Revamped Big East
- Thread starter SJU61982
- Start date
beast of the east
Active member
I dont see your point. Villanova, SJU, and GTown all have recruited well without great football programs. The greatest postseason play in the world is March madness - nothing compares to it. I don't think it matters one bit to the players that there is a football team on campus that draws 70,000 or that there is a fatr TV contract associated with a football league.
As long as we end up with 10-12 quality basketball teams, players will continue to come, and fans will watch them. I think the Big East was too big already. I liked the olddays when you would go home and away against top flight schools in the conference schedule.
As long as we end up with 10-12 quality basketball teams, players will continue to come, and fans will watch them. I think the Big East was too big already. I liked the olddays when you would go home and away against top flight schools in the conference schedule.
tom in salem
Well-known member
FWIW: Very long post about how it all went down, from a reliable Pitt insider.
Warning: extremely long.
I spoke with some of my Pitt connections tonight - mostly over text - after a LOOOONG spell of radio silence (which I took to be a good sign - at least from a Pitt perspective). Here is what I have learned/figured out on my own by piecing together accounts:
1.) The loss to Iowa today was one of the biggest choke jobs of all-time. Holy cow that was an epic collapse. We were up 27-10 in the fourth quarter and somehow managed to lose the game. Amazing! This could have a devastating impact on the rest of this season. I'm still stunned that we somehow managed to lose that game.
2.) Okay, now onto the things you all care about.
3.) This is a done deal. Pitt and Syracuse are definitely going to the ACC and that is going to be announced tomorrow afternoon at a press conference in Greensboro, NC. My guy thinks it will likely be a 3 p.m. presser but that is not yet confirmed.
I don't wish to hurt anyone's feelings but I am extremely relieved to hear this news. More on that later.
4.) Anyone who has read my stuff knows that I have had grave doubts about this conference's long term viability and I have not been remotely shy about stating that it has long been my desire for Pitt to land in the comparatively more stable ACC. It's just a better fit for us on a host of levels. Fortunately for me, a number of decision makers feel the exact same way. I wasn't always convinced that was the case but apparently I was wrong about some of the people I have cursed out so many times in the past.
5.) Until this past year, Pitt was 100 percent committed to the future of the Big East and I would argue that no president has fought harder for the league than has Nordenberg. However I would say that the school's belief in the league and its future began wane last spring over the whole Villanova debacle.
Adding VU for football just was - and remains - among the very the dumbest ideas in the history of major college athletics and I think it shocked, alarmed and disappointed Pitt that so many other schools fought so hard to implement it and that so many other football schools were willing to leak it to the press (cough, Louisville, cough South Florida) in an effort to pressure Pitt into capitulating. Incidentally I believe that West Virginia and Rutgers hold the exact same view on the matter but you will have to ask them.
Pitt wanted to add Central Florida but was willing to settle for East Carolina and maybe even Houston. However as the process dragged along it became clear that some of the football schools and just about all of the basketball schools - minus ND, which always manages to stay above the fray in these matters - were not going to allow any package of teams in the league that did not include Villanova. Pitt (and West Virginia and Rutgers) just couldn't understand that mentality and that caused a deep rift. Honestly until this morning I had always been led to believe that SU was on the other side of this issue but obviously that was a misperception on my part.
6.) Syracuse president Nancy Cantor and especially Pitt president Mark Nordenberg (by virtue of his position on the league council) are being eaten alive right now by the critics for how poorly they handled themselves throughout this process and my first thought was, "Rightfully so. They really should have called Marinatto before this all leaked." I can't tell you how disappointed I was to hear that Marinatto learned of this whole deal while in the press box prior to the WVU @ UMD game.
However according to the people with whom I have spoken, it is a bit more complicated than has so far been reported.
Basically, the ACC was afraid that they were going to lose Florida State and likely Virginia Tech - they believe that the SEC would like to go to 16 teams, not 14 teams - so it made an aggressive overture towards both Notre Dame and Texas to see where they stood.
ND was cool to the whole thing (but is still possibly in play in some capacity - at least in the opinion of one person with whom I have spoken) but Texas was another story altogether. The Longhorn brass seemed eager to speak with the ACC so off they went to try and hammer out a deal.
