Good article on the Big East

[leopold]

http://communityvoices.sites.post-gazet ... g-big-east

Wednesday, 26 October 2011 00:30
Written by Bob Smizik

As a football conference, the Big East is in intensive care, on oxygen and with family members at its bedside. The league is dying and no amount of manipulation can save it.

Naturally, the blame-placers are circling the body. They're alternately screaming and pouting. They’re pointing fingers at schools, at university presidents and mostly at commissioner John Marinatto.

Go home, folks. There’s no blame to be placed here, as much as you relish that task. The Big East was sent to intensive care by the defections of Syracuse and Pitt in September and is on its death bed by the word yesterday that West Virginia was leaving. But this was a long, long time coming.

* The Big East was a marriage of convenience from the start. Those kind don’t usually last.

* It was a basketball league trying to be a football league. That’s never a good idea.

* It took in Southern members to make itself stronger. But those teams, with no allegiance, only made it weaker in the long run.

The cold, hard truth about Big East football is that not enough people care. The East is not college country. It’s pro country. The major markets, New York, Philadelphia and Boston, have interest mostly in the pros.

When the schools with the grandest traditions in a league are Pitt, Syracuse and West Virginia, well, no disrespect, but it’s pretty clear the league is in trouble.

If the Big East were a batting order, Pitt, West Virginia and Syracuse would be complimentary parts. There were no middle-of-the-lineup hitters in the Big East. Penn State would have fit that description, but it was long gone.

When such tradition-vacant programs as Louisville, Cincinnati, Rutgers, Connecticut and South Florida, most with little grass-root support in their own home town, are added to that nucleus, the result is a league in trouble. Of that group, the only one with home-town clout is Louisville, -- a school of the South.

This league was not going to make it. Instead of bashing the commissioner and the presidents, maybe those people should be praised for taking it into a third decade.

I don’t know Marinatto. I knew his predecessor, Mike Tranghese, and he was one of the smartest and ablest sports administrators in the country. He is universally respected. If Tranghese could not make a go of this league, probably no one could.

It was Tranghese, not Marinatto, who first stood in the way of the expansion the blame-placers are now claiming was the ruination of the league.

Really? SMU is going to save the league? Houston is going to save the league? Colorado State is going to save the league? That’s a joke.

To Marinatto’s credit, he took in TCU but that was a move of utter desperation. TCU had less allegiance to the Big East than Miami and Virginia Tech.

So go ahead and attempt to place all the blame you want. You’re dead wrong. There’s no blame to place. The Big East was an idea whose time came and went. There was no saving it.

RIP, Big East.

[SMU2007]

blah blah blah more big east is dead talk. guess what, they still have bcs status for several more years, and as many have pointed out, it's not going to be that easy to revoke that anytime soon.

dead in terms of not being that competitive? maybe. for now anyway. but not going anywhere.

[ericdickerson4life]

Well, I would tend to agree. The BE as we know it is dead. It will stop being an east coast football league and will move south and west. But it is still going to live and have this strange name, the BE which it really should change. I am still one that believes this conference will live on. It will be the weak sister for a long while but it's not going to disappear.

He talks about traditions holding together leagues, teams with long held together ties. The reality is in today's football landscape it's about money. Why else would A&M kill a 100 year tradition? Or Colorado and Nebraska split ways?

[ponyinNC]

Well, I would tend to agree. The BE as we know it is dead. It will stop being an east coast football league and will move south and west. But it is still going to live and have this strange name, the BE which it really should change. I am still one that believes this conference will live on. It will be the weak sister for a long while but it's not going to disappear.

He talks about traditions holding together leagues, teams with long held together ties. The reality is in today's football landscape it's about money. Why else would A&M kill a 100 year tradition? Or Colorado and Nebraska split ways?

yup, add in Mizzou-Kansas, the backyard brawl, on and on

[huskerpony]

He talks about traditions holding together leagues, teams with long held together ties. The reality is in today's football landscape it's about money. Why else would A&M kill a 100 year tradition? Or Colorado and Nebraska split ways?

Colorado and Nebraska were not ever rivals. Oklahoma and Nebraska were rivals. Oklahoma ran away to the South in 96 because they had only won 1 game against NU since 1987.

[BRStang]

This morning I was listening to Sirius-XM College Sports on the way to work. It is sobering to hear all the doom and gloom discussion on sports talk radio (from BOTH callers and show hosts) about the Big East. I listened to several callers from Big East schools, including WVU, AND the show host discuss how ANYTHING would be better for the current Big East schools than to stay in the Big East. The way they talk, it is a given that the Big East is the titanic--nevermind the supposed expansion plans--better just jump ship to the first thing that comes calling.

