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Post by rgs318 on Mar 28, 2021 16:21:28 GMT -5
Had a couple of students who were very good boxers on the international level. Both took quite a pounding, even though they were good and had Olympic potential. Multiple concussions eventually forced both to stop competing. I was once a fight fan (listened to the second fight between Floyd Paterson and Ingmar Johannson on the radio. Cssius Clay was my favorite in the Olympics and against Liston. However, seeing up close what happened to these young men turned me off to the sport and I have not followed it in years.
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Post by gks on Mar 28, 2021 16:53:53 GMT -5
The job of college is to position a graduate/attendee for a good paying career. Sherman shouldn't complain what Stanford did for him. His football career worked out for him. That is irrelevant to my point: many college athletes cannot actually receive a real college education. He also did not complain about Stanford per se. In fact, he said he was lucky to go to Stanford because it was so unique compared to its peers - which is exactly his point. The video does a better job of capturing his full comments (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP0FYeO1N2A, the video stops after 3:10; it plays three times for some reason). This is ridiculous. The vast majority of college athletes go to class and graduate. The ones that don't never had any desire to do so in the first place.
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Post by gks on Mar 28, 2021 16:56:05 GMT -5
There are certain majors you simply cannot pull off as a big time athlete. Nursing and education come to mind where at some point you are in a hospital or school all day for a semester' An education can be had if a big time athlete wants it. I'm sure there are also accommodations for big time athletes where they can go through the motions of an education without actually getting one if that's what the athlete wants. Most of the the big time athletic schools aren't like HC. The schools are big enough where that 2:00 English Lit class is also offered at 8:00 AM. Oh and by the way Johnny Averagestudent can quickly get bumped out of that 8:00 class so the athlete can get in. I don't think it's easy. The first lesson of college better be one about time management and you need to learn it fast. It's not easy, but it's doable if the athlete wants to There are no former college student athletes that are now teachers? ? Come on..... As far as "regular" kids getting bumped from prime class time....no problem with this. The time the student-athletes put in for the college they should get this perk.
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Post by gks on Mar 28, 2021 16:59:18 GMT -5
mm67 you are so correct! I was at a coaching clinic years ago when one of the speakers talked about the start of his season and the schedule they had. Double sessions on the court, weight room time and individual workouts..When the speaker was asked "when do they go to class?", his response was "In the summer!"... Larger schools with full summer class sessions have student-athletes take classes year round. I remember reading Victor Oladipo from Indiana graduated in three years. It not only keeps kids on campus year round but allows them to take a reasonable schedule during season where the time demands on them are greatest.
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Post by rgs318 on Mar 28, 2021 17:14:05 GMT -5
My son was a swimmer and their hours were based on pool availability. It started early in the morning and filled up a lot of the day. The interesting point is that they said their grades were better when they were in-season with all that entailed. In one school where this was true the swimmers petitioned for and actually started a water polo team to keep the swimmers "in season" to help maintain their grades. When they had no practices, they found they studied less because of all the available time they had to get it done. From my experience, true student-athletes are very organized and have good time-management skills.
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Post by longsuffering on Mar 28, 2021 17:23:14 GMT -5
mm67 you are so correct! I was at a coaching clinic years ago when one of the speakers talked about the start of his season and the schedule they had. Double sessions on the court, weight room time and individual workouts..When the speaker was asked "when do they go to class?", his response was "In the summer!"... Larger schools with full summer class sessions have student-athletes take classes year round. I remember reading Victor Oladipo from Indiana graduated in three years. It not only keeps kids on campus year round but allows them to take a reasonable schedule during season where the time demands on them are greatest. Former NFL tight end Christian Fauria is a Sports Radio talker in Boston. He went to Colorado and has had a nephew and a son I believe who have played or are playing FBS ball. He explained that for some lower income scholarship players, it is like a five year lifeline where the student gets great nutritious food year round, housing, academic support, etc. and when the pandemic threatened to disrupt that it would have been quite a burden for some student athletes and their families.
