Rush The Court

Brian Otskey is the Big East correspondent for RTC and a regular contributor.

The ongoing and complex conference realignment situation certainly has all folks involved with the Big East from Providence west to Milwaukee and south to Tampa worried and rightfully so. This is the real deal and the outcome of this round of consolidation and realignment will have a revolutionary effect on collegiate athletics for decades to come.

While I will discuss things from a Big East perspective in this piece, everyone must understand why this is happening. Football runs college athletics, end of story. This is about football, money, TV markets/contracts and the survival of individual universities. Nothing else. Any effects on college basketball are purely collateral damage. It’s nice that the top of the ACC will be tremendous in basketball but that is not why Pittsburgh and Syracuse decided to join, nor the reason why ACC commissioner John Swofford decided to expand his league for the second time in eight years. Pitt and SU bolted because it is in their best interests to remain viable and in a stable conference membership situation. They saw the writing on the wall and came to the conclusion that the Big East couldn’t last as a 16-team conglomerate of schools with conflicting interests. As for the ACC, it was a proactive move and the conference has now assured its place as one of the four “super-conferences,” a distinct possibility down the road. The ACC made this move out of self-preservation, a concept that is key in understanding all of this.

With that out of the way, let’s take a look at some scenarios regarding the future of the Big East’s 15 remaining members (if TCU doesn’t renege). All signs currently point toward Connecticut joining the ACC and Rutgers may soon follow the Huskies. The ACC needs two more members to get to 16 and while UConn seems like #15, the sixteenth team could be aforementioned Rutgers, Texas, Louisville, or even Notre Dame. Texas is an extreme long shot but you can never count them out considering they have the Longhorn Network. Louisville is a dark horse in this process because its football program seems to fit the profile of the other ACC teams but the Cardinals aren’t in an attractive TV market, nor is the university’s academic reputation up to snuff for the prestigious ACC but that is not going to be high on the list of drawbacks. A major red flag for the ACC will be Louisville’s 48^th-ranked TV market according to Nielsen Media Research. I’d keep an eye on the Cardinals but I think it’s going to be Rutgers solely on the basis of television. The Scarlet Knights are attractive to the ACC because they can bring the New York City market directly into the fold. While Rutgers’ sports programs have never been anything to brag about, all that matters here is geography and television. The New York market (#1 in the country) includes every television set in northern and central New Jersey. It doesn’t matter if people in the professional sports-driven New York area care about Rutgers football or not because a certain percentage of college football fans will always watch. With more eyeballs in this area than any other, television revenue will be huge. The ACC is actively expanding its reach northward and by adding Rutgers and Connecticut it will achieve media dominance from Boston all the way down the east coast to Miami. Truly, the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Notre Dame is the wildcard in all of this. While their football program is fiercely independent and doesn’t fit the profile of the ACC, the Fighting Irish may eventually be forced to join a super-conference. Most would say that destination will be the Big Ten but Notre Dame has actually floated the idea of being an ACC member. The Irish joining a conference still seems some years away and the ACC will probably add two more teams quicker than that. Keep in mind that Notre Dame is a member of the Big East in every other sport, including basketball. While it doesn’t seem likely, nothing can be ruled out in this crazy world of conference realignment.

If we assume Connecticut and Rutgers are gone, the Big East has a decision to make. Does it want to remain a hybrid of football and basketball-only schools or does it split along football/basketball lines? With seven non-FBS football members (DePaul, Georgetown, Marquette, Providence, Seton Hall, St. John’s and Villanova) plus Notre Dame in the fold there is a real possibility that these schools get left behind. However, a number of schools are being forgotten in all of this, including Cincinnati, Louisville, South Florida, TCU and West Virginia. Cincinnati and Louisville are not major media markets, a huge (and probably fatal) roadblock if they wish to join another conference. At best, West Virginia is in the Pittsburgh market (ranked 23^rd) but that’s a significant stretch. The Mountaineers were reportedly rejected by both the ACC and SEC on Tuesday but I have a feeling they’ll end up in the SEC when all is said and done. For the time being however, they are stuck in the Big East.

Along those lines, here are two possible scenarios and the repercussions of each:

A)     The Big 12 folds and its leftovers merge with the Big East.

