Remember a big dog has big $hits that you have to clean up, I don't know about you but I don't want to have two hand fulls of $hit.
like one the brehs said the first year is very critical you need to train it. My dog was only in the crate during the first month for long amounts of time. He's completely house trained and there's times where he's in the house 12 hours with no problem out the crate while where gone. It was a process though first year dude was testing my patience and at times I doubted my decision on getting him.