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Post by longsuffering on Mar 28, 2021 17:31:49 GMT -5
There are certain majors you simply cannot pull off as a big time athlete. Nursing and education come to mind where at some point you are in a hospital or school all day for a semester' An education can be had if a big time athlete wants it. I'm sure there are also accommodations for big time athletes where they can go through the motions of an education without actually getting one if that's what the athlete wants. Most of the the big time athletic schools aren't like HC. The schools are big enough where that 2:00 English Lit class is also offered at 8:00 AM. Oh and by the way Johnny Averagestudent can quickly get bumped out of that 8:00 class so the athlete can get in. I don't think it's easy. The first lesson of college better be one about time management and you need to learn it fast. It's not easy, but it's doable if the athlete wants to There are no former college student athletes that are now teachers? ? Come on..... As far as "regular" kids getting bumped from prime class time....no problem with this. The time the student-athletes put in for the college they should get this perk. I believe Lauren Manis was an education major and think I read she was prepared to teach when she graduated, so the requirements must have been met around basketball obligations. If a good college athlete wants to be a teacher coach in their sport, I would think the hiring principal would work with that person to meet requirements because it is value added for the school.
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Post by timholycross on Mar 28, 2021 18:58:23 GMT -5
Amy Lepley (now Quinn) is the Norwood basketball coach and a math teacher there.
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Post by gks on Mar 28, 2021 20:45:21 GMT -5
Larger schools with full summer class sessions have student-athletes take classes year round. I remember reading Victor Oladipo from Indiana graduated in three years. It not only keeps kids on campus year round but allows them to take a reasonable schedule during season where the time demands on them are greatest. Former NFL tight end Christian Fauria is a Sports Radio talker in Boston. He went to Colorado and has had a nephew and a son I believe who have played or are playing FBS ball. He explained that for some lower income scholarship players, it is like a five year lifeline where the student gets great nutritious food year round, housing, academic support, etc. and when the pandemic threatened to disrupt that it would have been quite a burden for some student athletes and their families. You are absolutely correct. It's up to each individual student to take advantage of the opportunity given to him or her.
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Post by hceconhist on Mar 28, 2021 20:56:29 GMT -5
His football career worked out for him. That is irrelevant to my point: many college athletes cannot actually receive a real college education. He also did not complain about Stanford per se. In fact, he said he was lucky to go to Stanford because it was so unique compared to its peers - which is exactly his point. The video does a better job of capturing his full comments (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP0FYeO1N2A, the video stops after 3:10; it plays three times for some reason). This is ridiculous. The vast majority of college athletes go to class and graduate. The ones that don't never had any desire to do so in the first place. I think you knew that I, for the most part, was referring to schools in the power conferences. Two posters after me shared similar sentiments and anecdotes. When you are instructed to avoid a certain class or major, take less than the allotted time on tests to attend conflicting practices, or enroll in *literally* fake classes, you are not fully utilizing your education. You may, in the most formal sense, "attend class and graduate," but you are certainly not able to fully utilize your educational opportunities. In other threads, I've asserted that there is an unavoidable trade-off between seeking to compete in top D1 athletics and maintaining the full integrity of the student athlete. That's why I am, likely, in the strong minority on this Board who think Fr. Brooks made the right decision.
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Post by gks on Mar 28, 2021 21:01:50 GMT -5
This is ridiculous. The vast majority of college athletes go to class and graduate. The ones that don't never had any desire to do so in the first place. I think you knew that I, for the most part, was referring to schools in the power conferences. Two posters after me shared similar sentiments and anecdotes. When you are instructed to avoid a certain class or major, take less than the allotted time on tests to attend conflicting practices, or enroll in *literally* fake classes, you are not fully utilizing your education. You may, in the most formal sense, "attend class and graduate," but you are certainly not able to fully utilize your educational opportunities. In other threads, I've asserted that there is an unavoidable trade-off between seeking to compete in top D1 athletics and maintaining the full integrity of the student athlete. That's why I am, likely, in the strong minority on this Board who think Fr. Brooks made the right decision. The vast majority of student athletes at Power 5 schools graduate and are successful in their careers. They go to class and do the work and take advantage of the opportunity presented them. When you make comments like these you imply that every kid at (insert Power 5 school here) is taking the easy way out. Holy Cross students do not spend every spare minute doing school work.
