(02-09-2021 11:48 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(02-09-2021 11:40 AM)MemTGRS Wrote:  In my opinion, the Big East was never going to be "all that they can be" (with apologies to the US Army) per declining Penn State in 1981. Regardless of how much their hoops struggled then, they directly snubbed a national top ten fan base that is also by far the largest in the area of PA/NE/NJ/NY. And by a large margin, the biggest financial monster there as well. When I think of all time blunders of conference decisions, I rank it #2 ... only behind Tulane voluntarily exiting the SEC.

I'm not so sure. The Big East, from its inception, was created as a basketball conference. Spurning Penn State was consistent with that mission.

This mission was destabilized (in terms of original membership) once the supreme court overturned the NCAA football TV monopoly in 1984. From that point on, over the next five or so years it became clearer that if you weren't Notre Dame, to maximize football revenues, you needed to be in a major football conference. That's what created tension between the purely hoops schools and the ones with established football programs, and in the long run, probably nothing but a split could resolve it. As it was, the Big East did a pretty good job of forestalling it, more than 25 years.

For sure, they did a good job keeping the commissioner and his staff employed by the Big East. Was it in the best interests of the schools that were in the Big East at the time of the Supreme Court decision? At the time, and a few years later when they decided to start a football league, the Big East had 3 members (BC, Pitt, Syracuse) who played I-A/FBS football, and 6 (UConn, Georgetown, Providence, St. Johns, Seton Hall, Villanova) who didn't.

Query whether either or both of those two groups would have been better off if they didn't go along with Tranghese's football scheme, and the schools with football eventually left to join an FBS conference while being replaced in the Big East by a few new members that didn't play FBS football.