, by forming their own conferences, then aggressively marketing themselves as nimble, prestigious, cost-conscious institutions more urban and urbane than their BCS counterparts, in tune with today's society. Perhaps even counter-market soccer in the fall, as more democratic, intelligent, and universal than those euipment-laden behemoths that play push-shove on the gridiron...

Just a thought about possibilities...

;)

Agree if separted Basketball only schools will survive. But what happens when they "the basketball only schools" decide to come up with a football team?

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

College football is the dividing force in college sports for essentially one big reason - school size, both in budget and in enrollment. Yes, there are many smaller, private schools that feature 1-A programs; some good, most along for the ride with their conference. But the bottom line remains that in college football size does matter. The larger the school, the more likely to have larger crowds, greater TV markets and, ultimately, more money. Look at the recent NCAA reports to notice that such programs are among the most profitable in college sports.

Basketball as a sport has a chance to be very profitable, but no where moreso than with those same larger schools that provide the built in fan base and can build off the national reputation that came with the football program. Schools without football must recruit without the additional fall air time and hype that schools with football programs have. Even if schools draw the same for basketball, playing for Ohio State conjures up images of larger crowds and instantly recognizable names when compared with an Ohio University or an Xavier.

The basketball-only schools can only survive if they cooperate with the all-sports (i.e. football first) schools. If the basketball-only schools do not cooperate with the all-sports schools, the basketball only schools will not survive.

But the bottom line remains that in college football size does matter. The larger the school, the more likely to have larger crowds, greater TV markets and, ultimately, more money.

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GunnerFan, agree with the above in principle. I think the one place where it might break down is in high profile, academically excellent private institutions. I'd say in their case, quite often it is the higher standards they set for themselves than the state schools do in recruitment that hurts more than size.

I'd use the following as examples: Stanford and Northwestern. With the massive populations in the Bay Area and Chicago, they're in great locations to draw fans and their recruitment can be national. They are, however, hampered by the type of student-athlete that they can recruit.

You're correct, bgdz. Certainly they qualify as exceptions to the rule. It could also be defined as smaller institutions that are considered defining of thier area, ones with perhaps the slight edge in athletic history that has allowed them to become THE college program for an area; Boston College, Syracuse, and Miami come to mind.

Perhaps the point can be made more clearly using a converse approach; Smaller schools without established 1-A programs have a much, much larger hill to climb in selling the value of their athletics because they simply cannot offer the broader commercial appeal of larger schools and/or those with nationally recognized athletic programs. IMO.

Key "battle grounds" for this war to keep watch over;
Cincinatti vs. Xavier, if the Bearcat football program does become a more marketable attraction. Would it be ironic or simply sad to see Cincinatti, instead of Xavier, affiliated with Marquette, Notre Dame, BC and Villanova!
Temple vs. Villanova, if the Temple program drops from 1-A

I think there is room for non-BCS schools to remain competitive nationally in basketball. Two models make sense to me:

1) In the short run, at least, big-market urban schools can be members of major and near-major conferences in all sports save football. Only a few schools can pull this off, I think -- St. John's, Villanova, Georgetown, Charlotte, DePaul and Marquette are good examples.

2) The Atlantic 10, West Coast Conference and Missouri Valley Conference, to name three, should remain as high-quality conferences just short of the BCS group. No reason that the Creightons and Gonzagas and Daytons of the world should not remain competitive, as long as they sustain good fan support. After all, a program that can recruit one or two impact players within a four-year span, and can complement them with fundmentally sound role players, is not incurring massive expenses.