While talking to the Longhorns it became clear that Texas' priority was the LHN (big surprise there, right?) and for reasons that I don't quite understand that didn't fit into what the ACC was looking to do. However the real killer was that Texas wanted basically the same deal that ND has with the BE (or with some minimal number of guaranteed games against ACC schools) and they insisted on Texas Tech coming along as well. And to get to 16 teams that also likely meant other B12 schools.
That was a killer for the ACC because it is very market hungry. Remember four of that league's 12 teams are located in the same Raleigh, NC DMA. That is a problem for that league and why they were always going to be forced to go outside their footprint. Now they have the only major college football program in the entire state of heavily populated New York and one of two major programs in similarly heavily populated (and recruiting rich) Pennsylvania. That is a BIG deal for the ACC and way more than Kansas or K-State (the other schools believed to be in the discussion) could have given them.
Still, even despite that, Texas was STILL in play because they are Texas. However after speaking with the UT officials for a few days the ACC people began to believe that they were being used as leverage for what Texas really wanted - either a reconstituted B12 (with the LHN of course) or an invitation to the Pac-16 (also with the LHN as part of the deal).
I'm told that the reports out of Kansas City have been the most accurate and that the report last week or the week before that said that the B12's targets were Notre Dame, Arkansas, Brigham Young and Pitt were "100 percent true" according to one of my peeps. However ND and ARKY were completely uninterested and BYU was on the fence and leaning towards staying indie.
Pitt was initially not interested in changing conferences either but when the other schools mentioned were replaced with Louisville and West Virginia, that all changed. Also, Pitt believed that if another B12 team left for the ACC, they would be replaced with TCU. That is a pretty good group to defect with.
What the ACC began to suspect was that Texas was using them to bluff others into staying in the B12 and that the meetings on Monday were going to be to announce that they presidents had the sole authority to find the right league for their schools and that they were first going to try to make the B12 work - with the BE programs in tow.
It made the ACC nervous that the B12 was going to aggressively pursue the Northeast and they were worried that their inactivity was going to cost them the Noles and the Hokies to the SEC so they acted first and instead offered Pitt and the Cuse - the two BE football programs with the best overall academic profiles and the best football traditions. No offense to WVU or Louisville or anyone else but if you put an all-time team from all of the rest of the BE schools combined it would not compare to either Pitt's or SU's.
However the ACC's offer was conditional on the schools immediately accepting their invites/applying for membership. If they hesitated, the ACC was simply going to move down their list until they found some teams in the NE that were willing to say yes. I'm told that this all happened "incredibly fast."
Finally, this has flown somewhat under the radar but the ACC also agreed this week to raise the exit fee from $12 million to $20 million. That is a LOT of loot for an athletic department - especially in these cash strapped times.
7.) What nobody seems to know - and what I think is the key to this whole story - is who leaked the story to the NYT in the first place?
Judging by their stunned reaction, I don't believe that it was anybody associated with the Big East office - which would have been my first guess. And from all of the things I have read the BE media guy in Iowa City was on the phone all day and "looked like his dog had died" and Marinatto found out in the press box of the game at Maryland.
As an aside, how is it that many of you knew about this last night and the freaking commissioner of the league still had no idea that this was happening until about 11 a.m. this morning? THAT is precisely why people should be very afraid for the future of this league. Okay, now back to my previously scheduled question of who leaked this story?
Also, it seems pretty unlikely that any of the league's AD's leaked the story because they all seemed flummoxed as well. Hell, I don't think that UConn even has an AD at this point - which is absurd in this climate.
My first guess was that Daryl Gross - or "Dr. Gross" as some of Syracuse's most pretentious fans insist on calling him - was the culprit. Gross has a HUGE mouth (like Oliver Luck big) and he has been telling anyone who would listen for years now that his primary objective was to get SU out of the BE and into either the B1G or the ACC. This is an ENORMOUS coup for that dude on a lot of fronts and it would make sense that he would be the one to leak this story to Pete Thamel (an SU alum and a guy who writes in a market that SU covets). However his "no comment” and then awkward add at the end casts doubt on my suspicions. Let's call him "a person of interest."
On the surface it makes no sense for the ACC folks to have leaked it, so who leaked it?
My guess is that if it wasn't SU then it would have to be either ND or Texas as they would be the only other two programs who might have known this was coming. I'll be curious to see how that all gets reconciled. The people with whom I spoke today were all just as flummoxed as I am about who leaked it and that is what they have been trying to figure out all day. The working theory seems to be that it may have been Texas by way of ESPN - who would have been informed by the ACC of their intentions as a matter of contractual obligation.
