What will keep Lavin here is if we can pay him. If a new basketball-only conference nets us a smaller tv payout, then we won't be able to afford him and his staff - and that's when he'll leave.
Don't fool yourself into thinking this is about prestige of conference.
We could be in a conference with Fordham, Manhattan, and LIU and if we paid a coach the same or more than he'd get from a major program then said coach would be inclined to stay.
The $64,000 question is whether the "new" Big East, or a yet to be devised basketball-only conference, will earn us the same amount of tv revenue.
Gotta focus on Top DMA's. If you get schools with healthy alum #'s in those top DMA's you can still get a sizable chunk of money.
http://www.tvb.org/media/file/TVB_Market_Profiles_Nielsen_Household_DMA_Ranks2.pdf
Agree
That's what would make SJU, Georgetown, Villanova the backbone behind any basketball only conference. They bring the big east coast markets.
Still, I honestly don't know what kind of tv contract that would generate vs what we're getting now. I'd like to think it would be close, but who knows.
I'll tell you this though; if an ACC/Pac12 team can offer coach $2 million a year and we can only pay him $1 mil ... that's when he's going to leave. And who could blame him at that point.
But I don't think he'd go to USC or Wake Forest or Illinois (just to name a few) just for the sake of prestige and being in a so called power conference.
Quality of life and money mean a lot more than prestige. Right now, it appears he loves living in NYC, and we're paying him a very competitive salary.