All Entries Tagged With: "Rutgers football"

Conference Expansion Footnote

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Conference Expansion Stampede May Have Begun

If there was ever any doubt that football reigns supreme in college sports, it should be crystal clear by now. Football is the only thing driving conference expansion decisions.

Unless some emphatic denials are issued soon, one can assume the conference dominoes have begun to fall. The lynch pin appears to have been an informal decision by the Nebraska board of regents to accept an invitation to the Big Ten Conference.

At least six Big 12 schools have been invited to join the PAC 10. This leads many to conclude that the Big 12 Conference is done. But Texas and Texas A&M are convening a meeting Friday to attempt to salvage things.

Then there are unconfirmed reports that Notre Dame, Maryland, Rutgers and possibly Syracuse have been invited to join the Big 10.

There goes Big East football if true. Should the Big East football schools immediately withdraw from the conference? If so, the best basketball conference in the country becomes history almost over night.

Rutgers can thank itself for all the TV sets in the region. Maybe watching a lot of TV has some positive educational benefits after all. But that’s probably sour grapes. Rutgers in the Big 10. Really?

If Maryland is gone from the Atlantic Coast Conference, Pittsburgh is the first choice to replace the Terps. Never mind Pittsburgh’s long-standing rivalry with West Virginia or the fact that they have little in common with other ACC schools.

Some have suggested a merger between the Big 12 and the Big East football schools. Stranger things have happened and they probably will.

Many universities, including the University of Louisville, have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in facilities and Title IX to secure their future only to be faced with uncertainty. Don’t count on any members of Congress coming to the rescue. They’re too busy trying to save their own butts.

Conference expansion is about to wreak havoc on the college sports scene, and it could get ugly quickly. Many schools are going to be forced into some hasty, very bad decisions without any ability to redress their grievances.

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Notre Dame Football Needs A Conference

The latest Big Ten expansion rumor has the conference extending feelers to Notre Dame, Nebraska, and Missouri. If Notre Dame were to decline, Rutgers might receive an invitation.

This conflicts, of course what Big Ten officials said last month, indicating that they would be taking their time to reach decisions, leaving the impression that could be several months.

Everyone, including the Big Ten and the presidents of the schools, is denying that any contacts have been made. So one has to assume the latest buzz is a trial balloon to see how the idea flies with a certain group of fans.

That, of course, would be the Notre Dame fans, with a national fan base unrivaled by any school in any sport. They value their independence, and selling them on the idea of a conference affiliation is going to take a little time for fans still living in the past. One has to believe the Notre Dame administration recognizes that tradition can only take one so far.

Despite its national following, Notre Dame no longer has the appeal it once had for the average fan. Sure, the Irish consistently have a tough national schedule and a list of traditional foes. But over the last two decades, Notre Dame has been little more than an also-ran in college football. Yes, the Irish have been invited to a few BCS games. But expectations were low, and they usually met them.

That could change if Notre Dame were to join a conference, providing more of an incentive for fans of other schools to watch the Irish on TV, competing for something tangible, rather than sentimental reasons.

Imagine how much meaningful a Notre Dame-Michigan game would be if the teams were playing a conference game. Purdue and Michigan State are annual foes, but those games could garner major TV ratings’ gains if the games meant anything to anyone besides Notre Dame, Purdue and Michigan State fans.

Notre Dame could actually become relevant again by giving up its independence.

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Miami Receiver Verbals To Charlie Strong

Home is where the heart is.

Michaelee Harris, a talented Miami Northwestern High School wide receiver, once told a sportswriter that he had always been a University of Miami football fan.

“I would be kidding you if I didn’t say that the Hurricanes weren’t my top choice,” he said. “It would be a dream to play at home, with people I know, staying close to family.”

That was last spring, before anyone envisioned Charlie Strong leaving Gainesville and the University of Florida to accept the head coaching job at the University of Louisville.

Harris, a four-star recruit by major scouting services, has made a verbal commitment to play football at Louisville, choosing U of L over offers from Miami, Kansas State, Mississippi, Mississippi State, West Virginia and Rutgers.

