This is interesting, because I'd been kicking around an idea in my head that Syracuse adjacent people should try to organize an in-season tournament at MSG to play meaningful games against old Big East foes for recruiting purposes. Call it a Northeast Championship, get a trophy, and I was going to say $1M to the winning team via NIL. That would be the hook to kind of force Big East teams to play it, given that they have no reason to want to help us play meaningful games at MSG.
Invite the top 4 teams from the previous season in the Northeast, top 4 in preseason polls from the Northeast, then fill-in Northeast teams up to 8. Make certain conferences eligible - probably P5 and mid majors.
So this year would have been something like...
Last Year's Final Rankings
UConn
Penn State
Pitt
Providence
This Year's Preseason Poll
Villanova
St. John's
Two spots left - Seton Hall and Syracuse probably round it out?
Anyway with that amount of money on the line, the impact on recruiting, the bragging rights of the trophy, I think this would reignite some of those old rivalries for us. Ideally you get some retired coaches to organize it and lend their names to the trophy in some form or fashion, then tie in charity.
Could debate whether Penn State and Maryland count as Northeast for the purposes of this tournament, although obviously we'd count Pitt and Georgetown. Could also debate whether Ivies that qualify are in, as teams like Princeton or Cornell will qualify sometimes. (Princeton would have this year by these criteria.)
Once it starts, you can also automatically invite the previous year's champion to defend.
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