rams80

Oh and Creighton's rumored to be #10 in the Basketball Big East, throwing the Missouri Valley Conference into a state of disarray. I wonder how often Bradley's cursed Jim Les' name the last few months. ------------------------------------------------------------- Of course, Bradley could always subscribe to the theory that "It can't hurt to ask". Seriously though, Bradley in the Basketball Big East? /They'd probably be better on the court than DePaul though....

So next fall WAC & Big East football are no more? Big East football will go on as planned.

Supposedly the Northeast teams draw better in Florida.

With the exception of my time at IU, I've never lived in a town with a White Castle (and then it was on the other side of town from me), so I've never really had it and can't weigh in. For the others that might class as major, my personal hierarchy of taste/value would line up as... Wendy's Arby's Hardee's McDonalds Long John Silver's KFC Subway *gap* Super Bong Burger Taco Bell Burger King

It's not that bad really. It's not gourmet dining, but when is fast food gourmet?

It's the same source. Yeah, not my finest post. It was late and I was adding that from a tablet, so I missed some of the earlier conversation. Back to a 20 team Big Ten. If UVA and UNC are #15-16, who are the other four? All ACC members, or does the league consider making offers to schools like Kansas and Missouri? Interestingly enough, a 20 team format allows for two divisions of 10 (or 4x5), but it cleverly allows the league to market themselves as "The Big Ten(s)" Considering North Carolina and Virginia as 15 and 16... Gerogia Tech will definitely be in play with Kansas or Kansas State being 17 and 18. I would lean towards Kansas State because they are receiving heavy research dollars and their basketball and football teams are more competitive than Kansas', however Kansas does have a larger national following in football. Not to mention, the recent surge of the B16 TEN in basketball. As for 19 and 20, I think there is some room for dispute. I think they ultimately would like to add Missouri (as I believe Missouri was in the long term plans before they jumped to the SEC). I would have to believe Clemson and Florida State would also be in play and strongly pushed for. And we have gone through the looking glass.

It's the same source.

Already being talked about.

Wash U hired this guy after those UNC academic scandals? Ummm....wow. Yes. He will be their Provost (the top academic administrator) as well as a Chemistry professor. Dang, I could see some poor low level school teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and/or the loss of accreditation, but Washington's supposed to be a top level school.

Wash U hired this guy after those UNC academic scandals? Ummm....wow.

I'm so glad my U.S. sports history prof talked me into cutting off the narrative of the Big Ten's development at 1953. Otherwise It'd be May, I'd have a 30 page paper and the Big Ten would just announce they are adding ing Pitt and Florida State the day it was due.

You must've not seen the PSU/Iowa game when I was a freshman at Penn State in 2004.Iowa 6, Penn State 4. No joke. You were at that game?! *salutes*

Nah, Ragequitting the Mid-Con never worked for Chicago State either.

I'm not sure what point (a) has to do with people adopting relegation. The analysis should be on whether fans in city x will still support a team in the 2nd tier. My point was that fairly big teams occasionally drop to Tier 2 in the English structure and they survive. And in those essential metro areas, the promotion/relegation structure allows multiple teams in those areas as teams compete at different levels. Leagues can adopt relegation because the teams most likely to be relegated don't play in areas that could cost you media support or TV money if they weren't represented. The EPL currently quintuples down on Greater London, and the absolute worst case in a given year would be that Greater London only has 3 teams. This is good because London is the only market the EPL could not survive without. Believe me, if the relegation system posed an existential threat to the EPL's position in London, they'd drop it in a heartbeat. Meanwhile Leeds and Portsmouth do prove to the money guys the hazards of this system. Yes, they exist, but Leeds is still trying to climb out of the crater and as alluded to earlier, Portsmouth seems to be on a journey of discovery in which they find out how quickly a club can realistically go from the EPL to being out of the Football League altogether without being liquidated. Pay attention to what happens up in Scotland over the next few years as well now that they shot the only reason people care about that league in the head. Actually in terms of raw numbers for attendance its a pretty good analogy. Sheffield Wednesday's season-long attendance would put it in the lower 1st quarter of attendance states for AAA baseball, Sheffield United would be in the upper half. You need to remember that soccer attendance numbers are boosted up by a relative scarcity of home dates (and lack of competition for the sports dollar). Maybe. Or the entire thing would implode because of the entrenched fandoms in the multi-team cities for the existing teams and the markets that don't have teams are for the most part on the saturated side. Multi-team cities only work because they've been that way forever and most of the teams have historic roots in some neighborhood club team to give an organic fan base.

