When it comes to college hoops, regional rivalries have consistently dominated the minds of local fans and created much of what brought college basketball to the forefront of the national sports conscience. In New Jersey, two teams fight for the yearly bragging rights of high major state dominance in December, but lost are the conference stakes that could have potentially affected the hanging of banners at either school.
Seton Hall, a founding member of the Big East, and Rutgers, a no-brainer addition to the conference that dominated the northeastern coast, sit just 30 miles from each other yet it takes the extra effort of each school and the buy-in of athletic departments for the two to face in the annual Garden State Hardwood Classic. The schools compete for arbitrary bragging rights and a trophy built from the remains of the Asbury Park boardwalk destroyed by Superstorm Sandy, yet the furious wave of conference realignment, once regional conferences and the rivalries they created have left these two schools competing out of conference as Rutgers has joined the historically mid-western Big Ten while Seton Hall was one of the Catholic holdovers of this new iteration of the Big East.
The wave of conference realignment lead to a constant state of flux from 2010 to 2015 leaving confusion and controversy running rampant. This time of conference changes for colleges large and small were mostly driven by three things, football revenue, cable subscribers, and greater prestige or reputation, that can be summed up with one word: greed.
Ten years after this major overhaul of traditional conferences and the exciting return of Connecticut to the Big East it is time to reexamine what happened and the effect it has had on the men’s college basketball landscape of today.
It unofficially began in late 2009. The Big Ten, the nation’s oldest intercollegiate athletic conference, announced they would begin a ”thorough evaluation of options for conference structure and expansion.” Speculation would suggest the Big Ten was looking to add more markets for their Big Ten Network television contract that would be expiring in 2017. Nebraska soon took the open invitation and solidified the Big Ten as a hockey conference while furthering boosting their football, but this did not do much to increase the BTN.
They had their eyes on a market unlike any represented by the Big Ten: New York City.
The Big Ten extended an invitation to Rutgers to leave the Big East as their football conference seemed it would be coming to an end or going through a steep dropoff. Though Rutgers had had moderate success under Greg Schiano just a few years earlier, the addition of Rutgers and the stealing of Maryland from the Atlantic Coast Conference just a few months earlier were seen as hits to the reputation of Big Ten football.
Despite this fear, these additions lead to the BTN being added to cable subscribers in the New York City and Washington, D.C. metro areas and the
of a $2.64 billion TV agreement with CBS, ESPN, and FOX. Steve Berkowitz of USA Today reported the 12 longest standing Big Ten schools received $54 million in 2018, higher than any other conference by over $9 million.
The Big 12 continued being hurt by conference realignment when six schools were invited to join the Pac-10, though only Colorado would officially do so, and Missouri and Texas A&M left for the SEC. The Big 12 was encouraged by the decision of those five others to not join the Pac-10 and added Texas Christian University, formerly committed to the Big East, and West Virginia, formerly of the Big East.
The Big East continued to lose when Louisville, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, and Syracuse saw the greener and richer pastures of the ACC and the conference was left with just 10 schools: Cincinnati, UConn, DePaul, Georgetown, Marquette, Providence, Seton Hall, South Florida, St. John’s, Villanova.
There was constant speculation of what the remaining 10 schools in the Big East would do and countless rumors swirled around what schools would be asked to join. Bloggers posted their opinions with ideas as outlandish as pairing with the Big West for a conference championship game, pairing with Conference-USA for football, or even adding various east coast urban schools like Boston University, Fordham, Northeastern, and New York University while extending south with Richmond and William & Mary. Others even suggested only adding Catholic schools like LaSalle, St. Joseph’s, St. Bonaventure’s and Xavier while pleading with Notre Dame not to leave and, a personal favorite, telling Seton Hall to join the Atlantic-10 and embrace their on campus arena (Fully biased note here: Seton Hall is currently amidst the upper echelon of the Big East with four straight tournament appearances and a fifth seemingly locked in).
There were big plans that seemed universally unpopular. Some suggested with the Big 12 and Big East both being ravaged by conferences better at football, a viable option would be to combine the two conferences. Others turned to smaller schools such as Tulane as the answer to the primary football question. The conference though, was built on basketball and not football, and the smaller, non-football schools thought it was time to take a chance. The “Providence Plan” was devised to divide what the Big East had become and “the Catholics” decided to use their 7-3 voting advantage
The Catholic 7 dissolved what is now known as the Big East to pursue a basketball-focused Olympic sports conference, and, though there were suggested name changes such as Catholic-10, VAT(ican)-10, or Cardinal Conference, they were able to keep the Big East name along with the famed Big East Tournament venue, Madison Square Garden. They then added Butler, Creighton, and Xavier and signed a 12-year, $500 million contract with Fox to fill out much of the programming for their new Fox Sports networks, a deal that ESPN refused to match. The “New” Big East would have a large part in the creation of a new sports network just like the “Old” Big East once did with ESPN.