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Post by hceconhist on Mar 28, 2021 21:06:38 GMT -5
I think you knew that I, for the most part, was referring to schools in the power conferences. Two posters after me shared similar sentiments and anecdotes. When you are instructed to avoid a certain class or major, take less than the allotted time on tests to attend conflicting practices, or enroll in *literally* fake classes, you are not fully utilizing your education. You may, in the most formal sense, "attend class and graduate," but you are certainly not able to fully utilize your educational opportunities. In other threads, I've asserted that there is an unavoidable trade-off between seeking to compete in top D1 athletics and maintaining the full integrity of the student athlete. That's why I am, likely, in the strong minority on this Board who think Fr. Brooks made the right decision. The vast majority of student athletes at Power 5 schools graduate and are successful in their careers. They go to class and do the work and take advantage of the opportunity presented them. When you make comments like these you imply that every kid at (insert Power 5 school here) is taking the easy way out. Holy Cross students do not spend every spare minute doing school work. Where do I put the blame on the students? In the post you quote, I am literally referring to what they are told to do by the people who exercise the power.
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Post by hchoops on Mar 28, 2021 22:15:58 GMT -5
Gil Fenerty left LSU because they would not let him take the courses he wanted to.
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Post by Tom on Mar 29, 2021 7:42:23 GMT -5
There are certain majors you simply cannot pull off as a big time athlete. Nursing and education come to mind where at some point you are in a hospital or school all day for a semester' An education can be had if a big time athlete wants it. I'm sure there are also accommodations for big time athletes where they can go through the motions of an education without actually getting one if that's what the athlete wants. Most of the the big time athletic schools aren't like HC. The schools are big enough where that 2:00 English Lit class is also offered at 8:00 AM. Oh and by the way Johnny Averagestudent can quickly get bumped out of that 8:00 class so the athlete can get in. I don't think it's easy. The first lesson of college better be one about time management and you need to learn it fast. It's not easy, but it's doable if the athlete wants to There are no former college student athletes that are now teachers? ? Come on..... As far as "regular" kids getting bumped from prime class time....no problem with this. The time the student-athletes put in for the college they should get this perk. I never said or even hinted that no college student athletes are teachers. Holy Cross does not offer an Education major. (They have relatively recently added an education minor). There are plenty of HC grads who are teachers. You do not need to be an education major to be a teacher. That being said, I should back off a little because football and other fall sports athletes can easily do a full semester of student teaching in the spring of their senior year
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Post by rgs318 on Mar 29, 2021 7:57:50 GMT -5
I went to HC as an education major and found when I got there that major had been dropped. I had never ben told ahead of my arrival. I had been made a political science major (and changed that as soon as I found out). After 50 years as an educator, I do not like most education majors. I recommend a minor (as HC now has) but a major in a particular field. With an education major you are learning "how" to teach befofrer you fully grasp what it is you "want" to teach. My first master's was in education.
The only ed courses I took at HC were from "Squire" Maguire. His were two of the best courses I ever had and I used techniques that I learned from him for decades.
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Post by WCHC Sports on Mar 29, 2021 9:15:56 GMT -5
Yes, there are a large majority of D1 athletes who take advantage of their educational experience, and as the commercials say, "go pro" in something else other than the sport. But for the purposes of this thread, we're talking about football and basketball players at Top 25 ranked programs, not somebody's daughter here who is on the swim team at one of those programs (who I am sure was a fantastic and responsible student).
Even to the Richard Sherman statement, let's not compare Stamford's athletic rigors with those of, say Alabama or Wisconsin.
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Post by rgs318 on Mar 29, 2021 9:42:33 GMT -5
If we are only discussing football and basketball, why are there any general references to "students" or to "student-athletes" at all? What we have here is a free flowing discussion with two separate issues that are being intermingled. Sadly, that does little to clarify much in this discussion.
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Post by trimster on Mar 29, 2021 11:04:20 GMT -5
Actually, there has been no discussion in the thread of my original post wondering if spring recruiting of transfers is going to become just as important as recruiting high school seniors/prep players in this new era of college hoops. I don't have a problem with that as people have made some interesting points.