We'll see.
8.) Okay, one more then I'm tapped out and off to bed.
The ACC's plan is not to stop at 14 teams but rather to go to 16 teams and they plan to do so quickly. I am told that they actually asked both Pitt and Syracuse who they would recommend for those extra spots if push came to shove? I found that piece of info absolutely fascinating. I don't know who SU's preferences were but Pitt's were believed to be West Virginia and Rutgers. My personal choices would be WVU and UConn but I guess I can live with Rutgers.
Apparently the goal is to make one more run at ND and perhaps Texas - and Texas alone - for those spots to see if they can make a deal work. However that is considered a very long shot so then they are likely to go after two of Rutgers, Louisville, Connecticut and West Virginia. If the league loses two schools - which could still happen even after raising the exit fee to $20 - I'm told that all four schools would likely get in.
Wouldn't that be something else?
9.) Finally, everyone I spoke to tonight believes that Texas will end up in the Pac-16 with Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. They believe that the LHN will end up being a very successful regional package and that 20 years from now Texas will thank its lucky stars that it worked out as well as it did for them.
10.) Oh, one more and then I really am done for the night. Let's just make this an even ten. It may surprise many of you to learn that most of the people with whom I have spoken about this issue (both insiders and outsiders alike) are anything but celebratory. This is very different than VT's reaction in 2003 or BC's reaction a year later. Everyone with whom I have spoken is a little bit sad that it has reached this point and everyone is lamenting losing the Big East Tournament in MSG. However they are also mostly resolved that this is probably in our best long term interests because of the stability the new league will provide us. Also, most believe that WVU is a at least a decent bet to get an SEC invite.
Warning: extremely long.
I spoke with some of my Pitt connections tonight - mostly over text - after a LOOOONG spell of radio silence (which I took to be a good sign - at least from a Pitt perspective). Here is what I have learned/figured out on my own by piecing together accounts:
1.) The loss to Iowa today was one of the biggest choke jobs of all-time. Holy cow that was an epic collapse. We were up 27-10 in the fourth quarter and somehow managed to lose the game. Amazing! This could have a devastating impact on the rest of this season. I'm still stunned that we somehow managed to lose that game.
2.) Okay, now onto the things you all care about.
3.) This is a done deal. Pitt and Syracuse are definitely going to the ACC and that is going to be announced tomorrow afternoon at a press conference in Greensboro, NC. My guy thinks it will likely be a 3 p.m. presser but that is not yet confirmed.
I don't wish to hurt anyone's feelings but I am extremely relieved to hear this news. More on that later.
4.) Anyone who has read my stuff knows that I have had grave doubts about this conference's long term viability and I have not been remotely shy about stating that it has long been my desire for Pitt to land in the comparatively more stable ACC. It's just a better fit for us on a host of levels. Fortunately for me, a number of decision makers feel the exact same way. I wasn't always convinced that was the case but apparently I was wrong about some of the people I have cursed out so many times in the past.
5.) Until this past year, Pitt was 100 percent committed to the future of the Big East and I would argue that no president has fought harder for the league than has Nordenberg. However I would say that the school's belief in the league and its future began wane last spring over the whole Villanova debacle.
Adding VU for football just was - and remains - among the very the dumbest ideas in the history of major college athletics and I think it shocked, alarmed and disappointed Pitt that so many other schools fought so hard to implement it and that so many other football schools were willing to leak it to the press (cough, Louisville, cough South Florida) in an effort to pressure Pitt into capitulating. Incidentally I believe that West Virginia and Rutgers hold the exact same view on the matter but you will have to ask them.
Pitt wanted to add Central Florida but was willing to settle for East Carolina and maybe even Houston. However as the process dragged along it became clear that some of the football schools and just about all of the basketball schools - minus ND, which always manages to stay above the fray in these matters - were not going to allow any package of teams in the league that did not include Villanova. Pitt (and West Virginia and Rutgers) just couldn't understand that mentality and that caused a deep rift. Honestly until this morning I had always been led to believe that SU was on the other side of this issue but obviously that was a misperception on my part.
