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ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! SOMEONE NEEDS TO STEP UP AND STOP THE MADNESS!

With BIG EAST representatives visiting such places as Colorado Springs, Boise and Houston…can someone please stop the madness?

I feel like George Jetson….”Jane, stop this crazy thing!”

Here is a look at where we are…how we got here and where we should go next, if someone, would just face the music…

It is time for the BIG EAST to face facts. The run is over and any of the far-reaching expansion ideas being floated across the worldwide web offer very little in stabilizing the future programs of those involved. There are too many variables and schools with different interests and attributes coming together to form a ‘conference’ stretching from Boise to Houston to Tampa to Storrs and nearly every place in between does little good for anyone.

Rick Pitino can continue to publicly lobby for what schools need to be invited to the BIG EAST. Of course, while he does, politicians from his state of Kentucky are allegedly working back channels to get Louisville an invitation to the Big 12, possibly at the expense of fellow conference member West Virginia. This is the same Big 12 conference that looked to be on similarly shaky ground not too long ago. Now schools and their state representatives are fighting to join the conference to get out of the BIG EAST.

The person I feel sorry for the most is BIG EAST commissioner John Marinatto. His approval rating continues to plummet. However, he did not create this mess, but was left in charge to manage it. This is also not to say Mike Tranghese created the mess either. The commissioner in the BIG EAST must represent all 16 teams in the league. Actually, they have been successful in doing so. Against tough odds and outside forces the conference was able to sustain the loss of Boston College, Virginia Tech and Miami by creating the toughest basketball conference in the nation. They were also able to act adequately enough to keep the BIG EAST schools that play Division 1-A football in a BCS league. This allowed those schools to position themselves to prosper even when it looked like the conference would fall completely apart.

I see all the criticism toward both commissioners. What could Marinatto do to prevent this from happening? His job and power does not allow him to kick out the 8 football schools, who have their BCS status. His power does not allow him to kick out the 8 non-football schools that, the majority of them, were original BIG EAST members and have the conference name and relationship with Madison Square Garden. Instead the league presidents have the power…but, a conference split right down the middle was not going to get anything done for the greater good. Like a deadlocked congress or senate, political gridlock ensued in the conference.

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All the schools wanted the best of both worlds. The football schools wanted their BCS bid AND they wanted Madison Square Garden and the NCAA Tournament credits of the BIG EAST. The non-football schools were not going to give up their assets of the BIG EAST either. The BIG EAST was not on stable ground, any other BCS program in America knew that. There were no answers…no chance of adding Notre Dame for all sports, luring Penn State to be interested in a all-sports conference in the East. The conference could not even keep their own with original member Boston College bolting and doing so in a way that still has others feeling ill will towards the school.

So, what is the reason the BIG EAST is in the situation they are now? On June 27, 1984, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in NCAA versus Board of Regents of University of Oklahoma that the NCAA’s television plan, which was to the benefit of the College Football Association (CFA), violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. As a result, individual schools and athletic conferences were freed to negotiate contracts on their own behalf.

Nothing really changed in the immediate aftermath until Notre Dame broke from the CFA in 1991 and signed an exclusive deal with NBC for the rights to their home football games. This touched off the beginning of conference shuffling and the great money grab as college football television rights began to soar. By 1991 the BIG EAST had added Miami, Temple, West Virginia, Virginia Tech and Rutgers to form a football conference with Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Boston College. By 1995 the CFA had completely fallen apart. Miami began as an all-sports member in the 1991-1992 season and by 1995 Rutgers and West Virginia were also added as all-sports members and Notre Dame, who began the frenzy with their decision to leave the CFA, was brought into the league for all sports besides football upon the CFA falling apart.

The addition of the football arm of the BIG EAST came just a few years after Penn State applied for inclusion to the conference. At the time the BIG EAST was getting their feet under them it was Nittany Lion head football coach Joe Paterno who began developing a concept for an all-sports conference in the Northeast. That idea was scrapped when the BIG EAST added Pittsburgh in 1982.

In 1985 Penn State applied for conference membership but was denied admission when they only received 5 of 8 votes in their favor when they needed 6. This vote could have been the single biggest reason why the BIG EAST has found itself on the wrong end of the 2005 and 2011 conference shuffles and in the situation it finds itself today.

The BIG EAST can survive, but it needs to go back to its roots. The league has always been a basketball conference where some of its members played football. In the last round of television negotiations Mike Tranghese smartly attached the league’s basketball power to the negotiations to keep the football league on television and scrambled to keep the automatic BCS berth alive for the 8 schools that were cobbled together for football. However, the time has come to go back to what it was. The BIG EAST name can stay intact and mean something.

St. John’s, Georgetown, Villanova, Providence and Seton Hall need to take back their conference. They begin with a strong reputation in NYC/NJ, Philadelphia, Washington DC and New England. The conference has established itself in the Midwest, so keeping their relationships with DePaul and Marquette make sense. After all, those schools all fit a similar profile and that is going to be key in keeping a conference together.

There are some other logical additions to the conference that could be made. Forming a Western Division with DePaul and Marquette could be St. Louis, Xavier and Dayton. Branching into Indianapolis with Butler would add another excellent market and a school that fits in with the others very well. The East would be made up of original conference members St. John’s, Georgetown, Villanova, Providence, Seton Hall as well as another member like Richmond, Duquesne or UMass. Duquesne would allow the conference to keep the Pittsburgh market in a city that is seeing a rebirth of basketball popularity at all ages. This is a nice, tidy 12-team conference of schools with similar profiles and agendas.

At this point the football side of the conference does nothing to help the basketball schools. These teams see none of the extra revenue the football programs receive from the BCS or television deal. Instead, these smaller, regional Universities are asked to travel more distances to play games in all sports as part of the conference. Adding Houston, Central Florida, SMU or anyone else bandied about does not help these programs one bit and they need to say enough is enough!

The BIG EAST should continue to work with the remaining schools that play football to find a landing spot. While Connecticut and Rutgers could be ACC targets and Louisville continues to work their way to becoming a Big 12 candidate (all this is assuming West Virginia finds its place, as mis-placed as it may be, in the Big 12), aligning themselves with Memphis, Temple, South Florida, Cincinnati, Central Florida, East Carolina, UAB, Southern Miss and Marshall could be adequate. Is that a BCS conference? Probably not…but will any of the current BIG EAST proposals offer a solution to guarantee a BCS automatic bid going forward? Again, probably not. Maybe creating an alliance with the remaining C-USA members, those that make up the West Division, and the Mountain West where one school out of the 24-team conglomerate earns an automatic bid to the BCS. Each conference can sell a conference championship game as part of their television rights and then they can share the revenue of their BCS qualifier game and BCS slot between the two conferences.

In order for this to happen, someone needs to step up and realize the inevitable. The BIG EAST is done as an all-sports conference. The commissioner is not the one to do it, he needs to find the best scenario for all the teams still under the BIG EAST umbrella. It has to come from the Presidents of the schools, the ones with common interests and common profiles need to step up and take a realistic look at the situation and find the best long term solution. While BIG EAST representatives are off to Colorado Springs or Idaho, someone back East needs to stop the insanity and face the music!

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