We need to go back to the big east | Page 7 | Syracusefan.com
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We need to go back to the big east

OrangeXtreme said:
As long as Syracuse has FBS Football, we will have a seat at the table. ESPN isn't about to abandon the Northeast. Too many eyeballs watching too many Dr Pepper commercials.
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Wasn't Cuse like 6th or 7th this year in TV views in the ACC? With that crap record.

Why do you all continually underestimate the national brand this school has, and that the population of NYS even outside NYC and LI is equivalent to a good amount B1G and SEC states. Invest in athletics and this is a top AD that TV/top tier conferences can't leave out.
 
Cusefan0307 said:
Overreaction because it would be the death of the sport. Ratings would crater. The sport would be over. Those regions of the country do not care a lick about college basketball. Anyway they have that now. It’s called conference tournaments.
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Depends how it plays out, and there are some assumptions built in to your reasoning. Considering there are teams in California in the Big Ten, I think expansion into something closer to AFC/NFC is what the Big Ten/SEC are headed towards. They are close already.

And what fans like is winning, if teams in the southeast win, fans will show up and ratings are fine as it is. Considering Kentucky and Indiana are in “those regions” and are basketball schools - it’s a dubious premise to begin with that “those regions” don’t care about basketball.

The question is if Penn State and Rutgers represent the northeast adequately. And if not, is adding BC to cover New England good enough. Syracuse matters if it’s a high level program - right now we’re just a Rutgers peer with potential to draw ratings in NYC without the actual ability to do so. We need to do everything possible to win and be attractive as changes come in college sports.

I don’t know exactly what it will look like, but some collection of 32 to 64 teams breaking away from the NCAA would be my bet. It won’t kill the sport, it won’t kill the attendance, and it won’t kill TV ratings if it happens. It’s not great that instead of trying to prepare for that possibility, we have fans longing to return to the Big East.
 
Archimedes said:
What are you going to replace the Dome with when it has to be torn down?
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That’s one part of this which is insane. The Dome is a big part of the Syracuse basketball brand. If football dies, there is no way we keep it. The options are going to be new arena for basketball - which neither Syracuse or NYS has the political or financial capital to make happen. Even if it happens, it will be at minimal cost possible. More likely basketball becomes a tenant at War Memorial. Regardless, people complaining about Syracuse having no identity in the ACC need to ponder what not having the Dome does to Syracuse basketball.

My guess is it turns us into DePaul -a school with a lot of history that couldn’t keep up with economic forces in college athletics and is now irrelevant.
 
Cusefan95 said:
Depends how it plays out, and there are some assumptions built in to your reasoning. Considering there are teams in California in the Big Ten, I think expansion into something closer to AFC/NFC is what the Big Ten/SEC are headed towards. They are close already.

And what fans like is winning, if teams in the southeast win, fans will show up and ratings are fine as it is. Considering Kentucky and Indiana are in “those regions” and are basketball schools - it’s a dubious premise to begin with that “those regions” don’t care about basketball.

The question is if Penn State and Rutgers represent the northeast adequately. And if not, is adding BC to cover New England good enough. Syracuse matters if it’s a high level program - right now we’re just a Rutgers peer with potential to draw ratings in NYC without the actual ability to do so. We need to do everything possible to win and be attractive as changes come in college sports.

I don’t know exactly what it will look like, but some collection of 32 to 64 teams breaking away from the NCAA would be my bet. It won’t kill the sport, it won’t kill the attendance, and it won’t kill TV ratings if it happens. It’s not great that instead of trying to prepare for that possibility, we have fans longing to return to the Big East.
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No one watches SEC basketball now. Outside of Kentucky they literally don’t care about it despite increasing their profile. All of the top TV ratings for basketball are in the Northeast, upper Midwest, or Carolinas.

I could see something like this for football, but that setup is not going to attract viewers. We don’t need another NBA and that’s what you’re creating.

This conference realignment stuff is funny. I’ve been reading imminent destruction of conferences since at least 2016 by the same posters. Eventually you may be right about some of it, but people in this thread have been wrong for a decade and just keep kicking the can.
 
Cusefan0307 said:
No one watches SEC basketball now. Outside of Kentucky they literally don’t care about it despite increasing their profile. All of the top TV ratings for basketball are in the Northeast, upper Midwest, or Carolinas.

I could see something like this for football, but that setup is not going to attract viewers. We don’t need another NBA and that’s what you’re creating.

