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2008-2009 BIG EAST PREVIEW: HISTORICAL CONFERENCE RECORDS

The Big East has gone through many changes over the last 28 years. Starting out as a 7-team (Syracuse, Georgetown, St. John’s, Connecticut, Boston College, Seton Hall and Providence) conference with a 6-game schedule in 1980, Villanova joined in 1981, making it an 8-team league and the schedule increased to 14 games. As talk of an Eastern All-Sports league increased, the Big East made a pre-emptive strike against such a formation move by adding Pittsburgh in 1983 and increasing the league schedule to 16 games.

The 9-team, 16-game set-up held stead until another football move was made. This time, Miami was added 1992 and the schedule was increased to a grueling 18-game slate. In 1996 the Big East moved into two conferences (the Big East 7 and the Big East 6) with the addition of Rutgers, Notre Dame and West Virginia, still playing an 18-game conference schedules. In the 1999 conference season, they went back to one division and in 2000 the conference went back to 16-conference games.

The next expansion came in 2001 with the addition of Virginia Tech to the basketball side and the creation of two divisions (East and West) returned to the conference. From there, we all pretty much know the rest of the story with the ACC raid poaching Miami, Boston College and Virginia Tech, knocking the Big East to an 11-team conference. In 2005-2006, the Big East welcomed Louisville, Cincinnati, Marquette, DePaul and South Florida to the conference and that is how we have gotten to our current 16-team set-up. The conference returned to an 18-game conference schedule for the 2007-2008 season.

Below are the all-time record of all 19 past and present Big East programs in conference play. As you can tell, some of the new wave of programs are moving up the standings trying to knock Jim Boehiem off his lofty perch. Can they do it this season??

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