Dan Wolken Wrote:The Misfits Could Fit
...Look, there are plenty of things about the new Big East that don’t make sense, and the idea of a league based in Providence playing football games in San Diego may not even be in the top five. This is a conference that was born out of major basketball programs in the northeast corridor, with nine members once Pitt joined in 1982, in the league’s fourth season. Now, it’s a league that will give us football games between Houston and Navy in the fall and regularly offer up SMU-Rutgers and Central Florida-Providence in the basketball winter.

It just doesn’t look right. It doesn’t appeal to the tradition or common identity of college athletics. And yet, in the rush to read the Big East its last rites, something important has been forgotten.

All of these schools have more to gain by finding a way to stay together than they ever would by breaking apart...