The way I see it, by the time Marinatto took over, any hope for the BE as a major football conference was already gone with BC, Miami, and Va Tech.
I suppose you could argue that the BE should have pro-actively raided the ACC before it happened to them, but I don't see which ACC, Big 12, Big 10, or other schools were ever going to join the BE.
That being the case, and football being where the money is, there was probably no way to stop aspiring football schools from leaving. The BE is probably lucky that there weren't enough chairs for UConn, Rutgers, and Louisville to leave too. Adding bottom-feeder football schools was not going to change the math here. The math is that the schools that left will end up with $100 million more over 10 years, and nothing the Big East did was going to change that.
If you accept that logic - and I understand people may not, I just don't happen to agree with them - then there was just about nothing that could be done to keep Cuse, WVU, and Pitt. Keeping the losses to three (so far) was probably an accomplishment in and of itself.
At that point the BE had a choice to make: Split up the rest of the conference with the football schools going where they would, and leaving the rump the beloved-of-some Catholic Conference, or trying to save the football situation and then patching up basketball as well as possible.
IMHO the Catholic conference would ultimately (and perhaps pretty quickly) slide into the same sort of irrelevance as the A-10, and the football-first plan was probably the right move. I understand that most readers here (including me), care more about college hoops than college pigskin, but the simple fact is that football is driving the bus in college athletics.
Left with that alternative, the best hope was for the Big 12 to fall apart and the Big East to pick up four schools there. That didn't happen, and yes perhaps the Big East could have been more aggressive there. It sure would have been nice to have Kansas in the Big East.
After that, I think the additions of Boise, Navy, Houston, SMU and UCF shored up the football side about as well as could be done. The football conference probably still stinks, but it actually stinks a lot less than it did before. Boise is a perennial top 10 team, and several of the other additions flirt with national rankings often enough to be an improvement on the three departures. And I think UCF is a sleeping giant that may surprise people in the long run. Other than the Big 12 merger that didn't come to pass, i don't see any programs out there that were potentially gettable that would have been better than what was gotten. You weren't getting Alabama, LSU, or USC, ya know? Of what was out there, we got just about the best available.
Turning to the basketball side, again short of pie-in-the-sky raids on the other BCS Conferences, the Big East again got just about the best out there in Temple and Memphis. Houston also has a fine history, and again I think UCF may turn out to have been underrated. From a loss standpoint, nobody in the Big East really cares about Pitt and West Virginia except that Pitt and WVU care about one another - and now they are in different conferences, so good luck with that. Losing Syracuse is a blow, but creating Temple/Villanova and Memphis/Louisville doesn't exactly stink. Temple should also be a natural rival for the historic Catholic schools, and Memphis will fit right in with the others.
So in terms of saving the conference as a conference, preserving and actually improving the football side, and making the best of a bad situation on the basketball side and really minimizing the loss of strength almost to the point of it being a wash, I really don't see how a better job could have been done.
You want to say that "everybody knew that was what needed to happen"? OK. But meanwhile somebody had to make it happen, and somebody did.
As far as the geography, from a television contract standpoint the geography is a plus with new markets in Texas and Florida. And television money is what this is all about. The more of it the BE gets, the less likely there will be any further departures.
It will take 5 years to settle out, but it seems likely to me that the new Really Big East will be as good or better than the old one. Losing the old rivalries stings, but the Big East wasn't given a choice there. Losing Louisville would be a blow (and clearly if Pitino has a vote they will stay), but at this point that is a very survivable one.
I have nothing against negativity, but in this case I think it is an occasion to look on the bright side.
I suppose you could argue that the BE should have pro-actively raided the ACC before it happened to them, but I don't see which ACC, Big 12, Big 10, or other schools were ever going to join the BE.
That being the case, and football being where the money is, there was probably no way to stop aspiring football schools from leaving. The BE is probably lucky that there weren't enough chairs for UConn, Rutgers, and Louisville to leave too. Adding bottom-feeder football schools was not going to change the math here. The math is that the schools that left will end up with $100 million more over 10 years, and nothing the Big East did was going to change that.
If you accept that logic - and I understand people may not, I just don't happen to agree with them - then there was just about nothing that could be done to keep Cuse, WVU, and Pitt. Keeping the losses to three (so far) was probably an accomplishment in and of itself.
At that point the BE had a choice to make: Split up the rest of the conference with the football schools going where they would, and leaving the rump the beloved-of-some Catholic Conference, or trying to save the football situation and then patching up basketball as well as possible.
IMHO the Catholic conference would ultimately (and perhaps pretty quickly) slide into the same sort of irrelevance as the A-10, and the football-first plan was probably the right move. I understand that most readers here (including me), care more about college hoops than college pigskin, but the simple fact is that football is driving the bus in college athletics.
Left with that alternative, the best hope was for the Big 12 to fall apart and the Big East to pick up four schools there. That didn't happen, and yes perhaps the Big East could have been more aggressive there. It sure would have been nice to have Kansas in the Big East.
After that, I think the additions of Boise, Navy, Houston, SMU and UCF shored up the football side about as well as could be done. The football conference probably still stinks, but it actually stinks a lot less than it did before. Boise is a perennial top 10 team, and several of the other additions flirt with national rankings often enough to be an improvement on the three departures. And I think UCF is a sleeping giant that may surprise people in the long run. Other than the Big 12 merger that didn't come to pass, i don't see any programs out there that were potentially gettable that would have been better than what was gotten. You weren't getting Alabama, LSU, or USC, ya know? Of what was out there, we got just about the best available.
Turning to the basketball side, again short of pie-in-the-sky raids on the other BCS Conferences, the Big East again got just about the best out there in Temple and Memphis. Houston also has a fine history, and again I think UCF may turn out to have been underrated. From a loss standpoint, nobody in the Big East really cares about Pitt and West Virginia except that Pitt and WVU care about one another - and now they are in different conferences, so good luck with that. Losing Syracuse is a blow, but creating Temple/Villanova and Memphis/Louisville doesn't exactly stink. Temple should also be a natural rival for the historic Catholic schools, and Memphis will fit right in with the others.
So in terms of saving the conference as a conference, preserving and actually improving the football side, and making the best of a bad situation on the basketball side and really minimizing the loss of strength almost to the point of it being a wash, I really don't see how a better job could have been done.
You want to say that "everybody knew that was what needed to happen"? OK. But meanwhile somebody had to make it happen, and somebody did.
As far as the geography, from a television contract standpoint the geography is a plus with new markets in Texas and Florida. And television money is what this is all about. The more of it the BE gets, the less likely there will be any further departures.
It will take 5 years to settle out, but it seems likely to me that the new Really Big East will be as good or better than the old one. Losing the old rivalries stings, but the Big East wasn't given a choice there. Losing Louisville would be a blow (and clearly if Pitino has a vote they will stay), but at this point that is a very survivable one.
I have nothing against negativity, but in this case I think it is an occasion to look on the bright side.
