It does my heart good to see basketball trump football for once.
So the New Big East will have the name and MSG and a TV deal with Fox and a solid top-to-bottom membership. The Old Big East will be a wastleland, but at least we don’t have to call it the Big East anymore.
via Deadspin: The Big East Just Got Good Again.
Does my heart good to see programming decisions based on – and actually attaching a value to – quality college basketball.
The ESPN report sheds light on the major question in this Big East split: which would be worth more – a top flight basketball conference with no football attachment or a mediocre conference with football rights? Football has controlled realignment not just on the field, but in the offices of network executives. Football is the cash cow. Football is the driving force.
In spite of football’s dominance in college sports, the Catholic 7 led basketball league appears to be worth more than the full rights to the conference they would leave.
It is probably also worth noting that the so-called “Catholic 7″ will have a footprint in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington… significantly bigger and better media markets than what’s left of the Big East can reach.
The likeliest 12th member of the Big Ten is Rutgers, the Chicago Tribune reports.
Athletically, the Scarlet Knights don’t bring a whole lot to the table in men’s basketball or football. But Rutgers makes up for those shortcomings with the most important of considerations: location. Located in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers is well within the New York television market and easily accessible via Newark Liberty International Airport. New Jersey is also a key recruiting area for both football and hoops.
And as a member of the Association of American Universities — like every current member of the Big Ten — Rutgers is up to snuff academically.
Any change in the membership of the Big Ten is likely to have a ripple effect that will significantly change the college basketball landscape. Losing Rutgers from the Big East’s mammoth basketball conference wouldn’t make much of a difference; in football, any defection is critical. The Big East football conference has just eight teams — the minimum required to maintain its status in the Bowl Championship Series (BCS).
That means Rutgers would need to be replaced — and there really aren’t many football powers in the eastern half of the country that jump out as potential targets.
The most likely scenario might be similar to what happened when Boston College, Virginia Tech and Miami jumped ship for the ACC. At that time, the Big East raided Conference USA and added Louisville, Cincinnati and South Florida (and non-football schools Marquette and DePaul). The target this time could be a Memphis, Marshall or Central Florida.
Any realignment could also include a Big East schism between football and basketball-only schools that many observers think is inevitable. That would leave a basketball conference that would look a lot like the Big East in its pre-football heyday, built primarily around Catholic schools in big cities (St. John’s, Georgetown, Villanova, Providence, DePaul, Marquette, Seton Hall) and a football conference with Connecticut, Syracuse, Louisville, Cincinnati, South Florida, West Virginia, Pittsburgh, and the Rutgers replacement.
These scenarios usually assume that Notre Dame will stay independent in football and grouped with the Catholic schools for hoops. If the Fighting Irish joined the Big East for all sports, losing one school in football wouldn’t be nearly as earth-shattering, because the league would still have eight teams for football.
Big Ten Target: Rutgers originally appeared on About.com Basketball on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 at 20:48:19.
This time last week, the Connecticut Huskies were reeling — riding a three-game losing streak and about to lose hall-of-fame coach Jim Calhoun, who left the team to deal with an as-yet-unspecified medical problem, with games against St. John’s and top-ranked Texas looming.
After a dominating win at Madison Square Garden and an impressive come-from-behind victory over the Longhorns, the Huskies and interim coach George Blaney are right back in the “best in the Big East” conversation — alongside Syracuse, Villanova, Pitt, West Virginia and Georgetown.
Senior guard Jerome Dyson scored a career-high 32 points in the Texas game.
The Huskies’ performance may pay dividends beyond this week’s polls; Tony Wroten, one of the top recruits in the class of 2011, put Connecticut on his “top five schools” list immediately after the game.
Big Week for Connecticut originally appeared on About.com Basketball on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 13:08:27.
Those of you who were glued to American Idol last night missed one of the most entertaining endings to a college game I’ve seen in some time.
St. John’s was down two points to Cincinnati with under 20 seconds left — in danger of falling to 0-4 in Big East play — when junior guard Dwight Hardy did his best impression of Darrelle Revis, intercepting a long pass from Cincy’s Rashad Bishop and driving the ball back towards the rim, where he was fouled. Hardy — they call him “Buckets” — calmly drained both freebies.
On the ensuing inbounds play, Bearcat freshman Lance Stephenson — a.k.a. “Born Ready” — failed to live up to his nickname. Hardy stole Stephenson’s nonchalant inbounds pass, was fouled again and sank two more free throws.
A last-second three attempt by Deonta Vaughn found only iron, and St. John’s had their first Big East win of the season.
The win has some St. John’s observers gushing. New York Post scribe Lenn Robbins called it “…more than a win. This was more than a statement. This was, potentially, a watershed moment in the St. John’s basketball program under Norm Roberts.“
You sure about that, Lenn? Because I follow the program pretty closely, and my reaction was simply mild surprise.
The win didn’t surprise me; Roberts’ teams have knocked off superior opponents in Big East play before. No, the surprising thing in my eyes was the fact that the Johnnies got an opportunity to steal a game they had no business winning — and they actually came through. Let’s be real here — if Cincinnati players didn’t make two bonehead passes in the final 30 seconds, the New York media is leading stories with “St. John’s to 0-4 in the Big East and Roberts Seat is Getting Hotter.”
One gift-wrapped win later, and St. John’s athletic director Chris Monasch is telling Adam Zagoria, “I think we’re clearly a much better basketball team this year, based on how we played in the non-conference games and how we played in all of our Big East games. Getting a win tonight, I think we’re right on target where we want to be.”
Apparently where Monasch wants to be is “just good enough to justify keeping Roberts around another year.”
St. John’s: Hardy’s Steal Saves Game, Coach’s Job? originally appeared on About.com Basketball on Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at 14:29:02.