6.) Syracuse president Nancy Cantor and especially Pitt president Mark Nordenberg (by virtue of his position on the league council) are being eaten alive right now by the critics for how poorly they handled themselves throughout this process and my first thought was, "Rightfully so. They really should have called Marinatto before this all leaked." I can't tell you how disappointed I was to hear that Marinatto learned of this whole deal while in the press box prior to the WVU @ UMD game.
However according to the people with whom I have spoken, it is a bit more complicated than has so far been reported.
Basically, the ACC was afraid that they were going to lose Florida State and likely Virginia Tech - they believe that the SEC would like to go to 16 teams, not 14 teams - so it made an aggressive overture towards both Notre Dame and Texas to see where they stood.
ND was cool to the whole thing (but is still possibly in play in some capacity - at least in the opinion of one person with whom I have spoken) but Texas was another story altogether. The Longhorn brass seemed eager to speak with the ACC so off they went to try and hammer out a deal.
While talking to the Longhorns it became clear that Texas' priority was the LHN (big surprise there, right?) and for reasons that I don't quite understand that didn't fit into what the ACC was looking to do. However the real killer was that Texas wanted basically the same deal that ND has with the BE (or with some minimal number of guaranteed games against ACC schools) and they insisted on Texas Tech coming along as well. And to get to 16 teams that also likely meant other B12 schools.
That was a killer for the ACC because it is very market hungry. Remember four of that league's 12 teams are located in the same Raleigh, NC DMA. That is a problem for that league and why they were always going to be forced to go outside their footprint. Now they have the only major college football program in the entire state of heavily populated New York and one of two major programs in similarly heavily populated (and recruiting rich) Pennsylvania. That is a BIG deal for the ACC and way more than Kansas or K-State (the other schools believed to be in the discussion) could have given them.
Still, even despite that, Texas was STILL in play because they are Texas. However after speaking with the UT officials for a few days the ACC people began to believe that they were being used as leverage for what Texas really wanted - either a reconstituted B12 (with the LHN of course) or an invitation to the Pac-16 (also with the LHN as part of the deal).
I'm told that the reports out of Kansas City have been the most accurate and that the report last week or the week before that said that the B12's targets were Notre Dame, Arkansas, Brigham Young and Pitt were "100 percent true" according to one of my peeps. However ND and ARKY were completely uninterested and BYU was on the fence and leaning towards staying indie.
Pitt was initially not interested in changing conferences either but when the other schools mentioned were replaced with Louisville and West Virginia, that all changed. Also, Pitt believed that if another B12 team left for the ACC, they would be replaced with TCU. That is a pretty good group to defect with.
What the ACC began to suspect was that Texas was using them to bluff others into staying in the B12 and that the meetings on Monday were going to be to announce that they presidents had the sole authority to find the right league for their schools and that they were first going to try to make the B12 work - with the BE programs in tow.
It made the ACC nervous that the B12 was going to aggressively pursue the Northeast and they were worried that their inactivity was going to cost them the Noles and the Hokies to the SEC so they acted first and instead offered Pitt and the Cuse - the two BE football programs with the best overall academic profiles and the best football traditions. No offense to WVU or Louisville or anyone else but if you put an all-time team from all of the rest of the BE schools combined it would not compare to either Pitt's or SU's.
However the ACC's offer was conditional on the schools immediately accepting their invites/applying for membership. If they hesitated, the ACC was simply going to move down their list until they found some teams in the NE that were willing to say yes. I'm told that this all happened "incredibly fast."
Finally, this has flown somewhat under the radar but the ACC also agreed this week to raise the exit fee from $12 million to $20 million. That is a LOT of loot for an athletic department - especially in these cash strapped times.
7.) What nobody seems to know - and what I think is the key to this whole story - is who leaked the story to the NYT in the first place?
Judging by their stunned reaction, I don't believe that it was anybody associated with the Big East office - which would have been my first guess. And from all of the things I have read the BE media guy in Iowa City was on the phone all day and "looked like his dog had died" and Marinatto found out in the press box of the game at Maryland.
As an aside, how is it that many of you knew about this last night and the freaking commissioner of the league still had no idea that this was happening until about 11 a.m. this morning? THAT is precisely why people should be very afraid for the future of this league. Okay, now back to my previously scheduled question of who leaked this story?
Also, it seems pretty unlikely that any of the league's AD's leaked the story because they all seemed flummoxed as well. Hell, I don't think that UConn even has an AD at this point - which is absurd in this climate.
