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Message: [QUOTE="sutomcat, post: 193439, member: 27"] There are a number of reasons for staying in the BE for 2013. You have fixated on one of them, a relatively small one at that. And not done a good job of it. JB has already made it known he wants to keep playing Georgetown and St John's in basketball after SU leaves the BE. Even you appear to see value in doing this. Haven't heard a formal response from either school on this. Based on JTIII's comments, continuing the series is not a home run. It would help SU's chances if they left on relatively good terms with the conference. The same applies to St Johns and perhaps UConn. We can't sell out MSG on our own. In order to get good crowds/reduce the money lost playing down there instead of playing in the Dome, we need someone with a presence in the NYC area. That means St John's, or possibly UConn, Seton Hall or Rutgers. Could well see our games in NYC often being part of a double header, again to help ensure good crowds and TV exposure. That requires more schools with a presence in the NYC area. Could we do this without any BE schools? Yes, probably. We could play Fordham or LIU or someone like that. But it would be better to leverage the interest having former conference rivals meeting again, the long history we share, etc. These are the schools the networks want to see us play, and the schools our alums in NYC want to see us play. This applies for football as well. Yes, we can play games in the Meadowlands. They may or may not draw big crowds, they may or may not work out long term. Regardless, we are forced to schedule major football powers in order to play in the NYC area, and I think the games will usually end up more like away games than home games in terms of attendance. These are not necessarily in the best interests of the SU football program. Leaving the BE on good terms gives us scheduling options in the future we might not have if we leave like WVU is leaving. UConn refuses to play BC in football or basketball for instance. They might well decide to do the same thing with us if we leave in 2012. This might be meaningless to you but you don't know the future. Options and flexibility are good things. The thing I find most confounding with the people who are insisting we must leave now is that I have yet to see a single compelling reason why we need to leave immediately. Do we get a significantly better chance of playing in a BCS bowl (or playing in a bowl game period)? No, the opposite. Do we get more money? No, the opposite. Do we mitigate risk? No, the opposite. [/QUOTE]

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