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Post by Tom on Mar 29, 2021 11:14:16 GMT -5
Part of the answer to your question might have to do with what the NCAA does about the requirement to sit out a year if you transfer.
As crazy as things are now, they will get a lot wilder if that resolution passes and the spring recruiting period might just become a thing
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Post by timholycross on Mar 29, 2021 12:01:02 GMT -5
Imagine, if you will, what a nightmare it would be for Patriot League schools if aid were still need-based. You'd be losing decent players left and right.
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Post by trimster on Mar 29, 2021 14:27:37 GMT -5
Part of the answer to your question might have to do with what the NCAA does about the requirement to sit out a year if you transfer. As crazy as things are now, they will get a lot wilder if that resolution passes and the spring recruiting period might just become a thing I think it already has become a thing. Just how big of a thing it becomes remains to be determined.
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Post by purplehaze on Mar 29, 2021 17:29:10 GMT -5
not sure where to put this - Marques Wilson, one of the standouts on Lehigh's bball team has announced he's coming back for a 5th year
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Post by trimster on Apr 3, 2021 10:59:36 GMT -5
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Post by efg72 on Apr 3, 2021 11:19:08 GMT -5
Another part of the article
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Opinion The future of City 6 men’s basketball: Are these schools in the right leagues? | Mike Jensen This is the first of four stories this week, at the end of the most historically down year in the history of Big 5 men’s basketball, on its future. Which local school is in the right league? Villanova certainly is in the Big East. Which local school is in the right league? Villanova certainly is in the Big East. Mary Altaffer / AP Mike Jensen by Mike Jensen | Columnist Updated Mar 31, 2021 To think ahead, it pays to look back. Over four decades ago, Bill Bradshaw was a young athletic director at La Salle — before he went off to be AD at DePaul, then back in town at Temple, before he was an old AD at La Salle — he can remember being in a car with Ernie Casale, Temple’s AD at that time.
Casale was a mentor. Bradshaw, now retired, said he would run issues past Casale. But this conversation was about Temple, how this new basketball league was being formed, with schools up and down the East Coast.
“We turned that down,” Casale told Bradshaw, which might shock you now when you find out the league being discussed — how when what came to be called the Big East was formed, Temple was the informal Philadelphia target (Rutgers and Holy Cross also turned down invites.)
Temple was not crazy to pass, institutionally speaking. Another league was being talked about, championed by none other than Joe Paterno.
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Imagine an Eastern all-sports league featuring the likes of Penn State, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Boston College. It made a lot of sense. (Still does.) Casale and Paterno were friends, Bradshaw said. Temple was in. It just never got off the ground, as some of those schools ran with that Big East offer and fast-breaked into history.
» READ MORE: Jay Wright thinks Jeremiah Robinson-Earl is ready for the NBA
All this is solid background for an understanding of any discussion about whether Philadelphia’s schools are in the right league right now.
There is some luck (good and bad) and timing (good and bad) involved.
Temple’s sports future has long been tied to football.
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This is the first of four stories this week, at the end of the most historically down year in the history of Big 5 men’s basketball, on its future through a number of prisms. We’ll look at factors from facilities to recruiting in this new era of transfer portals and instant eligibility, to an overall look at the Big 5 as a collective entity, what could be done to put some buzz back into local hoops beyond waiting around for Villanova (and, yes, Drexel this year) to play in the NCAA Tournament.
Yes, you need players, but what are the factors that contribute to getting the requisite talent in place.
Where are they now?
Start with a simple question: Are these schools in the right leagues?
All this realignment ended up with a couple of leagues that were off — not way off, just by degrees. You want to compete with like-minded and similar-spending schools. You also, maybe most of all, need rivals, for your alumni, but also your players.
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For Villanova, the Big East remains the right league, although maybe it took some more recent luck for that to remain true, in addition to hiring the right coach at the right time.
For Penn, let’s also stipulate, the Ivy League obviously is the right alignment. Of the six American universities with the largest overall endowments, four are Ivy schools, with Penn in that elite moneyed group, sixth place in those standings. The Quakers aren’t going anywhere.