Since conference realignment “ended” in 2013, three conferences have won national championships: the American Athletic Conference, which included the Big East leftovers after the separation of the Catholic 7, the ACC, and the Big East. The American’s lone champion was UConn in their first season out of the Big East. The ACC has dominated with 3 championships in the last 5 years with the Big East, Villanova specifically, taking the other two. The “New Big East,” as it is often referred to, has sent at least four teams to the NCAA tournament each season since with a high of seven teams in 2016-17. The Big East has gotten back to a level skeptics thought would take much longer, if even at all.
Under the leadership of Commissioner Val Ackerman, the first president of the WNBA, the Big East has had amazing success. Exemplary of this success is the 2018 Big East Tournament. The BET enjoyed “incredible attendance numbers” for the annual conference tournament surpassing each of the Power 5 conferences, even the Big Ten, who hosted their tournament a week earlier than most high-majors at Madison Square Garden because it was booked the next weekend by the Big East. As Dan Wetzel puts it, “There is an ethos to the Big East Tournament, one that the other leagues have forever failed to duplicate.” The longstanding relationship between the Big East and the “Mecca of Basketball” goes beyond the money football conferences could offer.
FiveThirtyEight’s analysis of conference tournaments compared to their geographic centers.
“I think this league has proven that this is our home. We had the highest attendance of any conference tournament last year. (Other leagues) can come in if they want to, come in a week before or a week after, that’s great. This place is as good as it gets for college basketball and that’s why other people want to get in, but it’s our home,” Seton Hall head coach Kevin Willard proclaimed back in 2018.
The dissolving of the Old Big East moved the league forward and left behind the muddled past of greed that football attracts, and has focused on basketball as second to none, an attitude that has brought small, catholic schools that play in arenas double, or triple the size of their student body into the national conversation.
Ratings Percentage Index, or RPI is a statistical measure that weighs records and strength of schedule into a single number, and it shows that the Big East has not lost a step since realignment. Ranked by conferences, the Big East has finished 4th in 2014, 3rd in 2015, 4th in 2016, 3rd in 2017, 2nd in 2018, 5th in 2019, and currently sits 1st in 2020 (as of February 5th).
Never once has the Big East fallen behind every one of the Power 5, or, more aptly named, Football 5, conferences, and they have a chance to fall behind none of them at the end of this season. A conference without football has done a great deal of good for the schools in the Big East, but without the backing of the financial aspect of football some of these smaller schools have lost coaches to big time colleges who consistently compete at a national level in football and basketball and can offer large raises in pay. Butler’s Chris Holtmann left for Ohio State and Xavier’s Chris Mack left for Louisville, while this past off season Kevin Willard was pursued by Virginia Tech.
“That’s reality for us, and that’s something that our ADs and our presidents know.” Val Ackerman shared with the media in 2018. “I think that’s just a fact of life. That’s what we have to deal with as we look to compete with schools that have that incredible revenue stream.”
Nevertheless, the New Big East has found growth from the lessons of the old, and will continue to grow with the addition of UConn, who ultimately chose the Big East over the ACC. A staple of the Old Big East, UConn will bring with it the nostalgia and prestige that fans skeptical of the new league and it’s additions have complained about and a return to relevance that will certainly help the struggling UConn program.
Ten years later, conference realignment looks like it is over. The Big 12 survived, and has cultivated a basketball conference consistently great from top to bottom and currently boast the number one team in the country.The Big Ten Network has more subscribers than ever and both Maryland and Rutgers are competing for the Big Ten title. The Pac-10 has rebranded as the Pac-12 and has continued their west coast mystique. The SEC has continued their football prowess and quietly send strong veteran-laden teams to the NCAA Tournament each year along with the primary one-and-done destination Kentucky. The Big East has to be the biggest surprise to come out winners after the age of conference realignment and, despite having teams from Indiana, Illinois, Nebraska, and Wisconsin, they have continued their legacy of a league as exciting as the busy and bustling as the streets of Manhattan in early spring.