Things that happened in the world this week which a Jersey Guy noted:
Here’s how it should go down with the Big East divorce. The next two days will be filled with a series of telephone calls, which will firm up the proposals on both the Big East football side and the Catholic 7 basketball side.
On Monday, more formal discussions will resume. They could get the deal done on Monday, but it will probably drag into Tuesday or even Wednesday before the announcement will be made.
The final money figures will be worked out by the lawyers, who are the only real winners in this circus.
If they can get it done by Tuesday night, Fox sports can have its press conference with the Catholic 7 as stars of the show. If not….well, let’s just say sometimes paybacks are indeed expensive.
The Catholic 7 group of Seton Hall, Georgetown, Villanova, St. John’s, Providence, Marquette, and DePaul will leave the Big East on June 30th. They will be able to take the “Big East” name with them. They will then quickly move to add Butler and Xavier as part of the group which begins business on July 1 as the new-old basketball version of the Big East. They will consider adding a 10th team for next season, but probably reject it, feeling very comfortable with a double round robin conference schedule.
Creighton, Richmond, Dayton and Saint Louis are on call as potential additional members.
Negotiations will begin immediately to make Madison Square Garden the host of the new Big East tournament, which will get done.
A new staff must be hired, many of whom will come from the Big East offices. A new commissioner must also be hired, either on a temporary basis (Joe Bailey?) or a permanent, which could mean that someone like West Coast Conference commissioner Jamie Zaninovich gets a call.
The football version of the Big East will maintain its conference offices in Providence for the time being, with a new name on the door. They will begin plans to have a 10 team conference in football and basketball next fall–UConn, Cincinnati, South Florida, Temple, Central Florida, SMU, Memphis, Houston, Rutgers and Louisville.
Notre Dame will not be part of the basketball conference, because the Irish will be allowed to leave for the ACC a year early, which could also affect Louisville, which is also scheduled to depart for the ACC in 2014.
By 2014, the new name conference–we still like something like the Big American Conference–will have Tulane and East Carolina as full time members, with Tulsa and Navy (football only) ready to join a year later
A new basketbll conference tournament site will have to be found, with New York and New Jersey, Philadelphia or Memphis likely landing areas.
Forget the part about Notre Dame being part of the Catholic 7 for a year. A large segment of the Catholic 7 group really doesn’t want the Irish as a one and done participant.
And then it will be over. Both sides can move on with their athletic lives.
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Princeton beats Harvard at Princeton’s Jadwin Gymnasium. Again. And again. Make that 24 agains, which gives you the feeling that if the Crimson went into Jadwin and saw a men’s over 40 recreation team on the court, they would also lose. Harvard coach Tommy Amaker says its not fair to put 24 years of the losing streak on his team, but you can put the last two seasons when Harvard had the better team and lost each time, after beating the same Princeton team at Harvard. Who’s No. 1? For the time being it should be Gonzaga on Monday. And no one should be surprised if the Zags are also No. 1 walking off the court in Atlanta next month with their first national championship. They are that good…Don’t look now, but the Pac-12 may be moving up in status. Arizona and UCLA will meet in a Pac-12 regular season showdown on Saturday night a UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion and join Oregon, California and Colorado as probable NCAA tournament teams, which would give the Pac-12 5 teams. That would be a pretty good bump from the two teams the conference has had in two of the last three seasons..What’s with Rory McElroy, who has basically bombed out in his first three appearances on the PGA tour this season?..Good news for Northeastern. No matter what happens the next two weeks, Coach Billy Coen’s team will receive an NIT bid as the Colonial Athletic Association regular season champion. Raven QB Joe Flacco takes his team to a Super Bowl win and he gets rewarded with a 6-year 120 million dollar contract, which makes Flacco the highest paid NFL player. Sometimes the system works…It’s March, which means there will be coaching openings. Someone needs to hire former BC coach Al Skinner and Billy Coen should also get some calls. Just a hunch, but we think that Harvard’s Amaker wouldn’t be a bad fit at USC.
