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At Least Arthur Johnson Showed Some Self Awareness While Explaining Why Villanova’s Big 5 Proposals Weren’t Going to Work
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Villanova is departing Big 5 play after this season. It was the big story on Action News last week, amplified by Kevin Willard going after the Inquirer’s Jeff Neiburg and blaming Temple’s A.D., Arthur Johnson, for the Wildcats’ exit.
Johnson spoke with Owls Daily on Friday, and said this, in part:
According to Johnson, the decision to leave Villanova behind was made because the Wildcats wouldn’t budge from their proposal to reset the schedule with tiered pods – a pair of three-team groups seeded 1-2-3 based on their NET ranking from the previous year. The three seed would visit the two seed, with the winner advancing to play the one seed on its home floor. The pod winners would then play for the Big 5 title at XMA in the same tripleheader setup as today.
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In examining the proposal, the ADs reviewed the NET rankings from the past six seasons. The Wildcats would have been the top seed in their pod each year, meaning they wouldn’t play any road games.
“So now we go from playing four (Big 5 games) when I got here, down to three in the current pod, which is not ideal, to two,” Johnson said. “They want to play two games and be the champion based on what was done the year before.”
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“We all benefit by playing Villanova,” Johnson said. “But we all don’t benefit by going to Villanova’s place every time, that every time we play them it’s got to be on one of their home courts.”
All of that weighed against Villanova’s proposal, Johnson said. The counterbalance was guaranteed revenue from XMA. Then the Wildcats tried to put their thumb even further on that scale.
“At one point they came back, and this helped them lose the rest of the people, that there should be some merit based on how you finish in terms of how the revenue is distributed,” Johnson revealed. “So already you’re going to start out at least fourth (place), now you want more of the money from the tripleheader.”
There’s a lot to unpack here.
Villanova’s proposal definitely is unfair, in a vacuum. If you go by NET, they’re at the top every year. And if the Big 5 classic revenue share is weighted, then they walk away with most of the money. So the other athletic directors were right to push back on that, because the Cats were proposing something that was unequal and and favored themselves.
But the reality is that we don’t live in a vacuum. Villanova is the best Big 5 program. St. Joe’s fans will tell you all about the current two-game winning streak they have against Nova, but they beat Kyle Neptune twice after going 0-11 against Villanova between 2012 and 2022. The Holy War looks like Temple vs. Penn State in football going back almost 30 years now.
When Kevin Willard took over last season, the Cats beat La Salle by 15, beat Temple by 18, and then beat Penn by 27 points in the Big 5 title game. They didn’t play SJU because the Hawks lost to Penn in pod play, which saw them match up with Temple in the 3rd place game. They didn’t go on a tear until January, when Steve Donahue had them cooking.
Right now, Big 5 classic revenue is split seven ways between the teams and the venue. But Villanova brings more fans than the other five. They have a gripe there, don’t they? If Drexel brings 100 fans, and Nova brings 5,000 fans, should both of those schools receive the same amount of money?
Johnson, who has driven Temple athletics further into the ground, by the way, at least had some self awareness when he told Owls Daily this:
“We’ve got to get people to show up,” Johnson said. “And I try to be as real as possible. We all have to get better. We can’t depend on [Villanova] to carry the city in terms of getting a bid. And we’ve all got to make it where that would not be the case. We can be better. We can get into the tournament.
Temple fans have nothing to stand on. Adam Fisher is 49-51 in three seasons and Aaron McKie was 52-56 in four seasons. This what the Owls are now, a team just hovering under .500, playing in a conference no one cares about. They haven’t been to the NCAA Tournament since Fran Dunphy’s last season and haven’t won a March Madness game since Obama’s first term.
SJU, meantime, was a mixed bag under Billy Lange, experiencing two crap seasons, two bang-average seasons, and two 20-win seasons, though you could make the argument that they underachieved relative to the talent on those rosters. Donahue got them to 24 wins last year, yet they exited the A10 tournament with another double-digit loss and extended their March Madness drought to 10 years. If you look at what SJU was from 2000 to 2016, then yes, they have largely disappointed relative to the expectations we should all have for that program.
La Salle, Drexel, and Penn are smaller programs with limited resources. They are what they are and the best we can hope for is a season like Penn had last year.
Ultimately, we’d all agree that there’s a lot of blame to go around here, right? I mean, if you’re capable of critical thinking and not blathering from the top of Hawk Hill or the roof of the Liacouras Center. Your schools have done hardly anything in 10 years, so get your Temple and St. Joe’s houses in order. And Nova? Your complaints are fair, but there is a putrid smugness and arrogance coming from you lot. Your head coach is a dick and a poor representation of the program that Jay Wright turned into a powerhouse.
And last, but certainly not least, if people really care about the Big 5, then they will show up, but they haven’t been doing that.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com