Last stand for Big East

Harry · January 14, 2013

After a decade of turmoil during which it was consumed as much by internal tensions as by the outside forces that were tearing it apart, the Big East Conference is down to its last, best chance. Now that the league's seven non-football schools have decided to bolt and its clumsy East Coast/West Coast ploy has begun to unravel, will the Big East finally be able to coalesce around a common purpose for the future?

The answer comes down to the makeup of the future membership roster. Success will be achievable if the conference reconstitutes itself in a geographically logical fashion with like-minded schools having football at the core of their athletic engines. Attractive television markets must be part of the equation.

So far, the jury is still out on whether that is the course the league will pursue. During its most recent tumult, the Big East's unwieldy gestures at defining its new brand left plenty of room for doubt about whether it has arrived at a solid plan for, first, achieving real stability, and, second, positioning itself for prosperity.

The so-called Catholic Seven were part and parcel with the all-sports schools in the convoluted western expansion strategy that envisioned the perpetuation of a discredited conference structure handicapped by divergent interests and wracked by intrigue and mutual suspicion.

It should be apparent to those with open eyes that the awkward pursuit of football-only associations with a few Mountain West schools was little more than a desperate Hail Mary to try to sustain the unsustainable. It was a reflexive attempt to prop up the same philosophy that long kept the Big East frozen in a virtually defenseless posture as raiders ransacked it.

Fortunately, all is not lost yet.

Read more: http://bonesville.net/Articles/DannyWhitford/12-13/011413_Whitford.htm

Arkstfan · January 14, 2013

Here's the rub.

Take his expansion list.

Charlotte, ODU, Tulsa, UMass, Marshall and Southern Miss.

If I am UConn, I think UMass is quite appealing. I might think that at Memphis and Cincy. ECU probably doesn't share that view nor would Tulane, Houston SMU.

Probably much the same as you move through Charlotte and ODU.

Marshall? Not sure that anyone outside Greenville is terribly excited.

Tulsa and USM? Cannot fathom UConn finding USM at all appealing and probably UConn is asking why Tulsa when superior basketball programs like UMass, Charlotte and ODU are so handy.

So that leaves you with.

1. Deadlock and do nothing which is unlikely given the claims that a title game is essential to the TV strategy.

2. Compromise and select one but that may be easier said than done given the geographic reach of the league.

3. Compromise and select three (or four if Navy is not as firm as advertised).

Starts looking a lot like WAC in 1993-94 when their expansion committee returned and said we support going to 12 but have failed to reach consensus on which two of the 10 or so schools we've looked at should be added and the process basically locks up until the decision is reached to go to 16 by adding six rather than adding two.

It looks a lot like CUSA March-May of 2012 when it is widely believed that CUSA is adding one maybe two teams but the disparate interests of east/west led to adding six schools.

If Big East walks out of this taking one compromise school, Aresco has earned his pay.

Mean Green 93-98 · January 14, 2013

Bigger issue looms if the ACC loses another school and then the BE loses UCon. Then what?

There is no real decent option. It is getting closer and closer to having the some form of full-scale restructuring. It is going to happen. There are too many schools that are getting tied together in a hodgepodge fashion. This was way it was an absolute imperative for UNT to make the CUSA move. As much as people like to say that the Belt has caught up, the overall perception is still there. When the last round of this all ends, the important part is going to be who you are dancing with.

True. But it would have been far better for us if we had already been dancing with C-USA a few years ago.