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The Big East needs to break up. The current rift in the conference between football schools and basketball schools is similar to a high school couple who try to transition their relationship on to college. They alternate between phone calls cursing each other out and phone calls saying how much they need one another. But, through it all, nothing productive happens. Fans of the conference are just rooting for something, anything, to happen at this point.
In case you missed the whole mess, the Atlantic Coast Conference raided the Big East for two members: Virginia Tech and Miami. However, the ACC needs to add one more team to get the magic number of 12 that will allow them to hold a lucrative conference championship game in football. Rumors are swirling, mostly involving two schools: Notre Dame and Boston College. The idea that Notre Dame would join the ACC is pretty laughable, as the Fighting Irish have an incredibly lucrative deal with NBC to televise their games, and under their current independent football situation, they don’t have to split their revenue from bowl games with anyone. Boston College is more likely to accept a bid to join the ACC, but it would require them swallowing a little bit of pride. The Eagles were left on the altar this summer by the ACC, who denied them a bid by the narrowest of margins.
The Big East is also looking for new members, with the same urgency that the ACC is. Currently, there are six football teams slated to be in the conference in 2005: Boston College, Pittsburgh, West Virginia, Rutgers, Syracuse and new member, Connecticut. Temple is being shown the door after the 2004 season ends, as they are a Big East member in football only and have had limited success. In order to be a viable football conference and continue to cash in on college football’s lucrative Bowl Championship Series, the Big East needs to add at least two strong football programs.
But the Big East needs to worry about more than just football. Currently, the conference has 14 teams in basketball, a huge number. Six of the schools play basketball and other sports in the Big East, but not football. Those schools have very different missions than the football schools, and would need to be placated also. Current rumors suggest the Big East will look to add Louisville and Cincinnati as football members, and Marquette and DePaul as non-football members. Adding these four teams from Conference USA would create a 16-team amalgamation that stretches from Massachusetts, west all the way to Wisconsin and Illinois.
However, there is an easier solution, and one that I am a proponent of. The Big East could simply split into two separate entities: a football conference and a non-football conference. Sure, separating the two leagues would rip apart some pretty good basketball rivalries like Syracuse vs. Georgetown and Boston College vs. Providence, but all the schools would be able to pursue their own goals with like-minded institutions. The football conference could still add Louisville and Cincinnati and be strong in both football and basketball.
Without having to worry about keeping football programs happy, the basketball conference could get back to the Big East’s roots, as the conference was originally founded with only basketball in mind. Remaining schools Providence, Seton Hall, St. John’s, Villanova, Notre Dame and Georgetown have an incredible basketball tradition, and they are all very similar colleges as all are relatively small Catholic schools. They would no longer have to compete against large state universities like Connecticut and Pittsburgh. Adding Marquette and DePaul would stretch the conference very far west, but there are also viable options farther east, such as possibly creating an eight-team conference by adding Atlantic-10 schools like Dayton, St. Bonaventure or Xavier.
Whichever way the Big East decides to go, it needs to happen soon. Supporters and students at colleges across the conference have been waiting for months to know what will happen in the 2005 season. For the sake of college football and basketball fans across the country, one of the schools mentioned above needs to step up and take a leadership role in sorting out the current mess and deciding who will be playing where in the near future.
