UCONN Denies Negotiations to Start New League

[ColoStang]

Great point. Once UCONN/Cincy are gone, SMU, UH and Boise are the best of the rest. None of these conferences will stop at 16 forever.

[PoconoPony]

Marianatto had some flaws. But talk that its 100% his fault that the TV deal was turned down is complete nonsense. The schools voted to go to market. not the commish.

Plus, with the subsequent defections, the TV deal would have been reopened, due to material chances to the membership.

With a TV deal they would not be leaving.

[covok48]

Sort of ironic, the remaining Big East could be less vulnerable than the ACC. Just look at your scenarios that you proposed--they all involve schools in the ACC. Say Georgia Tech and Florida State leave, Notre Dame's options get even narrower. Clemson and VaTech get extremely uncomfortable and panic. I don't have a clue, but find it interesting that the ACC is now the least stable.

Not really. The Big East will continue to lose teams at the same pace the ACC loses teams. Consider The Big East like a AAA baseball team. As soon as the ACC loses a team to free agency (Big Ten, SEC, Big XII), the ACC calls up the top prospect. Currently that is Cincinnati an UCONN. Our best hope if for the ACC to lose enough teams to the point that SMU and Houston get the call. A better but less likely scenario is for SMU and Houston to be good enough on the field and in the stands that we pique the PAC-12's interest. Right now, the most stable non-aq conferences have to be the MWC and the MAC. That may be good for the league, but not for the schools considering they are not nor will they ever be desirable to the power conferences.

Agreed 100% until the PAC-12 part. The PAC 12 will never take us, ever. And the other's have 0 interest in another doormat mouth to feed,

Our prospects are from best of worst: Stay in Big East and hope of the best (what we're doing), Beg Mtn. West/ MAC to take us, Rejoin Conference USA, Beg Sunbelt to take us, go I-AA, go independent, drop football.

Sometimes the only options are bad ones.

[SMU_Alumni11]

Never ever beg cusa, Mac or freaking sunbelt. It would be far superior to just creat a small conference with the teams left out then join those cupcake conferences. Heck the MWC sucks. They have the dumbest tv contract I have ever heard of. Seriously we can't even pay off our coach with that crap tv money.

[redpony]

We can't pay him off as it is.

[CalallenStang]

Marianatto had some flaws. But talk that its 100% his fault that the TV deal was turned down is complete nonsense. The schools voted to go to market. not the commish.

Plus, with the subsequent defections, the TV deal would have been reopened, due to material chances to the membership.

With a TV deal they would not be leaving.

With that TV deal that was turned down, the Big East would have had the smallest TV contract of the Big 6 Conferences, so teams would have still left for ACC and Big 12. Maybe the BB schools would have stuck around.

[SMU_Alumni11]

I bet the big east won't even bother talking about tv till march madness. They still have Espn righ now and everyone is low balling so maybe they are banking that big east teams will do well.... No idea but its good they haven't set up a borderline crap/mediocre tv deal so we can see what happens with conference realignment but on the flip side we have nothing to hold the conference together