Is there really much difference between USF and UCF???? Well, the way the discussion is going--UCF, SMU and Houston are no better than lepers at the banquet. They said for teams like Lville, Cincy, WVU, etc., staying in the Big East is "like living in a house with no roof." I don't know, maybe I'm just naive or too close, but would the expansion plans for the Big East be THAT F'N BAD???

I'm sorry, but things are just not looking good for us or the Big East right now. I hope this turns around. But I fear the continued inaction is only going to make things worse. It's almost like Bevo & Co, ESPN and even the Big East itself are trying to stomp out the Big East and the schools who were announced to be added. As an added bonus, UT gets to watch SMU and UH go up in flames.

[smupony94]

Even without AQ status, I would prefer being in the Big east compared to CUSA. In addition to athletics, Turner sees this as a chance to market ourselves to potential East Coast students.

[ponyinNC]

I bet the talk was very similar when Miami, BC and VT left only to have the Ville, Cincy and USF come on board. How quickly those schools forget that just a few years ago, they were playing in CUSA too.

Look at it like baseball...CUSA/MWC are the minor leagues. Some schools get called up to the show and get to play AQ. As long as there is expansion, this will be the result. And those schools that get called up usually end up being pretty good with the additional $, resources and perception.

Latest call ups:
Utah
TCU

Next round:
SMU
UH
UCF
Boise
Navy
AFA
Temple or ECU

[smubrooks]

If the proposed expansion including SMU, UH, UCF, AFA, Boise and BYU happens I believe this will end up being a pretty good conference that DOES NOT lose AQ status even if WVU walks.

[BRStang]

I bet the talk was very similar when Miami, BC and VT left only to have the Ville, Cincy and USF come on board. How quickly those schools forget that just a few years ago, they were playing in CUSA too.

Look at it like baseball...CUSA/MWC are the minor leagues. Some schools get called up to the show and get to play AQ. As long as there is expansion, this will be the result. And those schools that get called up usually end up being pretty good with the additional $, resources and perception.

Latest call ups:
Utah
TCU

Next round:
SMU
UH
UCF
Boise
Navy
AFA
Temple or ECU

Yeah, but NO ONE outside of us seems to be looking at it that way. They look at it as the opposite--there are a finite number of chairs. When the music stops, there will still only be that same number of chairs. Sure, with the help of ESPN and some of the bigger conference players, more chairs could be added. But the powers that be don't want to add anymore chairs. So the WVUs and L'villes of the world are going to hogtie us so that they get one of the chairs in the original finite number. And Texas is laughing at us while it all plays out.

[ColoStang]

Dude, BRStang, you are the new SMT.

[smupony94]

CoxMustanfFan, BR and SMT

[BRStang]

Dude, BRStang, you are the new SMT.

Okay, whatever, "Dude." You're the new doe-eyed babe in the woods.

I'm not being pessimistic based on some gut feel or whim. I'm simply evaluating the latest NEWS since our big party a week and half ago when we all felt we were headed to the Big East. I still have hope that we make a move to the Big East and can convince enough teams to take the plunge with us, but when WVU and L'ville are fighting to get out of an already depleted 6-team league, it ain't good little guy.

[NickSMU17]

Its natural progression...calm down...

[ericdickerson4life]

This is pretty funny. Nothing has changed since the initial announcement/rumor that SMU was going to the BE. Nothing. We all knew then that WV would love to leave the BE preferably for the SEC, but would take B12. UConn & Rutgers have had love affairs elsewhere for a while as well. Dating back to at least last summer when Rutgers seemed to be a B10 target, now the ACC is in vogue for them. Absolutely nothing has changed. Unless you were one to believe that the BE was going to stand pat with no defection, if that was the case you were pretty optimistic and/or ignorant.

This is not doom and gloom. This is an opportunity for SMU to move past the Tulanes/New Mexico States/Rices of the world, dumping the dead weight and moving to a more competitive, committed conference. Screw Cincy/USF/and even Louisville. These are teams that were sitting in our shoes not that long ago, now think they are big and bad. Really these teams are just panicking themselves. If they don't get a B12 invite they feel a school like SMU/UH/UCF/Boise could become way more attractive in the next go around and they get left behind.

This is an opportunity for SMU to show they belong on the national stage. Even if it's in the weak sister conference. Keep improving, keep moving forward, think long term, stop panicking in the moment and letting fear dictate your actions. If SMU can do that, we will be sitting in a solid position when/if the Armageddon realignment happens or the BE losing AQ status or whatever doom and gloom scenario people want to come up with in the heads happens.

Time is a funny thing. Without any facts changing a situation goes from "this is great" to "OMG the sky is falling". I say this. Any remaining members of the BE should be really worried. The incoming invites have a lot of advantages going there way, and we may find that the gap between us and them really wasn't all that big to begin with.