Category: Big East

Expansion Update

On By AndyIn Big EastLeave a comment

According to ESPN.com’s Andy Katz, the Big West has opened up the possibility of accepting Boise State’s non-football teams. Such a move would provide Boise the landing sport they need now that the WAC looks to be a lame duck conference. There had been rumblings in the past week or so about Boise reconsidering their jump to the Big East and possibly staying with the MWC. Securing a position in the Big West would virtually assure the move happens (and would also shut down any talk of San Diego State going back to the MWC – they’re already in with the Big West for the rest of their sports).

The only downside? Lazy sportswriters and bad bloggers using “OMG BIG EAST FOR FOOTBALL BIG WEST FOR EVERYTHING ELSE LOL BIG EAST IS DUMB” as the basis for posts made in the 2 weeks following any such announcement.

I’M SURE THEY’D LOVE TO, BUT…

On By MikeIn Big EastLeave a comment

Andrea Adelson blogged on Friday that the Big East needs to step up its PR game:

At a time when the Big East has lost its automatic qualifying status, it needs somebody to vociferously defend the league, to explain why the league deserves an equal share of the BCS revenue pie as the Big Ten, Big 12, ACC, SEC and Pac-12. Someone to beat the Big East drum; to make every attempt possible to let an entire nation know that the ACC is not better than the Big East when it comes to BCS performance.

Nobody in the Big East has even attempted to make this case. Or to provide a breakdown of how the Big East has done vs. the ACC in the BCS. It should be an absolute outrage that the Big East is teetering on the brink of being left out of the big BCS money. Why? Going back to the first BCS game in 1999, the ACC is 2-13 all-time; The Big East is 8-6.

It’s a nice pep talk for the Big East, which is something of a surprise coming from an ESPN entity. However, it’s hard for the Big East to make the kind of PR push that Adelson is calling for when the future of conference expansion (and by extension, Big East membership) is still unclear. While most conferences seem content at the moment, the Big 12 has a new commissioner and may or may not be looking to get back to 12 teams. Louisville and Cincinnati have been rumored as potential Big 12 targets for a while now, but with the recent $200 million/year agreement that the conference has made with ESPN & Fox , it’s hard to imagine either of those schools adding value to the deal.  It’s not surprising, then, that most rumors have involved the Big 12 poaching the ACC instead, with Florida State, Clemson, and Virginia Tech as the latest targets of wild speculation. And make no mistake– right now it really is just wild speculation. The Big 12 hasn’t made any public indication that it’s looking to expand. At this point the only thing revealed as a result of these rumors is just how dysfunctional the leadership is at Florida State. Even if it’s just speculation at this point, it’s still reason to be nervous; if the ACC is raided, they are sure to respond by poaching the Big East yet again. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that. If TV is the biggest driver in conference realignment, it doesn’t make much sense for ESPN to weaken a conference it owns the rights to while strengthening a conference that it shares with Fox.

If it’s just left alone for once, the new Big East could still put together a very lucrative television deal. It’s just hard to move into the future when the dark cloud of uncertainty is hanging over your head. Pray that the Big 12 is content with its already huge TV deal so that we can move into our own negotiations with what should be a very good football & basketball package.

MUSICAL COMMISSIONERS

On By MikeIn Big EastLeave a comment

I’m sure that by now you all have heard that John Marinatto has resigned as the Big East’s commissioner. My news and Twitter feeds have been overflowing all week with stories and comments about how messed up the Big East is, and maybe it’s true for all I know. I don’t see how this (presumably) forced resignation is evidence of that, though. If the league presidents want to move in a different direction, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re moving in opposite directions.

Anyway, Marinatto seems to be taking a lot of the blame for the loss of Pitt, Syracuse, and West Virginia. I’m not sure what exactly anyone expected him to do to stop it. Some argue that the Big East should’ve taken ESPN’s offer for their TV rights, which would have brought stability to the league. But it was Marinatto coaxed that offer from ESPN in the first place. He didn’t turn it down; the university presidents did, including Pitt’s. Some argue that if he was more aggressive in expansion, the league might have stayed together. But he was aggressive in expansion. TCU was on board, and he went after the service academies and UCF, with the latter being shot down by USF’s president. Syracuse and Pitt left anyway. It’s not like the conference was going to bring in any bigger names than that without the Big 12 falling apart. The conference took its lumps, and now it’s moving on.

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CHANGING COURSE, PART 6: FAQ, CONTINUED

On By MikeIn Big East, conference talk, navy football32 Comments

There’s still a lot of ground left to cover, so let’s get to it.

How will Big East membership change NAAA’s financial picture?

Both VADM Miller and Chet Gladchuk have been very clear about their concern for college football’s future and why they feel that Navy needs to join the Big East. There are other implications of Big East membership that haven’t really been addressed, though, with the most notable being how it affects NAAA’s financial outlook. There are a couple of reasons for this, I think. One, until the new TV contract is actually signed, there aren’t any details to talk about. Two, any time you talk about money, it brings out the cynics who believe that athletic departments can instead be funded by platitudes and pep talks. For PR’s sake it probably makes more sense to focus on other things.

In a way, the financial impact of joining the Big East has been addressed, just in different terms. When we talk about remaining in the top tier, we’re really just talking about money. The divide in college football that many fear is around the corner will be based on finances, separating big-money athletic departments from those with smaller budgets for competitive and legislative purposes. If remaining in the top tier of college football is the goal, then NAAA’s financial health must be addressed.

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CHANGING COURSE, PART 5: TELEVISION AND THE TOP TIER

On By MikeIn Big East, conference talk, navy football28 Comments

I know I said that I was going to continue the FAQ from part 4, but my answers to some of these questions are so long that it makes more sense for me to make some of them into separate posts. Like this one.

You keep talking about a “top tier.” Let’s say that this haves/have-nots divide does happen in some way. Will the Big East will even be in this top tier?

It’s a fair question. Before it looked like the BCS would do away with AQ status for its conference champions, there was plenty of speculation as to whether the Big East would retain that distinction either way. The conference has struggled to produce high-ranking teams at times, and the 2010 UConn team that went to the Fiesta Bowl wasn’t even ranked in the BCS top 25  (their average position among the six computer rankings used in the BCS formula was 52). Would such a lackluster performance be rewarded with a continued automatic berth in a BCS bowl game?

Now that auto-bids are probably on the way out, we can only speculate how things would have been. Chances are, though, that the Big East would still have been part of the club. Remember, what happens on the field is not the point of the BCS. Television is. And when it comes to TV, the one thing the Big East always had going for it was that it was the conference with the greatest reach into the Northeast. While it isn’t exactly the most football-crazy part of the country, it is the most populated. Even if those TV sets aren’t necessarily tuned in to Big East football every Saturday, it’s still too many people to be ignored. If the BCS bowls have 10 slots to fill, one of them would certainly be reserved for the champion of the Northeast’s conference.

That’s where things get a little hairy for the Big East going forward. (WARNING: TIN FOIL HAT TIME)

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CHANGING COURSE, PART 4: FAQ

On By MikeIn air farce, army, Big East, conference talk, navy football28 Comments

For the finale of our look at Navy’s decision to join the Big East, I’m just going to do a Q&A format to expand on some of the things we touched on earlier and to cover any other lose ends. Each of these should probably be its own post, but whatever. This is running a lot longer than I thought it would, so it looks like there will be a Part 5 too.

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