Jumping from Mid Major conference to a Major Conference

Looking at VT's transition from a Mid-Major basketball team to becoming a member of a Major conference had me wondering about how other teams handled this. Since VT jumped to the Big East in the fall of 2000, 10 other schools have made the jump. Two of those schools jumped ship for football (USF and Cincy were in the BE from 2005-2012, but now are back as mid majors). Three of the schools joined the BE in 2013 (Creighton, Butler, Xavier). I left those 5 schools because well these graphs suck to make and not great amounts of post jump data. That leaves Marquette, TCU, Utah, UofL, and Depaul.

Here are the winning percentages over those years:

Everyone is kind of up and down over the entire time. When we look at trending from mid major to major conference we get this (note the breaks in lines are when each school made the jump:

As we see jumping conference is tough. Three of the schools have done worse in their new conference, which should make sense as major conference should be harder than mid majors. However, the 3 that have positive trendlines in their new conferences all have negative trend lines prior to making the jump. Marquette is kind of odd in how flat it's trend lines are before and after the jump. Utah looks like it is a bad year (2011) from having a flatter line. VT has the least mid major data in the set i am using so it looks like a steep downward trend. However, 1995 is a spike in winning percentage and one of VTs best seasons. If we were to trend out a few more years we get:

VT made two conference jumps, BE in 2000, ACC in 2004. The only other school to make a jump from Mid major to major to different major is UofL. Interestingly enough both UofL and VT used to be in the metro conference.

As you can see the Big East was good to both UofL and VT. The ACC hasn't been great for UofL.

Though this is limited data, I think that it's not clear to say that the competition is better so teams do worse, or recruiting is better so you can improve. I did not take into account strength of conference, but 2000-2003 BE was a tough conference and I feel it was much tougher than 2004 ACC.

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Wet stuff on the red stuff.

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To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
@VTnerf on insta, @BuryHokie on twitter, #ThanksFrank

Please join The Key Players Club to read or post comments.

To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
@VTnerf on insta, @BuryHokie on twitter, #ThanksFrank

Please join The Key Players Club to read or post comments.

To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
@VTnerf on insta, @BuryHokie on twitter, #ThanksFrank