WHY NOT 14 AND GET FOX DONE, NOW

[BBPETE]

That's right by having the Catholic 7, and planning for a great FOX Sports contract, include for year 1 the three schools that appear in the lead---Xavier, Butler, and Creighton. Add St. Louis and Dayton for 2014; but wait....that still leaves from a large meto tv area in the Mideast and Northeast 4 large metro areas that Fox needs to get: Cleveland, Columbus, Pittsburgh, and Detroit. TV is the draw along with PRIVATE schools with rich traditions and same school culture. Cleveland has no D1 schools that fit the bill ; Columbus has Ohio State (on fringe area of Dayton); Pittsburgh---need Duquense, Detroit---need U of D. Both programs are not what they use to be and should pay an entrance fee of some nature to offset part of the division loss by spreading over more schools. Every major tv market covered unless you look at upper state NY and Cleveland. Have two divisions---Mideast made up of 7 schools (DePaul, Marquette, St. Loius, Creighton, Dayton, Detroit, Butler) and Northeast (GT, Vil, X, Duquense, SH, SJ) made up of these 7 schools. BB is the driver so play in division twice---12 games; and cross over division once---7 games. Total of 19 with conference championship of course. TV executives win by cities/metro areas larger than any conference besides Pac10/12. Most of the large football conferences have "state followings", however from a metro, tv coverage area one of the best. Keeps expenses down by playing with some geographic region sence, and for "other sports" makes the competitive size and $ spent reasonable; travel costs and time away from classes, all that stuff could really happen here. A true winner!

[NyNjspider]

Fox needs to get Cleveland, Columbus, Pittsburgh, and Detroit? - No, they don't.

Pittsburgh and Cincinnati...in the Northeast? -They are not

The Mideast division? I can see the NyPost byline already

This thing is so close to coming together...why post the ridiculous

[thebin]

Wait...did you go to Detroit or Duquesne?

No way this league should dilute the funds by adding two more atrocious teams- thereby taking money away from schools who are MUCH MUCH better than those two schools and yet STILL need the extra money to improve.

The idea that tiny bad programs "carry" cities as if Duquesne could take a big chunk ofPittsburg off of Pitt or Penn St or that Detroit is going to eat into Mich/Mich St's market in Detroit is laughable. Small college teams do NOT carry markets. Much more attention needs to be paid to programs that can be good over the long term rather than how many people who don't care about that school live within an hour of it.

By the way....GT is Georgia Tech. Georgetown is GU. Let's get on board people.

[yorost]

Yeah, the GT for Georgetown keeps throwing me for a loop.

Adding metros is not good enough if it weakens a product. It has to be a balanced.

[BillEsq]

As a past abuser of the GT over GU think i humbly apologize. And as far as Detroit and especially Duquesne no chance. One you get past the cities which im sure Fox would want the programs have like nothing. Granted if Creighton or Dayton where in those cities they would be virtually guaranteed the spot Detroit and Duquesne don't have acceptable programs at all. Detroit occasionally is competitive in the Horizon and while they stand in good position to take over in the post Butler Horizon (and i do hope they do) they haven't had half the success of any other program being considered. Duquesne has had like 5 seasons over .500 since 1980. Heck a good season there is over .400. The worst case scenario for any of the C7+ schools is considered a good season at Duquesne. You have a better chance at BC dropping football than Duquesne being brought into the league.

[billyjack]

Let's go all in with 12 or 13 schools, including Gonzaga.

[BillEsq]

Let's go all in with 12 or 13 schools, including Gonzaga.

Gonzaga sounds great until you realize that they are in Spokane but im sure we can arrange the 12 thing for you.

[DeePhence]

If the goal of Fox is to have a footprint roughly equal to that of the B1G (I saw that somewhere, can't remember where), then by having Xavier and possibly Dayton, they have Ohio covered - as in all the tv sets Ohio that also get the B1G network. No need to water down the basketball product before we get it established at or near the top of the competitive landscape.

[BillEsq]

If the goal of Fox is to have a footprint roughly equal to that of the B1G (I saw that somewhere, can't remember where), then by having Xavier and possibly Dayton, they have Ohio covered - as in all the tv sets Ohio that also get the B1G network. No need to water down the basketball product before we get it established at or near the top of the competitive landscape.

Makes a lot of sense really they already have the PAC they can now schedule BBall games all day long start noon in the C7 and go to 10 in the PAC. I think oddly enough the fact that Creighton is another Central time zone team really helps them in this regard. Is it enough I don't know but maybe.

[DeePhence]

Also, the more you think of it, if they share their cable distribution platform with the B1G, that means they have all of Pennsylvania sewed up through Penn State's B1G affiliation, all of Indiana with Butler/IU/Purdue, all of Illinois (Depaul and Illinois), all of Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin, NY State, North Jersey, South Jersey, Northern Kentucky, Michigan.

Jeez, they have 270 electoral votes already!