No More Inter-League Play Means More Mets

In today Philadelphia Daily News, Marcus Hayes makes a pretty good case for either losing the eighteen inter-league games or not having them count toward the Wild Card (in order to offset the scheduling anomalies).

When interleague play first was suggested, I leaned against it as a pure traditionalist. But I have to admit, I voted with my feet. I did go see the Phillies play the Yankees- even drove to Boston to see them play in Fenway. But candidly, the novelty has mostly worn off. I now find myself torn. The purist in me says get rid of it; the pragmatists says that anything that reduces the number of times the Phillies play the Mets is an overwhelmingly good thing.

The Phillies has a terrible week- mostly because the rotation had a terrible week. Every time you looked up, it was like the third inning, and the Nats and Mets were working on their second inning featuring a crooked number. They have won a mere twelve of their past thirty outings since pulling within a game of the Mets about a month ago. Its pretty grotesque.

I really don’t have the heart to start with the Phillies- but rumors in Tulane world have been even more vapid. There is some loose talk about another raid on C-USA by the Big East.

I don’t believe it for a moment. The Big East exists for two reasons:

- collect checks associated with being a BCS football conference- both tv and “true” BCS monies.

- conduct a big time college basketball conference in major television markets.

True, the Big East is not some hotshot football League. Totally. Thus, the last thing they need is more football cripples like Tulane and its brethren. And I am sure the Big East simply can’t wait to share its BCS/television monies with another couple of members who bring either nothing or next to nothing from a major college football perspective- the exciting Pitt-UCF match up would be a must see, or the UConn-Southern Miss burner- and, other than Memphis, bring zero media footprint to basketball.

And we’re not talking a small dilution either- for example, four new members cuts the take for the existing football members by a third. And for what? What possible advantage do our programs give to cut your television and bowl revenue by a third?

And it is even worse for basketball. Other than Memphis, they bring nothing there. No television, no programs, nothing.

They already took all the members of our League that bring even a smidgen of those attributes: Louisiville (football and good media footprint), Marquette (surprising media footprint), DePaul (great media footprint), and Cincinnati (good media footprint). That is enough mediocre football for any league.