How much did leaving the Big East really hurt the program?

[Cuse181]

I still don't know why people act like the Big East had no good football schools.

West Virginia had already won 3 BCS bowl games, Louisville won 1 (and a 2nd one right after we left). TCU was coming in and they were a powerhouse (and are again). Pitt was usually solid. Boise State would've been added and they were a powerhouse. Houston would've most likely been added and they're damn good. Memphis probably would've been too.

I wish they Big didn't have 8 BB only schools. Adding Houston, Memphis and TCU as full time members would've added 3 good members in both sports in big markets. And Boise State football only. Would've been one hell of a conference and where it felt more home to Syracuse.

The big east didn’t have bad football then, the big east has no football now. That’s the problem

 

[Otto'd]

They hate “Yankees” there.

Charlotte and Raleigh/Durham are a different world, and normal.

Greensboro is “south” south.

I don’t like the south either.

Seems I don’t like a lot of things today. I’m a little emotional :-(

 

[EnviroSciGuy]

It didn't hurt us at all.

The Big East isn't the Big East.

It boggles the mind that so many folks do not get this.

 

[Otto'd]

It boggles the mind that so many folks do not get this.

The BigEast today is a better basketball league than what we are in. There is no debate on that.

 

[PFC99041114]

Leaving the Big East killed basketball recruiting. Kids want their families to watch them play and kids from the northeast don't want to play teams that are 1,000 miles away.

 

[EnviroSciGuy]

The BigEast today is a better basketball league than what we are in. There is no debate on that.

Asked, and answered. I know it seems romantic to expect SU to tank their AD just for nostalgia, but it's hardly practical.

 

[AlaskaSU]

The ACC is a disaster for basketball and that is not going to change. There were plenty of successful old coaches in the BE, and the ACC. Our recruiting would have remained top notch in the Big East.

ACC money is beneficial for non-revenue sports. Soccer says hello. Perhaps we might be able to add hockey and baseball.

There are football teams that could have been added to the BE. We went for the easy money just like UCLA and USC just did. Their major programs will suffer, but just like us, non-revenue sports will get a lifeline.

The big picture is that NIL and amateur sports are incompatible. There will be change.

 

[73CAV]

I blame it all on the greed and avarice of the SEC. It was the SEC that first took advantage of the rules' loophole (not intended for P5 conferences) which allowed a post-season championship football game for conferences with twelve members. The resulting expansions have been so detrimental to intercollegiate sports, IMO. And, if Syracuse fans miss the old Big East, there are those of us who miss the old ACC. The ACC of the 80s and 90s was every bit as good as the BE of those decades. Expansion put an end to round robin scheduling in basketball. In the 70s and 80s, fans from most of the ACC schools could make day trips for away football games. College Park to Atlanta might have been a stretch, but the rest were doable. (When I was in school, teams took a bus to away games.) Now you have to fly to see some away games.
WRT to MSG and recruiting NYC: The ACC schools never had much trouble recruiting elite talent from New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. There was a steady flow of recruits heading south. And, if you're old enough, you can remember when the BB powers of the northeast didn't need the BE or MSG to recruit well. Recruiting has changed significantly, but it has changed for everyone, and I don't think the change had anything to do with changes to the BE. The AAU and the emergence of prep schools focusing on basketball have altered the direction of the recruiting spotlight. The AAU circuits have changed how prospects are evaluated, and, increasingly it seems to me, the best kids are leaving public schools for places like Monteverde, Word of God, and La Lumiere. Admittedly, there was a time when the likes Oak Hill and Flint Hill did similar things, but the scale appears to have changed. It also seems to me (and I could be very wrong here) that many of the old inner city parochial school powers are either closing or de-emphasizing basketball.
I get it that the move to the ACC for the old BE schools hasn't been especially easy or productive, but I doubt that there were any other viable alternatives.

 

[JimBoston]

Leaving the Big East killed basketball recruiting. Kids want their families to watch them play and kids from the northeast don't want to play teams that are 1,000 miles away.

Typically, the recruiting footprint for Syracuse is NY/NJ/New England/Pennsylvania/Maryland/DC. That was/is the Big East footprint. Still, with a good coach and some winning momentum, recruits will want to come.

 

[PoppyHart]

With the possible exception of Baylor, the success of these programs can be directly connected to a single head coach. When that coach exits, the immediate future of those programs may be in jeopardy (see Villanova this season).

