Take the money at the expense of adding a near permanent doormat. I think expanding the Big East is a dead issue. Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from.
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Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. Loading comments Share this story Twitter Facebook. All three are unlikely to go dancing this year.
It has lost 28 straight games to ranked teams, a program record. Syracuse looks like an NIT team, owning just a single top victory, and has averaged just Recruiting has been poor. Notre Dame has the highest-rated recruiting class of the three for next year, and it is 51st according to Sports. Since the three joined the ACC in , they have had three top classes. Notre Dame was 15th in and Syracuse was eighth in and Compare that to where the programs were before leaving the Big East.
Syracuse had reached five straight tournaments and back-to-back Elite Eights. Pittsburgh had won at least 20 games 11 years in a row, making the Dance 10 of those seasons.
Notre Dame went to the tournament six of seven years. Jeff Capel has shown progress in each of his three seasons, and should at least have the Panthers in the NIT this year. At Syracuse, losing Mike Hopkins to Washington has negatively impacted recruiting. Coach Jim Boeheim is 76 years old. He was going to slow down at some point. There was no coaching change. The Irish reached back-to-back regional finals in their second and third years in the ACC, but have fallen off significantly since then.
If they had to do it again, Syracuse and Pittsburgh almost certainly leave because of the football money. The Big East said, "No thanks. Four months later, Syracuse and Pittsburgh would leave. A few weeks after that, incoming member TCU -- which had yet to even join the league -- left for the Big The next month, West Virginia followed suit.
Things quieted down for a year until September when Notre Dame took all of its sports except for football, to the ACC, as well. When Marinatto stepped down in July as commissioner -- a move which delighted and relieved many of the remaining member institutions -- the Big East brought in Mike Aresco. A veteran of the television industry and most recently with CBS Sports, Aresco was supposed to give credibility to the league as it entered into its two-month exclusive negotiating window with ESPN.
Beginning on Sept. We're nearing the end of the negotiating period, but we're optimistic about getting something done. They value our product immensely, we value them. We're continuing to talk. We'll see. On Nov. The thought -- even among the basketball schools -- was that being a free-agent on the market wasn't necessarily a bad thing. So many of the networks have so many different channels, that it meant a home somewhere.
As of Dec. The main component keeping the seven basketball schools tethered to the Big East was the promise of that TV deal. Privately, all of the schools acknowledge that being associated as part of a football conference helps sustain them financially. So on a conference call early Saturday morning with the presidents of the seven schools and Aresco, the decision was made to walk away from the conference. We're committed to doing that.
We're committed to pursuing that. Even if they were stepping out onto a battlefield without armor and arrows whizzing all around them, the seven basketball-only schools of the Big East finally felt relevant again. Peter M. Donahue told reporters after the Wildcats' game on Saturday , "and where basketball was playing a part in that conference. And in particular, one of those brothers that had all the shiny toys the basketball schools didn't: Connecticut.
The Huskies were a founding member and until , were just like their basketball counterparts. UConn football was a small-time endeavor, playing as a member of the Yankee and Atlantic 10 conferences. But when the Big East lost Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College in , the conference needed a replacement to help fill the ranks and UConn volunteered to upgrade its operation.
They even had success, being co-champions in and , with a BCS bowl berth to show for it. But even though UConn is so closely associated with its basketball product, it had little choice but to align itself with the football members.
But Connecticut wasn't the only casualty. Cincinnati, which has won 52 games and made back-to-back NCAA Tournaments in the last two years, was also left in the dust. We're sitting here in a state where the state school is miles from its closest road game. Don't tell me that people care about student-athletes. It's all ridiculous. Let's call it what it is. I've thought about this long and hard and I've waited to say this. If it's all about this much money and money-grabbing, the players need to get paid.
Even members that hadn't arrived at the Big East's doorstep yet -- ones that were supposed to strengthen basketball and prevent the schools from leaving -- were greeted by a "WE'VE MOVED" sign at the gate. Temple, which could've brought its Big 5 rivalry to an even higher level inside the Big East, is now left without Villanova. Memphis , was supposed to have brought the budding series against Louisville to the conference. And at the very least face off regularly against a Georgetown or Marquette, but will now no longer have the chance.
Individuals who are familiar with the thinking of the basketball-only schools have already begun to identify potential targets to bolster their ranks as early as the middle of last week. As is Missouri Valley Conference member Creighton. Even Gonzaga -- which is located in Washington state and plays in the West Coast Conference -- has already taken the temperature of the seven schools.
The seven schools are most high on Xavier, which has long been a target of expansion talks of the Big East. But with Creighton's emergence as a consistent, national basketball power, the Bluejays are expected to have a large amount of support.
Same for Butler, which made back-to-back national championship game appearances in and and moved up from the Horizon League to the Atlantic 10 this season. But at this point, it's all speculation. We just keep our head down and worry about today's practice. The great thing about our program is that for 30 years or so, we've done an amazing job of putting ourselves in a great position to be a desired commodity.
Gonzaga, perhaps, is the most intriguing option. Two highly-ranked individuals within the contingent of the seven defecting schools say that if the coalition is seriously committed to creating a nationally-relevant and financially-stable basketball conference, the Bulldogs have to be strongly considered as a partner.
Despite the tricky logistics of having a lone team on the West coast in a mainly East coast league, the seven schools would not be opposed to having Gonzaga as a member. There have even been scenarios tossed around that should Connecticut and Cincinnati want to find separate homes for its football programs elsewhere and shack up with its former conference-mates, those schools would be welcome.
And given their rich basketball histories, it -- in some cases -- is the preferred option. But given the college sports landscape being severely tilted towards college football, that option would require a complex and delicate amount of maneuvering.
And if that were to happen, it's not out of the realm of possibility to see Temple or Memphis -- both with historically struggling football programs -- to barter a similar arrangement.
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