Looks like the BE is going to need a 9th football only member soon
Jackson
Thursday, November 18, 2004
By Ray Fittipaldo, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Pitt and Notre Dame's decision to renew their long-standing football series was an important step for Pitt and the Big East. Any Big East team that plays Notre Dame ensures national network television coverage, guaranteeing widespread exposure for the league as it remakes its image in the wake of its recent shakeup.
Since Miami and Virginia Tech left the Big East for the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big East schools knew they needed to secure high-profile non-conference games in order to offset the drop in the caliber of play within the league, which next season loses Boston College to the ACC, subtracts Temple and adds Cincinnati, Louisville and South Florida from Conference USA.
If top-shelf Big East teams are going to compete for Bowl Championship Series games, future non-conference schedules must reflect a significant upgrade in difficulty.
"We talk about that as athletic directors," Pitt athletic director Jeff Long said. "We realize as a conference that we need to step up. By and large, we all want to. Now it's about the hard work to get these teams, logistically, to play us."
Long said he has "a couple more" series to announce in the next few months. The contracts are negotiated but a few minor details have to be worked out. He said the series are with other BCS conferences schools.
Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese said other Big East schools will announce series with the Fighting Irish in the coming weeks or months. Tranghese always has encouraged Notre Dame to play Big East teams in football because the Irish are Big East members in all other sports.
It seems now, with the conference's BCS berth in jeopardy after the 2007 season, that he has pressed Notre Dame more.
"It's great for Pitt, but it's great for our league, too," Tranghese said of the Pitt-Notre Dame renewal.
"It's very valuable. This game every year is going to be carried by a network or will be in ESPN primetime. ... I've had specific conversations with Notre Dame. Notre Dame has been very willing to do it. I think you'll see Notre Dame announce deals with other members. They're just not done yet."
The Pitt-Notre Dame series, which will resume in 2008 and run through 2015, is the first scheduling contract Long worked out in his tenure as athletic director. He said such negotiations can take months or years. Notre Dame and Pitt had been talking off and on for months, but things sped up in the week leading up to the game Saturday -- Pitt won, 41-38, on a last-second field goal -- so the schools decided to announce the renewal game because of the positive publicity it generated.
"Originally, there was so much to get done that I didn't think we would announce it until after the season," Long said. "But when things started to fall in place and it became clear on Notre Dame's end what was going to work, we both agreed it made sense to announce it the week we played, so the fans could get excited about it."
Some schools always have scheduled difficult non-conference games. Syracuse, for example, won't have to change much. This season, the Orange played Purdue, Florida State, Virginia, Cincinnati and Buffalo in non-conference games. But other schools have to get to work and make their schedules more difficult.
It is difficult for Big East teams to schedule non-conference games because the Big East is an eight-team league. That means Big East teams have four home conference games one year and only three the next, which throws off balance non-conference home-and-home series.
"We've always talked about a ninth member," Tranghese said. "But we're not going to take a member just for the sake of getting to nine teams."
Factor in the likelihood of the 12th game legislation being passed in the spring, and scheduling becomes a slippery slope for the Big East. Schools from all BCS conferences are going to have to add games in that case, but Long said the Big Ten and Pac-10 are talking about going to nine-game conference schedules if there is a 12th game, so non-conference games with schools from those leagues are unlikely.
Long also said games against Division I-AA opponents will count toward bowl eligibility every season if some NCAA legislation is passed. That means Pitt fans can probably expect to have I-AA teams on the schedule almost every year.
"I can tell you that a number of high-powered schools are excited about that, and they're excited to get those I-AA schools on the schedule," Long said.
"I think that's something our fans have to get used to. There's not enough games to go around without those I-AA games."
Pitt's future schedules are in flux. Next season, the Panthers play at Ohio and Nebraska and play host to Notre Dame. Long said he would like to add another marquee game, but it's difficult because teams have their schedules made years in advance.
In 2006, the Panthers have home games against Bowling Green, Toledo and Michigan State. Long has another game to add. The Navy series, which was set to resume in '06, has been pushed back and is scheduled to take place from 2007-11. Central Florida and Clemson come on in the following years.
The series Pitt will announce after the season could fill some of those holes, but Long's work is far from done.
"We're having some conversation on it weekly, if not more. It remains in flux," he said. "The conference changes have caused the ACC to look at the balance in their schedule. They're looking to do future scheduling options. I'm trying to strategically look at other places and look and see where a game might be freed up for us
"The kinds of teams we want to schedule are basically booked up at this time. There's just not that much out there to get, unless someone wants to change their existing schedule. There's a lot of wait-and-see out there.
"I'm kind of gambling that something will break for me for in 2005, so I can get a quality opponent. If not, I'm going to have to get a fill opponent. I don't want to do that, but the reality is that I might have to again."
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