This conference realignment stuff is funny. I’ve been reading imminent destruction of conferences since at least 2016 by the same posters. Eventually you may be right about some of it, but people in this thread have been wrong for a decade and just keep kicking the can.
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Kentucky, Arkansas, and Florida are all in the top ten programs by ratings this year. A lot of your position is based on opinion that is contradicted by the real world data. I’m hopeful the administration at Syracuse bases their strategy on the real world data and not fan opinion which is contradicted by the data.

To be clear, I don’t know what is going to happen. What I do know is hoping to rejoin the Big East when UConn is paying consultants to help them figure a way out of the Big East looks like an emotional position not supported by the data.

1773586189354.jpeg
 
Cusefan95 said:
Kentucky, Arkansas, and Florida are all in the top ten programs by ratings this year. A lot of your position is based on opinion that is contradicted by the real world data. I’m hopeful the administration at Syracuse bases their strategy on the real world data and not fan opinion which is contradicted by the data.

To be clear, I don’t know what is going to happen. What I do know is hoping to rejoin the Big East when UConn is paying consultants to help them figure a way out of the Big East looks like an emotional position not supported by the data.

View attachment 261126
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You’re confusing what I said. No one in the SEC watches basketball outside of
Kentucky. And I’d venture a lot of them are watching Arkansas because of the coach. And I’m the last one who wants to go back to the BE. The conference as whole averages barely over a million viewers total.
 
Cusefan0307 said:
You’re confusing what I said. No one in the SEC watches basketball outside of
Kentucky. And I’d venture a lot of them are watching Arkansas because of the coach. And I’m the last one who wants to go back to the BE. The conference as whole averages barely over a million viewers total.
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So people outside of the southeast will watch teams that are from the southeast. Which implodes your reasoning that whatever happens requires teams from the northeast to be included, because it doesn’t matter where they are located for fans in the northeast, Midwest, and Carolinas to watch.

No matter how you spin it, your position makes absolutely no sense with the actual data
 
Cusefan95 said:
So people outside of the southeast will watch teams that are from the southeast. Which implodes your reasoning that whatever happens requires teams from the northeast to be included, because it doesn’t matter where they are located for fans in the northeast, Midwest, and Carolinas to watch.

No matter how you spin it, your position makes absolutely no sense with the actual data
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Kentucky grads who live outside the southeast. No one without some real affiliation watches college hoops anymore. I only watched the big east finals last night because I was over a friend’s house and we hoop together. College hoops is regional at best now.
 
Cusefan95 said:
So people outside of the southeast will watch teams that are from the southeast. Which implodes your reasoning that whatever happens requires teams from the northeast to be included, because it doesn’t matter where they are located for fans in the northeast, Midwest, and Carolinas to watch.

No matter how you spin it, your position makes absolutely no sense with the actual data
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You’re cherry picking your data to prove a point. Kentucky is the only top 10 basketball market in the SEC. Their former coach coaches Arkansas. Florida won the title, not a shocker they are watched. The rest of the conference doesn’t care.

No exclusion is happening without some mix of ACC or Big 12. There’s too many schools in both conferences with hoop too important. And there comes a point where over selectivity leads to people not caring.
 
CuseFaninVT said:
Kentucky grads who live outside the southeast. No one without some real affiliation watches college hoops anymore. I only watched the big east finals last night because I was over a friend’s house and we hoop together. College hoops is regional at best now.
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I agree, but that’s why the position that nobody in the SEC watches basketball while Arkansas and Florida have high ratings doesn’t make any sense.
 
Cusefan0307 said:
You’re cherry picking your data to prove a point. Kentucky is the only top 10 basketball market in the SEC. Their former coach coaches Arkansas. Florida won the title, not a shocker they are watched. The rest of the conference doesn’t care.

No exclusion is happening without some mix of ACC or Big 12. There’s too many schools in both conferences with hoop too important. And there comes a point where over selectivity leads to people not caring.
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Cool, then present the relevant data properly. You have no data, period.
 