For the rest of the locals, all bets are off. If you were starting from scratch, only worrying about hoops, would Temple be in the American Athletic Association? Zero shot. Add in football, you start to see why it is what it is, even if it doesn’t entirely make sense.
» READ MORE: Amid adversity that included positive COVID-19 tests and injuries, Villanova’s players dealt with it admirably
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The AAC is a strong basketball league, a multiple-bid league, with a current AAC representative, Houston, that just reached this year’s Final Four. Wichita State, great hoops. Memphis, rich tradition. Cincinnati? UCLA was lucky to steal the Bearcats’ coach. When Temple is good enough for a bid to March Madness, one is available.
Houston just made the Final Four out of the American Athletic Conference. Houston just made the Final Four out of the American Athletic Conference. AP What’s the problem? Rivalries, for starters, top of the list. The Owls just don’t have one in this league filled with schools that were barely left out of Power 5 alignments. The closest road trip was to Connecticut, until UConn decided that football be damned, it was going back to the Big East.
Here’s a little mileage chart for Temple road games:
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To East Carolina, 414 miles
To Memphis, 1015 miles
To Wichita State, 1318 miles
To Cincinnati, 573 miles
To Central Florida, 986 miles
To South Florida, 1041 miles
To Tulane, 1225 miles
To Tulsa, 1279 miles
To SMU, 1467 miles
To Houston, 1547 miles.
Of course, the mileages are moot since the Owls are flying their teams to these games, adding to the expense of the whole endeavor. If you’re thinking by now, get out of the AAC, get back to the good old Atlantic 10, that’s fine, except the AAC provides more television revenue. More important, if Temple is going to play football, it’s in the right league for football, that’s been proven. Maybe the only league for football.
(In a perfect world, Olympic sports would certainly be reformed into leagues based on proximity. There is zero benefit to having all these teams flying around.)
Bradshaw knows the other side of luck. He’d found some of the good stuff, had colleagues at other schools telling him that they should build a statue of him at Temple when the Owls were accepted into the Big East for all sports. It was a coup — just a short-lived one, since the league wasn’t destined to hold together. The schools without FBS football went their own way. Syracuse and Pittsburgh and Rutgers all got lucrative invites from what became known as Power 5 leagues.
After being invited back in, Temple had no other viable options when the Big East split. Even playing A-10 hoops, which served the Owls well through the John Chaney era into the Fran Dunphy era, couldn’t work if football was in the Mid-American Conference, as it was before the Big East invite.
The A-10 dilemma
But enough about the Owls, you get it. Perfect world, hoops only, Temple and the A-10 were a great marriage, full of rivalries.
» READ MORE: Dawn Staley balances her focus on basketball with her need to speak out on social justice and gender inequity
What about St. Joseph’s and La Salle? Does the A-10 still fit. You want to say yes … a hoop league for two schools with rich hoop traditions. Until you take a closer look at the numbers. Not just wins and losses, but dollars and cents.
Is the A-10 the right league right now for La Salle and St. Joseph's? Is the A-10 the right league right now for La Salle and St. Joseph's? Keith Lucas/Atlantic 10 Conference / Keith Lucas/Atlantic 10 Conference The A-10 has averaged slightly better than two bids since 2016, but less than three, with seven at-large bids over the last five NCAA tournaments.
Not coincidentally, six of the seven at-large bids were taken by schools that routinely land in the top four of the league in expenditures on men’s basketball, with three at-large bids by VCU, two by Dayton, and one by Rhode Island. The only outlier, budget-wise, was St. Bonaventure, getting one at-large bid, in 2018, in addition to this year’s automatic bid.
Other than the year when Phil Martelli’s contract was being bought out, St. Joseph’s typically has landed just below the average in spending. In the fiscal year that ended in 2018, the Hawks were ninth in total expenses for men’s hoops, at $4.2 million. That same year, Dayton spent $7.3 million.
And La Salle? The Explorers spent $3.3 million, just beating out George Washington. The next year, La Salle got ahead of Davidson, too.