Which should make our fanbase a bit apprehensive.

Other way around. All the other schools had a rich history before Sampson, Wright, Bennett, or Few. Not so much Gonzaga, but who knows what Monson woulda done if he didn't go for the bag.

Baylor, on the other hand, had never done anything before Drew.

 

[Scooch]

And UConn gets the ACC invite that we turn down.

Everyone should read this 10 times and then read it another 20 times.

Because its true.

 

[Scooch]

Leaving the Big East killed basketball recruiting. Kids want their families to watch them play and kids from the northeast don't want to play teams that are 1,000 miles away.

Does Syracuse not play 18 times a year in Syracuse anymore?

This argument has always been utterly ridiculous.

Recruiting suffered because we don’t play in Providence and East Rutherford once every 2 years.

 

[dwilmont44]

Does the success of the basketball team have any influence on the next round of conference realignments?

 

[FRANKIEFAN]

NBE would be a good fit for hoops but don’t take it to the bank we are Nova and not middle rung losing to Butler.

ACC is a lifeline and god send for football. You want to renew the Colgate football rivalry (it was real and a serious one 30s-50s) that’s what joining the NBE for hoops gets you.

 

[73CAV]

Leaving the Big East killed basketball recruiting. Kids want their families to watch them play and kids from the northeast don't want to play teams that are 1,000 miles away.

I'm not sure of this. A coach needs to recruit players who fit his systems. That means wherever he can find them. Virginia's roster has players from:
Louisiana
California
2 from North Carolina
Indiana
2 from Wisconsin
Nebraska
Pennsylvania
West Virginia
Argentina
New Zealand
Next year's frosh are from Idaho and New Jersey.
Virginia has players from practically everywhere but Virginia.
In addition, I am unsure how many players from North Carolina are on Duke's roster. Travel is an issue for some players, but not for everyone.

 

[General20]

People think leaving the Big East hurt Syracuse? That's ridiculous.

Lets be very clear about what is happening in college sports right now. The big money generating schools dont want to share TV revenue with the smaller schools. They are grouping together in an attempt to hoard all the TV money, and they aren't just going to forget about the billion dollars a year the NCAA tournament generates. The changes happen painfully slowly as TV contracts expire, and also because if they happened all at once it would violate anti-trust laws, but they are happening all the same and its not a fight the bigger schools are going to lose.

Eventually every Big East school is going to be excluded from the big money and big champions (think of it as being regulated to Division 2). It might happen to SU anyway, ACC is not a safe place to be. But at least in the ACC Syracuse has a chance to continue to play major college athletics. Schools without football have zero chance.

What has hurt Syracuse isn't going to the ACC, but the changing nature of recruiting. It used to be largely regional, and Syracuse was really well positioned being in the region of NYC, Philly, and DC (possibly the three best recruiting hotbeds in the country). Recruiting isn't regional anymore, most big time recruits travel across country just to play high school basketball now a days. Instead its about fans and boosters raising money to entice recruits. This really favors big state schools who pump out a huge number of alumni every year and who are considered the home team by everyone in the state, rather than everyone in just one city, aka the big money generating schools that are consolidating power and money in the first place. SU (and every relatively small private school) is going to be lesser in this set up. Its not a coincidence Coach K, Jay Wright, Brey, and Boeheim all retired within a year of each other.

 

[SBU72]

I have previously stated that joining the ACC was a bad move and not just for SU. No BE team has consistently done well in the ACC in basketball. Miami has fared the best but were they really a BE school? Louisville had some success but with questionable tactics recruiting. Pitt used NIL / portal to build a team but one questionable call pushed them to 5th place. It's like the ACC won't allow outsiders to be good. Unfortunately SU had to move if football was to survive and the AAC wasn't going to cut it financially.

 

[Scotch]

The BigEast today is a better basketball league than what we are in. There is no debate on that.

It absolutely is not. Line up the programs historically - don’t just use this year. It’s not close.

 

[Cusefan0307]

The ACC is a disaster for basketball and that is not going to change. There were plenty of successful old coaches in the BE, and the ACC. Our recruiting would have remained top notch in the Big East.

ACC money is beneficial for non-revenue sports. Soccer says hello. Perhaps we might be able to add hockey and baseball.

There are football teams that could have been added to the BE. We went for the easy money just like UCLA and USC just did. Their major programs will suffer, but just like us, non-revenue sports will get a lifeline.

