There was a celebratory vibe to Big East media day Tuesday morning.
In terms of the big year ahead.
In terms of the league’s survival up to this point.
In terms of what has transpired from the time the conference had to rebrand itself until now.
While college football has created waves and waves of realignment, leading to the formation of super conferences and the destruction of the Pac-12, the Big East hasn’t just survived. It has begun to thrive.
Three of the last seven national champions have come from the league. It has three preseason top-10 teams in Marquette, Connecticut and Creighton. Two of its top brands, St. John’s and Georgetown, hired program-building coaches in Rick Pitino and Ed Cooley, to infuse energy and excitement into their previously flatlining programs. Most experts believe seven of the Big East’s 11 teams are NCAA Tournament-caliber.
“If college basketball has a soul,” commissioner Val Ackerman said in her prepared comments to kick off the day, “you’ll find it in our league.”
There is no doubt this is the healthiest this new version of the Big East has been. There is a very real argument that it will be the best conference in the country this year, at least before the ball is tipped on Nov. 6. And, yet, there remains uncertainty about how long this version of the conference will last in the ever-evolving landscape of college athletics.
Connecticut, which returned to the Big East three years ago, openly flirted with joining the Big 12 to prop up its independent football program. The invite never arrived. Athletic director David Benedict told The Post, “we’re excited to be a member of the Big East … we feel like we’re in a great situation right now.” But it would be silly to suggest Connecticut would turn down an invitation to join one of the big conferences if that opportunity presented itself. That said, Benedict thinks there could come a time when football becomes its own entity, and the rest of college sports returns to geographically appropriate conferences. But that day is not here yet.
Already, the Big East has indirectly been hurt by all the movement that has taken place recently. There was an agreement in principle between the Big East and the Big Ten to continue the Gavitt Games next year, the series of non-conference games pitting the best teams from the two conferences against one another. But the Big Ten backed out, Ackerman said, because it is unsure how many conference games it will play now that it will have 18 teams next winter. Strong non-conferences schedules are vital to NCAA Tournament résumés, and losing these games certainly isn’t beneficial for the Big East.
One way to fix that is to add another member to bring it to 12. It has spoken with Gonzaga, and “stays in touch” with the school, Ackerman said. There have been persistent rumors of Gonzaga potentially joining the Big 12 as commissioner Brett Yormark looks to build a super basketball conference, although it is unclear if he has the support from conference presidents to push the move through. The Big East would only add someone of that ilk, and there doesn’t seem to be anywhere else similar out there.
“There’s no better fit for Gonzaga than the Big East, if you look at the kind of school they are, basketball focus, their enrollment, their budget, it’s totally on point,” Ackerman said. “It’s clear from what we read that other factors may have come into play for them, in terms of money, alignment with maybe a football league. That’s their decision to make.”
If Gonzaga does in fact leave the West Coast Conference for a football conference, it would signal a paradigm shift, a power conference bringing in a program that doesn’t have football. It could lead to one of the other big leagues — possibly the Big 12 and Yormark, the former Nets’ CEO — looking to poach one of the Big East’s teams.
Ackerman is confident her basketball-only schools — only Connecticut has FBS football — are loyal and uninterested in looking elsewhere. She’s spoken to coaches like Shaka Smart who have coached at schools where basketball is clearly not No. 1, and they have raved about what a difference it makes when their sport is the driving force.
“I think it’s the last bastion of common sense,” Pitino said. “The Big East has stability. They have Madison Square Garden for the tournament, nobody else has had what the Big East has had throughout the years. The Big East has sensible travel, the Big East has a great commissioner, they have great teams, four teams ranked in the top 25, great rivalries. It has everything you’d want in a great conference, and nobody is looking to leave.”
But, nobody ever expected UCLA and USC to join the Big Ten, or Oklahoma and Texas to be part of the SEC. Money created unpredictable change.
It’s why this year is so important, as the Big East’s television deal with Fox nears its end, set to expire after the 2024-25 campaign. Talks between the two sides are expected to begin this winter. A big season would put the league in an even better bargaining position, and the better the deal, the better the odds of keeping this all together. Right now, the television deal pays out in the mid-to-high $40 million range, half of what Big Ten schools make per year from their new television deals.
“It makes it very important,” Ackerman said.
Make no mistake, the Big East is in a good place, so much better than anyone could have anticipated a decade ago, or even a few years back. If the Pac-12 was as forward thinking and proactive, maybe it wouldn’t be down to Oregon State and Washington State. But that can change quickly. Nothing is forever.
Football money already tore down the Big East once. This season can go a long way toward ensuring it doesn’t happen again.
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