Screenshot_20260315_112015_Facebook.jpg


It kills me every March...just another little part of the reason college basketball fell off the mountain top it once sat on, for me
 
Cusefan95 said:
I agree, but that’s why the position that nobody in the SEC watches basketball while Arkansas and Florida have high ratings doesn’t make any sense.
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I’m curious to see what you’re calling high ratings. High like regular season baseball or nba games? It’s still just regional interest as far as I can tell (admittedly without the benefit of data in front of me). Going off what I hear on sports talk radio, college basketball is interesting for a couple weeks in the spring. And I’m a basketball only guy, so that drives me nuts.
 
adk(roc)CUSE said:
View attachment 261132

It kills me every March...just another little part of the reason college basketball fell off the mountain top it once sat on, for me
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I really truly believe what will happen is college football will leave the ncaa behind, become the invite only giant hyperconference/minor league the nfl wants, and the rest of college sports can go back to regionally based conferences. Will Syracuse get invited? Don’t know and honestly don’t care. If we became a FCS team for football would it make that much of a difference?
 
adk(roc)CUSE said:
View attachment 261132

It kills me every March...just another little part of the reason college basketball fell off the mountain top it once sat on, for me
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And Etan wants to try the same thing with Hop or GMac (albeit in the ACC) and hope for better results. We should be scheduling games in MSG with an exciting style of basketball regardless of our conference. Those MSG tournaments in November/December used to be electric.
 
OrangeinBoston said:
Who cares about Georgetown? That's when dinosaurs walked the earth.

I'm far more interested in football rivalries with Clemson & Miami, LAX rivalries with Virginia, UNC, Duke, etc.
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Obviously the rivalry doesn't have nearly the juice it did in the 80s-2000s, but I don't think it's dead yet. Last year was Syracuse's bottom-of-the-barrel worst basketball season in decades and our home game against a bad Georgetown team still drew 17K fans. And thousands of SU fans still show up in DC when we play down there. If and when SU and Georgetown are ever good at the same time again, I could easily see mega crowds for it at the Dome again.

I'm not picking on lacrosse, but for a #1 vs. #2 lacrosse game in the Dome, there were 10k fans.
 
CuseFaninVT said:
I’m curious to see what you’re calling high ratings. High like regular season baseball or nba games? It’s still just regional interest as far as I can tell (admittedly without the benefit of data in front of me). Going off what I hear on sports talk radio, college basketball is interesting for a couple weeks in the spring. And I’m a basketball only guy, so that drives me nuts.
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Exactly! “High” is relative and absolutely terrible. That’s why seismic change is inevitable. Thinking the NCAA tournament is going to continue in basically the same format with nothing but minor tweaks seems like a very bad bet.

Cusefan0307 seems to think that is mostly likely, because the NCAA tournament will die without the ACC and Big 12. My position is the ACC and Big 12 are likely to die when the Big 10/SEC kill them to create two “superconferences” and effectively a new league. I may not be right - but I’m going to be closer to reality than anyone thinking “it’ll just stay the same”.
 
Cusefan0307 said:

By the way people watch Calipari because he’s Pitino light. Any school he would coach would have high ratings.
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I’m not sure what you think linking an article that’s behind a paywall, and that says Columbus is a good area for college basketball TV ratings, does for your case.

You have no data for your case. None. At all.

You need to be able to show that TV ratings are highly regional AND that people tend to only watch teams in their region, AND that regional ratings are highly enough that dropping them from a super league would have a big negative financial impact. The last part is the hardest, college basketball ratings are so terrible that getting rid of mouths to feed is more important than worrying kicking some of the folks away means the minuscule relish tray might disappear. And saying “Calipari draws ratings for Arkansas!” is like saying “Winning draws ratings for Duke!” Personalities and winning drives ratings - that works in MY favor, not YOURS. If you want to say “nobody in the SEC watches unless their team is winning, and/or they have compelling personalities associated with the team” - I’d agree with that. That’s not your position though.
 
Eric15 said:
Obviously the rivalry doesn't have nearly the juice it did in the 80s-2000s, but I don't think it's dead yet. Last year was Syracuse's bottom-of-the-barrel worst basketball season in decades and our home game against a bad Georgetown team still drew 17K fans. And thousands of SU fans still show up in DC when we play down there. If and when SU and Georgetown are ever good at the same time again, I could easily see mega crowds for it at the Dome again.

I'm not picking on lacrosse, but for a #1 vs. #2 lacrosse game in the Dome, there were 10k fans.
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I think looking at attendance is a very flawed way to analyze this. Attendance is driven by die-hard fans, TV is driven by casual fans. I’d expect attendance numbers to remain stronger while TV ratings drop first. TV ratings would tell us college basketball generally is on life support, and the Syracuse-Georgetown rivalry is in need of an AED immediately. I’m skeptical even if an AED arrives and there’s a big game between Syracuse and Georgetown at the Dome that attendance will be anywhere near 80s level - and TV ratings absolutely won’t be.
 

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