***
Enough of storming the court after games which are good, but not epic. the latest case involving Virginia fans charging of the court after the Cavs win over Duke has drawn the attention of Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski and the ACC. Nice win for the Cavs, but hardly epic. It happened last year when Princeton beat Harvard again at Jadwin. I was at the game and saw what was about to happen and I asked a Princeton student who was about to leap over the press table the following question. “You have beaten these guys (Harvard) here for the past 23 years, why is this a big deal?” Being a Princeton kid, he thought about his answer. “Good question,’ he said, as he leaped onto the court, barely missing my laptop.
© Copyright 2013 Mark, All rights Reserved. Written For: A Jersey Guy
IS this from conversations with sources or is this guessing?
Looking again at the Jeremy Fowler piece on the $68.8M in realignment money.
The Aresco lawyer’s email says that at the end of this school year, there would be $18.8M in the Realignment Reserve Fund. Where did the West Virginia money go, not to mention the rest? (Syracuse and Pitt have paid at least $2.5M each, Louisville probably has already paid something.) Where did the $$$ go?
Butler and Xavier may be glad to play more catholic boys next year. Butler on the road and Xavier at home get clobbered by big state universities VCU and UMASS by a combined 37 points. Those catholic boys better keep to themselves. What is Butler doing joining this group of catholic schools?
Butler is joining for the $$ and exposure the renewed Big East offers. Meanwhile, Uconn will be playing in the Lil Poopy Conference.
This process is going to take a long time. Other than Georgetown and Cincy who each have 1.1 billion endowments the rest of the voting schools are more modest in means with endowments ranging from 164 million to 401 million. So the dollars involved are actually quite meaningful to many of these institutions. Even Notre Dame is a skinflint with their 5 billion endowment they don’t want to part with 5 million to escape. There is a lot of money in the till from the exit fees 68 million as well as the NCAA basketball tournament units 50 million. The bottom line is no one is going to leave all that money to be inherited by UCF, Memphis, East Carolina et all. So the 10 voting schools that have skin in the game are going to want to each see a prorata participation, with the survivors getting paid for the Big East name as part of the proration. The new tv contract has provisions for different pricing if the C7 leave in the first years so that is all being taken into account as well, This is a messy combination of accounting and legal histrionics and will not be settled for a long time. Fox putting an artificial deadline in the mix is not going change anything. Remember there is also the embarassment factor. C7 headline deal for basketball is 500 million/ some estimates of up to 4 million per year per school versus what the survivors are getting from ESPN headline for everything of 120 million (albeit over 6 years vs 12 for c7). So survivors are digging in to at least have some consolation prize. What survivors need to do is provide administrative services to C7 to get their league going, they get an absorption of their overhead that way and maybe that eases some of the pain.
What does the endowment have to do with anything here? Endowments help defray costs on the academic side. The operative numbers are revenues and expenditures on the athletic side. Those numbers are much more relevant to all of this than endowments.
They have to dip into endowments to subsidize athletic shortfalls, That is why Rutgers and West Virginia litigated their escape fees, they were upside down in athletics. Places like Ohio State , Florida etc run in surpluses in their athletic departments because they have big football earnings. These smaller basketball only schools are barely breaking even in athletics.
Further to comment above
http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/sports/194518811.html
And while this is going on, college basketball is enjoying its most enjoyable season in perhaps decades. Wouldn’t it be deliciously ironic if the national champion emerges from a non-BCS conference? Football is king?
Blauds, whats up with Rory?
changed his sitcks.. look back at most players who took the big money and changed equipment, Curtis Strange, Ian Woosnam, more recently even Grahme McDowell, first year or two the game goes right in the shitter, and Rory changed everything, Clubs, putter, balls gonna take him a while
According to this article from the Philly Inquirer, with a quote directly from Temple AD Bill Bradshaw, Temple became a full voting member of the Big East as of 7/1/12:
http://articles.philly.com/2012-12-13/sports/35776270_1_football-schools-big-east-mike-aresco
“Temple athletic director Bill Bradshaw said Tuesday that according to the Big East contract, Temple became a full voting member of the league on July 1, 2012.”