Exorcise Those Demons

Can someone please tell me why the Big East continues to keep DePaul around? Seriously, if anyone has a legitimate answer to this question, I would love to hear it. Maybe it's because they're a private school with a good amount of money. Maybe it's because they're in a huge television market in Chicago. Those are really the only two explanations I can think of. Yesterday, USF Softball coach Ken Ericksen withdrew his girls from the field after concluding that the safety of his team was in jeopardy. I'll have quite a bit more to say after the jump, but first enjoy this Family Guy clip I've been using to illustrate the way DePaul went about this whole situation:

Vidivodo.com : stewie playing chess Etiket: stewie griffin brian play

The softball team's early exit from the game at DePaul resulted in a forfeit of the game, and subsequently a forfeit of a chance at the #3 seed in the Big East Championship tournament. But we have to just accept Ericksen's actions and trust that he's got the best interest of our team and our school in mind. Pending investigation by the Big East, this could end up costing the University of South Florida a good amount of money, as the conference doesn't look upon forfeits too leniently, regardless of the circumstances. The last time a USF team forfeit a game was the volleyball team in 2001.

But I didn't come here to talk about USF's forfeit. I came to talk about DePaul. The Blue Demons have been notorious for keeping USF out of the bottom spot in the men's basketball standings and have never really had much to offer in any of their other sports. Their best programs are softball (ours might me too, but that's not the point here) and women's basketball. I know I'm definitely not the first person that's thought of giving DePaul the boot. For years now, DePaul has been the bottom feeder of the Big East Conference, and one who doesn't return much to the rest of the schools. The teams who visit the Blue Demons are regularly met by dismal crowds and blowout victories. Obviously, a conference win is never a bad thing, but it seems as though the other 15 teams would benefit more from kicking them right out, and this is coming from the school whose team would undoubtedly grace the bottom of the conference basketball standings perennially.

So why would this conference put up with them? It's become clear that the Big East officials are drawn toward college teams in apathetic pro markets, including USF, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, DePaul, Villanova, St. John's, and I'd even throw Georgetown and Marquette in there, not to mention they just added TCU as well. It can't be that the conference is rewarding years of loyalty because they got invited up in 2005 when the conference expanded (not to mention that loyalty obviously means nothing to these conference officials, or else Villanova would be an FBS member by now). They're not big (~16,000 undergraduate enrollment), and they're not East (Chicago is recognized for most sport purposes as in the central United States), so what does this school possibly have to bring to the Big East? I guess until we get an explanation from the conference, we significant schools will just have to accept the fact that this school will be there draining 1/16 of the conference's basketball money and granting a free win for every team that makes the trip out to Chicago. The rest of the conference's desire to give the Demons the boot wasn't sparked by this softball fiasco, but it just lends more to the argument against keeping this school as a major-conference basketball team and allowing them to get the money and attention of the teams that deserve it. Let me know in the comments section whether you agree or disagree with me that it's time the Big East Conference tells DePaul to GTFO.

P.S. They should really be booted because they produced John C. Reilly.