• The big key here is how the merger takes place. If the Big East schools merge into the Big 12, does the Big 12 have any use for the basketball-only schools? It’s possible, but I really don’t think so. In this scenario, the Catholic basketball schools are at the mercy of the Big 12 and may get kicked to the curb as a result.
• If the Big 12 schools (most likely Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State and Missouri) merge into the Big East, the league becomes an 18-team behemoth with 10 football members. That number drops to 17/9 if Missouri goes to the SEC, as has been rumored. Ironically, 17 is the number of teams that would have been in place had Pittsburgh and Syracuse not left the conference. In a situation like this, the Big East would be primed to expand further in order to have the 12 members necessary for a football championship game. The basketball-only schools would be saved in this scenario and would likely be joined by schools such as Memphis, UCF, Houston or East Carolina.
• The Big 12’s survival rests with Oklahoma and Texas. If they go to the Pac-12 (likely taking Oklahoma State and Texas Tech with them), the Big 12 is effectively dead. With the Pac-12 on Tuesday night publicly saying they are not expanding, this scenario seems less and less likely by the hour.

B)      The Big 12 survives, putting the Big East in desperation mode trying to find new football members.

• Even more chaos would ensue inside the Big East if the football schools try to latch on to another conference in order to ensure their survival. That assumes they are not committed to one another and conflicts with what John Marinatto said Tuesday night after the meeting between himself and Big East football school representatives.
• The other possibility is the football schools remain together and try to recruit new members. That would be tough to do because they would need at least four and most likely seven new football members to survive as a football conference.
• The football schools could initiate a split along football/basketball lines, or would continue to welcome the basketball-only members in a hybrid model. Obviously that would be a critical decision for the future of the private Catholic schools.

At the moment, scenario B seems like what will happen. Late Tuesday night, the Pac-12 announced it would not expand, remaining a 12-team conference. That obviously puts the brakes on Oklahoma and Texas moving and makes it fairly likely that the Big 12 will remain intact. Remember, the above scenarios still assume Connecticut and Rutgers head to the ACC. Nobody knows if that will happen or not, as it’s all currently just speculation. If the Huskies and Scarlet Knights choose to remain with the Big East, the league can definitely survive in football and basketball in the hybrid model. As of Tuesday night, Marinatto said the conference will stick together and recruit new members, a statement that jibes with the news coming out of the Pac-12. The ball is now squarely in the Big East’s court. They must add football members to survive, either with or without the basketball members.

As for the basketball members, they can be proactive or have their fate decided by the football schools. The best option for the Catholic schools may be to commit to each other and form a new conference. Notre Dame is again the wild card and may not be able to be counted on so let’s assume the other seven basketball-only schools team up (also not a given). The first priority would be to target schools like Xavier, Butler, Temple and Dayton but they may not willing to part with what they currently have. Most of the Atlantic 10 (Rhode Island, Duquesne, Massachusetts, etc.) would be considered in this scenario, along with Colonial Athletic Association members George Mason, Northeastern, Old Dominion and Virginia Commonwealth. A ten-team basketball league would be ideal and would include the seven Big East schools plus Butler, Temple and Xavier. However, the other A-10 and CAA members would be viable options if the three target additions fall through. This new conference also doesn’t necessarily have to stop at ten members. The basketball schools could form a “super-conference” of their own, pushing the total number of memberships up to 14 or 16 if they want to. Butler, George Mason, Northeastern and Temple all reside in top 30 media markets, although the quality of Xavier’s program probably trumps TV markets in a basketball-only configuration. That league will command major TV money but not nearly on the level of football. Even so, this would be the best case scenario for the basketball-only Big East members.

The bottom line is that this is all speculation. Nobody can say to you with a straight face that they know how this will all turn out. For all we know, the Big East and Big 12 could both survive and expand even more. The average fan has no control over this so we’ll just have to sit back and watch to see how this all unfolds. Big East basketball will continue to exist, the only question is in what form? It’s fun and scary at the same time for diehard Big East traditionalists. It’s unfortunate that football is taking over a league that was founded for basketball purposes only, but that’s just the way of the world in collegiate athletics these days.