Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman made Big East expansion news yesterday, by way of two tweets from Dana O’Neil. In the first, Ackerman says she will ask the Big East presidents to consider expansion in light of the 2025 expiration of the league’s TV deal with Fox. “What school helps with our basketball aspirations?” In the second, Ackerman was specifically asked about Gonzaga, who would be a slam-dunk addition if they played anywhere this side of Bismarck, North Dakota. Ackerman: “nothing is crazy in this environment but we’re also mindful of details, like travel and logistics.” Tellingly, that’s not a no.
As with all things realignment, O’Neil’s tweets started a small storm of speculation: is it Gonzaga? What about SLU? Or VCU or Dayton? What about Wichita or Memphis? The speculation is fun, but you should keep two things in mind. First, it’s not Memphis, it will never, ever be Memphis:
Was told by a good Big East source this week: “You will walk on water before the Big East presidents invite Memphis to join the league.” https://t.co/OrIuwIrBQN
— Matt Norlander (@MattNorlander) September 10, 2021
Second, you should not overthink these things. It’s Gonzaga. And it is only Gonzaga.
The Big East is only adding one school
Here’s an important fact about the Big East: it has 11 members. The league is not adding two schools to get to 13. No one wants 13. So it’s one school or three, and as we’ll get to in a moment, there are not three schools worth adding, so it’s one. Note in particular that Ackerman asked “What school helps with our basketball aspirations?” Singular school.
(An aside: eleven is a great number for basketball because you can have a 20-game round-robin schedule, which is so good I am almost reflexively against expansion. It is not perfect because one school has to take every weekend off, but it is really good. But 12 is not bad. Lots of leagues have 12 schools. There would be two schools you only play once. Unfortunate, but not a deal breaker. Fourteen gets unwieldy. They’re only adding one school.)
Gonzaga checks both the TV and basketball boxes, no one else checks one
The most important part of Ackerman’s comments is the framing: this is about appealing to Fox. And Gonzaga is the only appealing option for Fox. Fox puts any Big East game that matters in one of two places: weekend afternoon games on network Fox (“Fox Banquet”), or evening games on FS1. Those channels are everywhere, so you do not get a boost by adding a market. No one cares how many TV sets there are in St. Louis, or how much people in Richmond love streaming services. What matters is (1) being a big brand, or (2) being good. Ideally both. Only Gonzaga is both. When the 2021 TV schedules were announced last month UConn and Villanova each had six (6!) games on network TV. Georgetown had five. Seton Hall (who might be good this year) had four and no one else had more than three. Marquette, Butler, Creighton, DePaul, and Providence combined have as many national games as UConn does alone.
So now do a thought experiment. There are two buckets. One has UConn, and Villanova, and Georgetown. One has Butler, and DePaul, and Providence. Which bucket does Gonzaga belong in? Now which bucket does SLU, or VCU, or Dayton, or anyone else belong in? I bet they are not the same bucket. So that’s the TV box.
Now let’s look at the basketball box, which should not take long. SLU, VCU, and Dayton, have all had some recent success. They are not bad programs. But they are not above the middle of the pack in the Big East. Would they drag the league down? Probably not, except through dilution. Here are their average KenPom finishes for the past 10 years:
- SLU: 122.5
- Dayton: 60.3
- VCU: 50.5
Now let’s do Gonzaga:
- Gonzaga: 9.5
This feels unfair, because it is. Gonzaga has been a 1 seed four times since 2013. It has been to the Elite Eight five times since 2015. It’s an ATM machine that spits out NCAA Tournament shares. It would be an immediate contender to win the league every year, and, not for nothing, its women’s team would be the second best in the Big East.
Leagues do not expand to fatten out their middle. We all just saw every non-Texas/Oklahoma Big XII team get turned down by the ACC, the Big Ten, and the Pac 12. Gonzaga is the only above-median option. No one else is close. No one else is even in the conversation.
The geography is Gonzaga’s problem
None of this is to say Gonzaga is a lock to join. The continental United States is big, and Gonzaga is on the wrong side of it. But that’s a Gonzaga problem: they’re the ones that will have to play half their basketball games 2500 miles away from home and answer a lot of hard questions about what to do with their other sports. Everyone else in the league just has to go west for basketball once. Yeah, it’s a long flight, but it’s only one, and on the other end of it you might have a Top 10 opponent on national TV. It’s a good deal. And the increased payouts from FOX and NCAA Tournament credits will be more than enough to cover trips for non-revenue sports. Is it ideal? Not at all, but it’s not a dealbreaker if you’re a current school.
Is it a dealbreaker for Gonzaga? Maybe! I do not even have suggestions for how they would handle non-revenue sports. But the WCC—its current league—was already bad and just got worse with the departure of BYU. The WCC also has a TV contract exponentially smaller than what the Big East gets now, to say nothing of what the 2025 deal will look like. Is the increase in money and competition worth it for Gonzaga? I do not know, but I bet it is worth it for them to kick the tires on the idea, and we will find out the answer soon enough. If Gonzaga says yes, the Big East should too. And if Gonzaga says no? Stay at 11, Big East: the round robin is better than Dayton.
