Friday, June 06, 2003

WHY I CRY NO TEARS FOR THE BIG EAST I finally got off work at a decent hour and I'm just kickin' back enjoying a Pete's Wicked Summer Brew. On the way home I heard on the radio that the 5 remaining football schools of the Big East have sued the ACC, Miami and Boston College for Conspiracy to destroy the Big East Conference. [correction: I originally included Syracuse as a defendant but they have not been sued] I guess now these 3 will decide to stay and we'll all be One Big Happy Family again. Well, now that the lawyers are involved (and did you think they wouldn't be?) I decided that it was time for this lawyer to sound off on his thoughts. The Big East Conference are a bunch of hypocrites. Over the course of its history the Big East has always been a predatory agent in Northeastern college sports. Now it wants pity because for once someone is taking a bite out of its hide? In a time long past (the 70's) there was no major conference in the Northeast other than the Ivy League. There was an amorphous group of "independent" colleges and universities that formed the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference, something which wasn't really a conference at all. The ECAC held tournaments in various sports including basketball and, most notably, track and field. Its members could choose whomever they wanted to play. It was alotted several bids to the NCAA basketball tournament and held tournaments in various sections of the Northeast to see who would get the bids. For example, in 1976 Rutgers defeated St. John's at Madison Square Garden to win the ECAC Metro bid. Both teams were good enough that they would both go to the tournament anyway, but the loser got to play #1 Indiana in the 1st Round. In the Spring of 1978 athletics directors at Providence, St. Johns, Syracuse and Georgetown, met to discuss newly imposed NCAA men's basketball in-season scheduling requirements that would force these "independents" to align and schedule schools with whom they had no interest or tradition. Rather than bow to the NCAA mandate, the Big East was formed specifically for men's basketball. Also included were Boston College, UConn and Seton Hall. In a year the first big move by the Big East was to raid the Eastern 8 (now called the Atlantic 10) and scoop up Villanova. The Eastern 8 was actually a year older than the Big East, but it wouldn't be the first or the last time that it would be poached. Around 1980 Joe Paterno, Penn State's football coach and athletic director, concluded it might be beneficial for everyone if a new, all-sports conference were formed. The Big East, included largely Catholic institutions with basketball as their major sport, but did include Syracuse and Boston College two schools that did play big-time football as well. Schools under consideration for this Northeastern answer to the Big 10 included West Virginia, Pitt and Rutgers who were already in the Eastern 8, Penn State, a founding member of the Eastern 8 that had left to become an independent and Army and Navy. At this time Pitt had a top 10 football team and was a bitter rival of Penn State who had been the traditional eastern power. The Big East saw and opportunity and did an end-run on Paterno and "invited" Pitt to leave the Eastern 8 and join them. This would give Pitt's basketball team a major boost and, at that time, Pitt's football fortunes made them feel they could continue as an independent. This effectively killed the prospect of a Northeast major all sports conference forever and Penn State ultimately ended up joining the Big 10. Big East basketball bloomed during this period of time with stars like Patrick Ewing, Chris Mullin and many other great players. But football would rear its ugly head one more time. Other eastern football independents like Rutgers, Temple, West Virginia and Virginia Tech were in talks with Miami and Florida State to form a sort of eastern seaboard conference. Obviously Syracuse, BC and Pitt would note this development with interest. Once again, the Big East thwarted these plans by admitting Miami, which had a downtrodden basketball program to join. Florida State ended up going to the ACC. But as long as the possibility for this kind of alliance existed, the Big East was in danger. It now had 4 teams who played major college football and the trend was away from being an independent and toward conference affiliation. To stave this off one more time the Big East once again turned to raiding the Atlantic 10, taking Rutgers, West Virginia, Temple and Virginia Tech first as football only members. It then extended full membership to 3 of these schools leaving out Temple. Temple remained for football only until the decision was made to unceremoniously boot them out in favor of UConn, who was upgrading their football program. The Big East also invited Notre Dame for basketball, but not football. Notre Dame had its own football TV contract and was not interested in sharing the loot but its basketball teams had fallen on hard times since Digger Phelps retired as coach. So basically you ended up with an unwieldy, though predatory, 14 team conglomeration of schools which academically really don't have that much in common and which include 2 members who are geographically far outside its footprint. Some schools were in for this, but not for that. Miami doesn't even play baseball in the Big East. It was only a matter of time, and greed, which would lead to the Big East's downfall. The Byzantine machinations of the Big East foiled the establishment of a major all-sports conference in the Northeast. The smaller schools would have done quite nicely for themselves with a basketball only conference. And they still will. But for now, the only ones who'll be making the big money are the lawyers. File under From The Sports Desk. 6:21:13 PM    Go ahead, make my day  []

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK “Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.”                                                                        --Dalai Lama File under Stuff That Don't Fit Anywhere Else. 8:50:49 AM    Go ahead, make my day  []