Strong is obviously one incredible recruiter, making a convincing case for Harris to become a part of his new football family. Louisville fans are eager to make him feel right at home.

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Big East Split Inevitable Over Football

No surprise the Big East is again in the unenviable position of having members targeted by other conferences. The Big East leadership has done nothing to resolve the major issues in football scheduling, forcing member schools to fend for themselves.

The inability to recognize that football is the key to securing the future probably stems from its founding as a basketball conference in 1979. The conference didn’t even include football competition until 1992 when Rutgers, Miami, Virginia Tech, West Virginia and Temple joined Boston College, Syracuse and Pittsburgh. UConn was in the process of moving up to Division 1A.

The biggest mistake was probably the rejection of Penn State in the early eighties when the conference picked Pittsburgh instead. Penn State football coach Joe Paterno would lobby hard for an eastern conference with many of the same members but he was rebuffed, ultimately joining the Big Ten.

While the lack of vision may have been a good thing for Louisville, making it possible to join the Big East, the failure to be proactive in resolving the football scheduling issues is not. The potential for football revenue (and losses) is much greater than for basketball. The revenue produced by the cellar-dwelling football teams in the Big Ten and the Southeastern Conference is comparable to the top Big East teams in both football and basketball.

Because of the Big East’s inertia, there is no move the conference could make that would prevent any other BCS league from taking its lunch money. It’s as if the university presidents, who really make the decisions, are unable to grasp the significance of the issue, or they are so helpless and inept that they prefer to wait until another conference forces them to do something.

As a result, a conference split between the basketball and football schools appears inevitable. However, the lineup of members of the new football conference may not faintly resemble the current one.

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Louisville Football Needs Bigger Big East

By Paul Sykes

Watch your back.

The Big Ten Conference is officially looking to expand again, with the aim of increasing its ranks to 12 schools. The reasons are obvious: An annual conference football championship game and more green for its already bloated coffers.

Missouri, Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Rutgers are the schools most often mentioned as possibilities. Louisville has been included in the field by the Chicago Tribune. Even Cincinnati, with the most fickle fans in the nation, has been floated as a candidate.

Notre Dame is not in the picture this time, having consistently resisted conference overtures. The superiority complex doesn’t help either, nor does the fact that the football program is losing its luster. The Knute Rockne tradition can only get you so far when losing has become a habit.

Great for Louisville to be mentioned among the possible candidates. But the odds of it happening are remote. U of L has it good right now in the strongest basketball conference in the country. On the football side, Big East teams have demonstrated they can hold their own and they have the poll recognition to prove it.

Can you imagine the good old boys at land grant schools like Michigan and Ohio State acknowledging U of L or Cincinnati as equals and welcoming a municipal university into their ranks? Without getting into the academic debate, the best argument for Louisville would be basketball where U of L is consistently ranked as the most profitable program in the nation. The expansion of Papa John’s would be a definite plus.

Perhaps the best thing about the Big Ten’s action is that it may force the Big East to finally become proactive in expanding the number of conference football teams in the conference. The scheduling issues have been ignored too long and are a threat to financial stability.

Schools like East Carolina, Memphis and Central Florida are viable candidates because they take their football seriously. Their fan bases are not insignificant and they would strongly support BCS-level football.

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Reasons To Get Out There

Ten reasons to attend the University of Louisville-Rutgers football game at 11 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving Day:

• Football weather, cold, damp, miserable.




• You already have tickets, or you can get them cheap.




• Check on progress of stadium expansion.




• University of Louisville, not Kragthorpe U.




• Game on national television, need fans in stands. Go ahead, wave to the cameras.




• New coach mulling over job, fan support a factor.




• Win a T-shirt at the Budweiser booth.




• Rutgers still in a daze, still puzzled about Syracuse loss, playing at 11 a.m.




• Final game for Trent Guy, Scott Long, Jon Dempsey, Chris Campa, Joe Tronzo.




• Save money avoiding Black Friday sales.

Bonus

• End of the Steve Kragthorpe era.

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