FanPost

Thoughts on Louisville's conference situation

I've been looking through the mass of comments on the post where I've tracked developments since yesterday, and I just wanted to cover a couple of my personal thoughts before I go to sleep.  Because I'm tired and don't want to worry about coherent sentence structure, let us go to bullet points.

SEC:

  1. The SEC does not need media markets.  It's true, they've become a giant conference murdering version of Notre Dame.  They have a very strong lock on the South and on the national championship game and that puts them in the catbird seat for their next TV contract which will come sooner than later.
  2. The only way the SEC can hurt themselves through expansion is moving to a Yankee or Northern state. I can see them taking Mizzou, but definitely cannot see them taking Kansas.  It's just too far of a reach for their fan base... despite the agrarian nature the major SEC supporters like to see in themselves, I doubt many identify with Kansas.
  3. The SEC does not need a stronger football conference.  Their biggest concern is beating up on themselves too much through the season, and they need to avoid having every team at two losses by the end. 
  4. The SEC could benefit from improving their basketball, though.  
  5. Tickets do matter. Rivalries do matter.
  6. Alcohol matters... to me.

ACC:

  1. Not happening.
  2. They want to range up and down the East Coast and the only thing they need to do to be the strongest basketball conference is kill the Big East, which is pretty much done.

Big 10:

  1. Slightly more likely than the Pac-12, less likely than the ACC or SEC.
  2. The only reason it's more likely than the Pac-12 is around 2090 miles.  That's the distance from UofL to Los Angeles.
  3. Even if Notre Dame goes we're not.
  4. It's all about the academics.  The Big 10 is the only conference in the AQ that actually cares about that, and it's a big selling point for their schools.

Big Tweast:

  1. Might, no probably, will happen.
  2. Not a great idea, but better than any of the other options that'd be below this.
  3. We'd have to eat some lower teams up and play some really odd days.  I'm talking Tuesdays, Wednesdays, 10 A.M. the day after Thanksgiving, at three A.M. after the World Poker Invitational is off, whatever, if we wanted to have a chance of keeping a bid.

Football Independent:

  1. We depend on our ravenous nationwide fan base to secure us a contract that'll get us paid real good.
  2. Actually, that's not a bad idea, we get what, $3 million/year from the Big East?  A $40 million/10 year contract would be good enough to tide us over until we can make some bigger strides, plus we could improve our scheduling.
  3. Plus if we kept the Big East together to keep our basketball in, they'd probably still be able to get a decent contract.
  4. Okay, yes, it is a bad idea unless we all agree to move out of Louisville and establish insular diehard communities of Cardinal fans throughout the nation.

Joining a lower rated conference/not having an auto bid.:

  1.  Please god no.
  2. I can't believe I still used sentences when I'm rolling with bullet points.
  3. Thanks to anyone who posted links that I added into the Pitt/'Cuse to ACC post as time went on.

I'm sitting here, now, thinking one last thought:
The only thing that auto bids matter for is money.  AQ conferences get the cash, it's true.  If we're concerned about money then yes, we should freak out about where we go.


If we're concerned about success, we should be looking at where we are as a fan base and as a team, not to others.