The big picture is that NIL and amateur sports are incompatible. There will be change.

The fact that you refuse to blame JB for any of our slide is absolutely mind boggling.

We have lost more games because we had a coach in his 70's that did not adapt to the current transfer portal environment or put the same effort into recruiting as the previous 4 decades while trotting out a defense that was borderline obsolete.

 

[atlanticuse]

Thoughts?

Is Jim retiring tonight if we didnt leave?

How do we look different if the ACC didnt happen?

FS1 makes a good point. The league and MSG were a big unique draw for recruits.

Sad

I’ve said this for a long time, and taken heat over it. The ACC is rough from a winning perspective.

But Jim retiring and leaving Big East are somewhat exclusive.

I think he might have retired earlier, honestly. Our success - or lack of - in the ACC possibly prolonged it.

 

[HRE Otto IV]

I do NOT think it hurt. We got plenty of players here the early years of the ACC. We were a name program with a name HoF HC playing in, at the time, what was thought of as the best BBall conference. Even with the ACC being down, look at the F4s the last decade.

I think our recruiting went down because of JB and the assistants. JB didn't put the effort in. And JB wanted kids who were easy to coach. Also is it a coincidence that Hop leaves and recruiting goes down? Is it a coincidence that two 3rds of our staff had little to no recruiting experience prior to being at SU? Is it a coincidence that we have SU guys and not outsiders who already have connections?

I will say that going forward I do think being in the ACC will hurt. We have been down the last 9 years so it is harder to recruit. We no longer have a championship winning HoF HC. Duke, UNC, and Louisville are all down and not likely to be your typical Duke, UNC, or Louisville any time soon.

Those factors make things more difficult. We made our program getting kids from DC to Boston. Recruiting is more national now than ever, so keeping kids from the Northeast in the Northeast is harder.

On top of that the B1G is seen as a better conference, even though they never win anything (only 2 F4s in last 6 NCAAs). So that, plus having a lot more money puts SU at a disadvantage vs Penn State, Rutgers, Maryland.

The Big East lately has been seen as a better conference also. UConn, Seton Hall, Providence, St Johns, Georgetown, Nova can all go to a recruit and say that they play all of their home games plus FIVE road games a year within that DC to Boston corridor. Oh and the conf tourny is in MSG. You know how many games SU plays total a year in that area? ONE! So that puts us at a disadvantage.

With the right HC it doesn't matter. Tony Bennett or Nate Oats would win a lot of games at St Bonaventure. But a decent HC will have a hard time being consistently good being in the ACC vs being in the Big East IMO.

 

[elimunelson]

Does Syracuse not play 18 times a year in Syracuse anymore?

This argument has always been utterly ridiculous.

Recruiting suffered because we don’t play in Providence and East Rutherford once every 2 years.

I think the argument isn’t if we made the right decision. We of course had to make that decision. It wasn’t really a choice

I do think perception wise we killed the big east when we left. Our national identity was tied to the big east. Hard to untangle that for people. Nostalgia is a powerful drug.

I do think the eyeballs we got from big Monday, big east tourney were intangibly massive. In the ACC we are not amongst our identifiable peers.

None of this suggests we can’t be successful.

In an alternate universe no one can convince me ACC football and big east basketball would be our preferred destinations

 

[TheCusian]

Excellent post. Exactly how it is. We had to go, but it sucks and it DID hurt our hoops program It really sucks for me because I’m a hoops fanatic , I never really liked college football and I hate it even more now because what it has done to the landscape of college sports over the last decade.

Also I don’t like the ACC. Reason number 1024:

One thing JB was 100% right on is NYC > Greensboro. Better venue for the event in almost every way.

ACC’s NC centric viewpoint and ego clouded out that truth.

 

[Cusefan0307]

I think the argument isn’t if we made the right decision. We of course had to make that decision. It wasn’t really a choice

I do think perception wise we killed the big east when we left. Our national identity was tied to the big east. Hard to untangle that for people. Nostalgia is a powerful drug.

I do think the eyeballs we got from big Monday, big east tourney were intangibly massive. In the ACC we are not amongst our identifiable peers.

None of this suggests we can’t be successful.

In an alternate universe no one can convince me ACC football and big east basketball would be our preferred destinations

Would 77 year old Jim Boeheim still win in the Big East?

 

[TheCusian]

The BigEast today is a better basketball league than what we are in. There is no debate on that.

Over the years? Debatable. And the payday is light years apart