Shaka and VCU

[yorost]

Interesting, though I'm not sure it matters too much. If they add football and leave it doesn't look so bad. Not good, but at least reasonable. If they sign the rumored grant of rights to join it'll be hard for them to add football and drop their basketball to a weaker conference.

[cm5yz6]

Interesting, though I'm not sure it matters too much. If they add football and leave it doesn't look so bad. Not good, but at least reasonable. If they sign the rumored grant of rights to join it'll be hard for them to add football and drop their basketball to a weaker conference.

If they add football, I don't think it would be hard for them at all to drop their bball to a lower conference. They would be adding football, priorities change.

[yorost]

Expensive change, and one that costs most schools money to operate, I believe. It's good money only if things pan out. Dropping to a conference that does not make as much as the Big East would hurt them further even if their media rights weren't signed over to Fox. Good basketball and just having football won't do them a bit of good landing in a great money-making conference.

Hey, I'm not saying it can't work for them, but if it were just something you could flip a switch on and make big money, we'd all be doing it. Yes, they have more students than our schools, but there is only so much room for big money in a sport. Would any of us like our schools to raise football and move to the Unnamed conference, right now?

[James]

For purely selfish reasons I like the idea of adding two more east coast teams that fit the profile of urban and private. Richmond would be my first choice and, call me crazy, but I like the idea of a school like Siena or Holy Cross - might be a couple of rough years (someone's got to be last!) but they could flourish with a bit of money behind them. I think I'm correct in saying Holy Cross were asked to join the initial Big East - Boston market would be a great get too.

[yorost]

Holy Cross? Siena? Sorry, but both would be a huge hits for the conference to take in basketball quality. Even adding one might drop our conference down a notch unless they seriously improve. Wouldn't you rather look further south to stay on the East Coast? Davidson rates far stronger than either of those two in recent years. I don't get why anyone has these dreams of our conference shooting itself in the foot. Adding another Philly school would be a far better idea than going the route of adding a team that projects to sit perennially on the bottom of the conference.

[James]

Yeah I agree to an extent. It's absolute pie in the sky stuff and not something I would imagine that's even discussed by the BE schools (if you look hard enough you'll find a few arguments for both schools on the web) HC do have a bit going for them in terms of fan base, history and location, unfortunately they're a bit in the doldrums at the moment. For what it's worth my preference is to stick to 10 and see how it goes.

[BillEsq]

Yeah I agree to an extent. It's absolute pie in the sky stuff and not something I would imagine that's even discussed by the BE schools (if you look hard enough you'll find a few arguments for both schools on the web) HC do have a bit going for them in terms of fan base, history and location, unfortunately they're a bit in the doldrums at the moment. For what it's worth my preference is to stick to 10 and see how it goes.

Holy Cross is not leaving the Patriot. That is their niche conference. Sienna might be moving to the A-10. They have the most potential to be a 12th team but at this point its is very unlikely. They will need to contend at the A-10 level for a few years first.

[IbleedVCU]

One thing rarely brought up on this board is that VCU wants to add a major football program. There has been discussion that the Redskins using the city for off-season training (and upgrading the stadium there) will accelerate these plans.

So back in 2011, VCU was thinking about adding football. They were going to do a study at the end of 2011 to see how much it would cost and where they could build a stadium. I know this because I met with the Assistant AD at the time to talk about adding football to VCU as I had done a personal study to see how much it would cost. At the time, the only way it seemed to move to a major conference would be to add football and hope someone would accept you. The total cost would be around 100-150 million as we do not currently have a stadium and are located in the middle of downtown Richmond.

Then VCU went to the Final Four.

After VCU went to the Final Four, everything changed here in Richmond. I can say with near certainty, that VCU may never add a football team. The reason is that we were too late and if we add a football program now, we will be stuck playing in Conference USA vs the sisters of the poor. VCU is 100% behind it's basketball team. We are building a 16 million dollar practice facility in the next few months. We plan to upgrade our current arena and add seats. Rumors have it that we can expand our arena to about 10,000 seats because it is confined to a city block. Also, Richmond and some local companies have conducted a study to build a new basketball arena that would seat around 15,000. As VCU success grows and Shaka Smarts stays, I could see this new arena being the home of VCU basketball.

VCU is on the rise and we would love to play in a basketball first conference. We are a public school but unlike any public school out there. Basketball is our only sport and it is king here.