I wonder if there's a midwestern, basketball-focused conference that's looking to expand and can boast an exciting conference tournament and a history of recent success in March Madness?

Conference USA future in doubt with four teams expected to join Sun Belt next week


https://www.cbssports.com/college-footb ... next-week/

interesting but do you think DP would really let us in their conference?
https://thehoya.com/ramblers-flyers-zag ... expansion/

I guess that depends on the veto power of each individual Conference school. Where things stand now, I disagree with the notion that we wouldn’t add any Chicago value to the conference. For as much publicity Depaul gets as Chicago’s “Big East” school, with a shiny new arena downtown, it sure seems like nobody really cares about them. Add us into the mix, with presumably better ability to get even higher rated recruits, and the Big East has better odds to have a team in Chicago that people actually care about. I think Depaul would actually benefit from an in-conference, intercity rival as well.

All that said, will it actually happen in the next year or two? I have my doubts.

We would have to double our current men's basketball budget to be in the middle to low range of Big East schools. But on the revenue side, we'd take in a lot more from their media contracts.

I would hate to see us go to the Big East. Besides the obvious costs, I am not sure if the Big East would let us play in the Joe. We would end up having to go to All State or even Wintrust and that would stink. I am not sure what attendance would be in either location and hard to get students out for those games. Nothing wrong with being in the MVC. It's getting better and our goal should be to help the MVC "recruit" other high level Mid-Majors to come over. How about a school like Marquette? They would fit in nicely and they have no football. Teams like that with tradition who are maybe struggling right now.

The chances that we join the Big East, while low, are exponentially greater than Marquette leaving the Big East for the MVC. That will absolutely never happen.

I’m also not sure they would require we play all of our home games elsewhere, either. St John’s plays a number of home games at their smaller on campus arena. They only play maybe a handful of games a year at MSG.

It's just a student newspaper rehashing rumors circulated elsewhere during the offseason. I'd be surprised if the Big East came calling for a number of reasons: primarily that we have yet to win a tournament game without Cameron Krutwig and we have a 29 year old head coach. I think it would be fun if we played a conference game or two in the United Center though. I'm sure if the timing was right students would show up in droves.

This is the best tweet I have ever seen, and I hate hyberbole.

It's really annoying but after 30+ years of experience, I can tell you... The Big East is steadfast in it's ways. It's not like DePaul alone can keep Loyola out of the Big East. It's that there's a united front of the original Big East Catholic 5, and DePaul and Xavier -- I don't know if it's unspoken, spoken, a gentleman's agreement, formal or informal, or what -- all of them are united in not letting someone from their region into the league. It's (again, someone tell me the word censor rules on this site)'ed my team since 1979.

All of us in the A-10 were totally shocked that Saint Louis and Dayton were not invited to the new Private Big East, and Butler and Creighton were ahead of them.

We had already added Butler, VCU and George Mason, knowing we'd lose members to the BE, and Temple to an FBS league. Davidson was pushing for Charleston and Elon to come with them for 14 teams; we were internally discussing the two, and then it was like "WOW... we still have UD and SLU"

It's incredibly frustrating, because my Bonnies are always going to be dismissed by the Big East for market reasons, even though that's really dumb because none of our alums live in the tiny town of campus, we live everywhere else and show up like "a cult in a good way" and Western New York has just as many people as the Saint Louis market, only with less competition; Dayton and Loyola are always going to be not considered because they already have Cincinnati and Chicago with Xavier and DePaul.

That's just the way it is, and that's why you guys belong with us in the A-10. Conferences ARE cartels, the world isn't fair, and we're the best have-nots in the world.

PS - Remember to go over screens on AJ Green.