There is a tremendous difference in taxpayer expense between major league and even AAA stadia. El Paso's building a new AAA baseball stadium; sticker shock is $50 million. Marlins Park cost $634 million. The huge financial outlays by taxpayers for major league stadium is justified by the tenant's major league status. You lose that, you just piled up half a billion taxpayer dollars and bond issues and set it on fire. And nuked the city's credit rating while you're at it-which is going to cost taxpayers more money and lead to cuts in services. The citizens will just loooove that. As for Sheffield, the point is neither Portland nor Milwaukee is critical to success if you're a major league. Same thing for EPL, although on a larger scale. The only city it needs is London. Pompey's on course to drop out of the entire Football League in a year or two at this rate, and for all of those attendance pounds, the value of the business has cratered and they STILL can't find a businessman to own the team at the moment. Only the NHL remains "gate-driven" of the classic Big 4. The rest of the leagues are more dependent on TV money. How much TV money gets shelled out to watch AAA baseball again? Municipalities need bonds to function in the current anti-tax environment. Otherwise basic services start to suffer. "Prohibiting factor in future bonds being issued" is a major problem.

They own the Panthers. Their common sense is already shot.

What's that you say? Divisional playoffs with 6 teams advancing to the playoffs with seeds 3-6 having a best of 5 first round?

I swear to God if that group doesn't speak French....

I can't see how they sold expansion to the owners when they just loaned Jamison Quebecor's expansion fee in its entirety.

Ummmm.....No. Leagues in Europe are seen as profit-maximizing units and moreso they inhabit the highest level of the table. The Premiership didn't break away from the Football League over a disagreement over how to handle penalty kicks, but in order to create a league-wide TV deal for themselves. Promotion/Relegation still exists....for now....because of the anticipated uproar that would accompany any attempt to close that off, although eventually you are going to get enough wealthy owners who will want to do that to protect the value of their investments. I would not say any of those major league wars happened when the sport was "in its infancy". Rather they were reactions to the lack of teams in viable new markets on the professional level. You did see millionaires buy their way into the league en masse. No, but its not that simple in England either. For starters there are minimal stadium requirements to gain entry into the Football League, and wage caps to prevent you from running roughshod up the ladder with a team that has the payroll of Real Madrid. With the exception of Milton Keynes Dons (which was a move of the old Wimbledon team, interestingly enough), I don't think there's been a legitimately new market brought into the Football League for decades. (i.e. not an organization formed to replace a recently folded team) I suspect there are rather pronounced barriers to entry after all. Oh damn right there is. Can you say "taxpayer-funded major stadium?" I can. Promotion/Relegation would go over like a lead balloon precisely because taxpayers don't like seeing their dollars completely wasted (instead of mostly wasted *rimshot*) As for Britain's support vis-a-vis America, it's not fair to compare teams that have 19 home games (plus cup matches) with teams that have 81 or 40-ish; the nature of the sport is different. There's also the issue of soccer being the only game in town when it is not in America and well-supported college athletics, which are an alien concept in Britain. Show me their taxpayer-funded sacred cows of stadiums. Now, as for your metro areas, Metro Leeds would go between Milwaukee and Jacksonville, Birmingham between Pittsburgh and Portland, Nottingham is a touch larger than Syracuse, Brighton's a touch smaller than Lansing, Michigan, and Bournemouth is on the same tier as Anchorage, the Quad Cities, and ing Peoria, Illinois. Only two of your name metro areas would be considered "major" markets over here, and none of them critical to the leagues in question. That might help explain why relegation isn't ending everything over there. I think the risk of becoming the next Leeds or Portsmouth puts paid to that notion.

It's not less money.... ---------------------------------------------------------- With regards to a 20 team Big Ten: And while we're at it, let's purge everyone with a business degree from the last 30 years from the Big Ten offices. Get those wits who can only think in terms of trying to extract the last marginal dollar regardless of the consequences outta here.

If you have this many structural flaws in the market and logistics, then Phoenix was a bridge too far for the NHL. Or maybe somebody in the Coyotes organization should have done a demographic study and said something during the 1990s. While being vaguely unfamiliar with the parking situation at the outer DC metro stations, I'd say the Verizon Center in DC also qualifies then. The arena's right on top of a station that handles Red, Yellow, and Green lines, and a couple hundred yards from a station that handles the Orange, Blue, and Silver lines (and Red). For those who don't know, that's all of them.

Really? If you're going to post stuff in a thread, know what the hell realignment is. Go back to China and harvest my rice where you belong. You know, he may be annoying to you, but that was completely uncalled for. Maybe he was. But that guy is going beyond annoying and is even calling guys homophobic and things and derailing the thread. I know, he is being extremely annoying, but you can't possibly defend what griffin said, can you? No, not really. Of course it might not have gotten to this point had somebody stepped in sooner.

Fixed Households. No matter who is in them. Until the dawn of a la carte cable.