The idea that everyone is playing on an even court, it’s fantasy. In the fiscal year ending in 2018, Villanova spent more on basketball than Temple, St. Joe’s and La Salle combined. (Temple was sixth in the American, smack in the middle, but would have been third in the Atlantic 10.)
Maybe if Drexel hadn’t won the Colonial Athletic Association this year, breaking a 25-year streak away from the NCAA Tournament, the Dragons would face greater scrutiny about their league affiliation. Their spending is right up there near the top of the CAA, but that in itself is impressive since Drexel plays in the smallest facility in the CAA.
“Are we all chasing something totally out of our control and might not be achievable?” former St. Joseph’s athletic director Don DiJulia said in a 2018 interview just before he retired. What he meant was, competing for at-large spots not even against bigger spending league opponents, but against the cream of the crop of the Power 5, pointing to UCLA, Notre Dame and Indiana being either last four in or first four out that season. That’s the real competition, as the selection committee veers toward the big boys for the at-larges.
The old idea about winning 20 games gets you in the March Madness conversation isn’t true right now for mid-majors. Dayton was 21-11 on Selection Sunday in 2019. NIT. St. Bonaventure was 20-12 in 2017. NIT. Davidson was 24-9 in 2019. NIT. The seven NCAA at-large bids were by teams that on Selection Sunday were 26-8, 25-7, 25-7, 25-7, 25-7, 24-7, plus 19-7 in this shortened season.
Maybe the smart path is to be among the highest spenders in your league. Just don’t delude yourself, La Salle fans, for instance, into thinking that returning to the MAAC brings back the good old days of dominance. Those leagues have been spending on facilities. It’s pretty cutthroat out there. (More on that in a day or so.)
Add in, Philadelphia is now surrounded by programs that aren’t just showing games on the Big Ten Network, but taking in Big Ten Network revenues. Tough to keep up with the neighborhood in this pandemic era sapping resources.
» READ MORE: Delco native in charge of Indianapolis NCAA bubble laundry
Getting lucky
If it takes some luck on your side, Villanova has had some of it again. The school smartly slow-played its decision on whether to move up to big-time football. That wasn’t luck, just institutional skill. The luck came in that Fox was starting a new sports network and needed live hoops programming. Not easy when most leagues were locked up in multiyear deals with ESPN and other entities.
So if that was luck in timing, we’ll add some more. Fox originally didn’t approach the Big East since that league didn’t exist yet as it is presently constituted. The original overture, according to an A-10 source, was the A-10. Don’t jump to the wrong conclusion here. The A-10 wasn’t crazy to say no. Fox was offering far less money than it would eventually throw at the Big East, and deals with more established entities such as ESPN, NBC and CBS made more sense.
“They hadn’t aired anything yet,’' the A-10 source said. “They weren’t plugged in yet.”
Fox had little leverage and desperate need for inventory when it went for the new-look Big East, offering a much more lucrative package. Perfect marriage. Timing is everything.
Bill Bradshaw was athletic director at La Salle, Temple and later La Salle again. Bill Bradshaw was athletic director at La Salle, Temple and later La Salle again. AP A question now at hand, as Villanova has gone off to another galaxy, a present-day hoops powerhouse, lifting the Big East as opposed to the other way around. Do the other Philadelphia colleges need to go back to the drawing board, to figure out how to make their own luck?
The numbers say yes. Imagine, for instance, an Eastern Seaboard league with the likes of St. Joseph’s and La Salle and Hofstra and Fairfield, with Fordham and Manhattan back facing each other again in a Bronx rivalry, with George Washington bringing the DC market, with Holy Cross, which passed on the big time of the Big East long ago, saying, “Hmm, sounds like a league for us.” A league for schools that bleed hoops, and can point to the tradition, but maybe, without massive enrollments or endowments, can’t afford to bleed quite as much red ink.
To think ahead, it pays to look back. There’s imagination needed, beyond a clear understanding of the numbers. As schools and their constituents analyze all the facts, maybe Bradshaw asked the pertinent question.
“Does that change your commitment?” Bradshaw asked. “Or does that change your goals?”
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