My first guess was that Daryl Gross - or "Dr. Gross" as some of Syracuse's most pretentious fans insist on calling him - was the culprit. Gross has a HUGE mouth (like Oliver Luck big) and he has been telling anyone who would listen for years now that his primary objective was to get SU out of the BE and into either the B1G or the ACC. This is an ENORMOUS coup for that dude on a lot of fronts and it would make sense that he would be the one to leak this story to Pete Thamel (an SU alum and a guy who writes in a market that SU covets). However his "no comment” and then awkward add at the end casts doubt on my suspicions. Let's call him "a person of interest."
On the surface it makes no sense for the ACC folks to have leaked it, so who leaked it?
My guess is that if it wasn't SU then it would have to be either ND or Texas as they would be the only other two programs who might have known this was coming. I'll be curious to see how that all gets reconciled. The people with whom I spoke today were all just as flummoxed as I am about who leaked it and that is what they have been trying to figure out all day. The working theory seems to be that it may have been Texas by way of ESPN - who would have been informed by the ACC of their intentions as a matter of contractual obligation.
We'll see.
8.) Okay, one more then I'm tapped out and off to bed.
The ACC's plan is not to stop at 14 teams but rather to go to 16 teams and they plan to do so quickly. I am told that they actually asked both Pitt and Syracuse who they would recommend for those extra spots if push came to shove? I found that piece of info absolutely fascinating. I don't know who SU's preferences were but Pitt's were believed to be West Virginia and Rutgers. My personal choices would be WVU and UConn but I guess I can live with Rutgers.
Apparently the goal is to make one more run at ND and perhaps Texas - and Texas alone - for those spots to see if they can make a deal work. However that is considered a very long shot so then they are likely to go after two of Rutgers, Louisville, Connecticut and West Virginia. If the league loses two schools - which could still happen even after raising the exit fee to $20 - I'm told that all four schools would likely get in.
Wouldn't that be something else?
9.) Finally, everyone I spoke to tonight believes that Texas will end up in the Pac-16 with Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. They believe that the LHN will end up being a very successful regional package and that 20 years from now Texas will thank its lucky stars that it worked out as well as it did for them.
10.) Oh, one more and then I really am done for the night. Let's just make this an even ten. It may surprise many of you to learn that most of the people with whom I have spoken about this issue (both insiders and outsiders alike) are anything but celebratory. This is very different than VT's reaction in 2003 or BC's reaction a year later. Everyone with whom I have spoken is a little bit sad that it has reached this point and everyone is lamenting losing the Big East Tournament in MSG. However they are also mostly resolved that this is probably in our best long term interests because of the stability the new league will provide us. Also, most believe that WVU is a at least a decent bet to get an SEC invite.
i think we're agreeing here. some may have thought lavin had the inside track. there were numerous posts by those who have "d" credibility ratings to the effect kyle was coming. it would have been great to have gotten him..but he would have been one and done. who knows how good he'll be.
tom in salem
Well-known member
He's extremely knowledgeable and never has an axe to grind.
Boy, the audacity of nova; and then to think they actually applied to the ACC.
Class of 72
Active member
$30 MILLION EACH IF THEY WANT AN EARLY EXIT!!!!
tom in salem
Well-known member
The non-football schools are on the verge of leaving.
Frankly doesn't matter what the football schools do.
sju85uva86
Member
TIS,
All of them ?
All of them ?
bball purist
Active member
Yes, all top non-football schools will be flocking to the former Beast, soon to be called the Big Nation Conference, or the All Basketball Conference, or the Blue Oyster Cult, I mean Basketball Only Conference. :silly:
It's already been proven that mixing big football schools with the basketball schools does not work. What I would do if I were the basketball only schools is, get the best 20 Basketball only schools in the country and form a basketball super conference. Then, when the four football super conferences secede from the NCAA I would go to them as the basketball super conference and cut a deal with the big four to be part of there organization for basketball only and participate in their championship process for basketball however that would work. I think that's the best chance that the basketball schools have of staying relavent.
According to what is being reported on ESPN.Com, The Big East would merge into the Big12 and not the other way around, My Goodness, talk about being a bunch of foster children, that is indeed what we would become. We would lose our identity, and that could have many repercussions including losing conference playoffs in MSG, This could be lousy, in my opinion. :evil: