Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn.

At its humblest origins, the Big East was founded in 1979 behind the fundamental purpose of consolidating the East Coast’s best basketball programs into one competitive league. It began with seven members – Providence, St. Johns, Georgetown, Syracuse, Seton Hall, Connecticut and Boston College – and within the next three years added Villanova (1980) and Pittsburgh (1982). While some of that founding core remains, conference realignment has caused massive changes to the league’s membership. Most of the league hopping – almost all of which can be attributed to football-motivated decisions – has taken place in the 21^st century. The latest move saw Notre Dame, who housed its basketball and Olympic sports in the Big East but kept its football independence, declare its intentions to join the ACC. There is no timetable yet for the Irish’s move, but for an athletic program as proud and as financially-supported as Notre Dame, there’s little chance school administrators will linger around in Big East territory for any extended context, even if leaving requires a hefty exit fee. As currently constructed, the Big East will feature a 15-team hoops league in 2012-13. Two years from now, when all the realignment pieces are settled into their new homes, the league will field a decidedly different blend of disparate programs. The hectic realignment frenzy of recent years forced me to research the Big East’s jumbled future membership, an exercise that left me nostalgic about the endless hoops drama the league has produced and discouraged for a bleak future.

A reckless compilation of new programs, the Big East was assembled so that Aresco could present an appealing package to prospective media rights negotiatiors (Photo credit: John P Filo/AP Photo).

Starting in 2013, this is the mixed bag of hoops castoffs the Big East will proudly own: Cincinnati, UConn, Villanova, Georgetown, Providence, Seton Hall, St. John’s, Rutgers, DePaul, Louisville, Marquette, South Florida, Temple, Houston, SMU, UCF, and Memphis. That’s assuming Louisville or UConn or Villanova or any other programs that could fill a potential future opening in the ACC (if Notre Dame joins as a full member, or if commissioner John Swofford looks to add a 16^th basketball-only member) don’t jump ship before then. It’s hardly the grizzled band of geographically-fitting programs we once knew, the one with the hostile rivalries and legendary coaches and highly-appealing hard-nosed brand of hoops. But it’s merely life in the new Big East, the latest example of the detrimental and usually unintended byproducts of conference realignment. A league brought together for basketball purposes was largely undone by the allure of football money. Lest I digress on the evils of conference realignment (a column for another day), the reality – that the Big East, from a basketball standpoint, is now a shell of its former self – warrants a reassessment of the league’s power structure and its future standing among other power conferences. SI.Com’s college hoops’ analytical extraordinaire, Luke Winn – in response to new Big East commissioner Mike Aresco’s comment that, despite realignment-related losses, “We’re still the strongest top-to-bottom basketball conference in the country” – quantified the Big East’s realignment efficiency rate and found the reconfigured league to be the “weakest top-to-bottom major conference, not the strongest.”

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Chris Johnson is an RTC columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn.

Over the past 26 years, Jim Calhoun has morphed the Connecticut men’s basketball program from a middling Yankee Conference ensemble to a plucky Big East upstart to a nationally-revered hoops powerhouse. He did it without the normal built-in advantages of most successful programs, without historical precedent, without strong administrative or financial support, without favorable geography, or a rich pool of high school players to recruit from. What Calhoun accomplished at UConn is truly remarkable; his legacy is forever intertwined with the program’s foundation and rise to prominence. The situation UConn now finds itself in – transitioning away from a legendary leader – is not completely unique. Arizona, UCLA, and North Carolina, to name a few, have all weathered the departures of sideline legends deftly, sustaining their national relevance and competitiveness with new coaches. The challenge for UConn is finding the right coach to succeed Calhoun, to prolong and advance what the three-time national title winner engineered in Storrs. While Calhoun believes two-year assistant Kevin Ollie is the perfect fit, it’s unclear whether new AD Warde Manuel will stick with Calhoun’s preference in the long run. But the timing of Calhoun’s departure has forced Manuel’s hand: Ollie is assured one season on the Huskies’ sidelines, a test run to prove himself as the long-term solution.

UConn’s basketball success is tied to Calhoun’s legacy (Photo credit: AP Photo/Jessica Hill).

With UConn ineligible for the postseason in 2013 and a depleted roster to work with, Ollie faces a tough road in the upcoming season. Whether or not he is the best choice to lead the Huskies out of the Calhoun glory days is an open question, but the national media has opined in droves over the fate of UConn’s program now that it has lost its foundational architect. Here’s a sampling of some of the best Calhoun retirement-related pieces I’ve come upon in the wake of yesterday’s official announcement, with a brief pull-quote summary of how each writer believes the Huskies will march on without Calhoun.

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Chris Johnson is an RTC columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn.

If we’ve learned anything about the recent conference realignment craze, it’s that the two principles governing inter-league swapping – football, television rights deals and the thick crossover between them – have unintended and often detrimental consequences for the parties involved. Case in point: the Big East, unraveled at its foundational core by realignment forces, has seen itself morph from a tightly-knit group of basketball-oriented schools along the northeast corridor with legendary coaches and historic rivalries to a geographically disparate medley of culturally and academically incongruous programs, cobbled together in a last-ditch effort in the hopes of leveraging a lucrative media rights deal this fall. The deterioration has fueled the ACC – much like in the early 2000s, when it poached Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College from the Big East – into becoming one of Division I college athletics’ premier power brokers, along with the SEC, Big Ten, Pac-12 and Big 12. More relevant to this space, the ACC, once all the moving pieces settle into their new league, is poised to field arguably the best compilation of hoops talent we’ve ever seen.

The ACC added a 15th basketball member in Notre Dame, but could No. 16 be on the way in the near future? (Photo credit: Mike Lawrie/Getty Images)

Commissioner John Swofford added another gem Wednesday in Notre Dame, who plans to join the ACC in all sports except football (the Irish will play five games annually against ACC gridiron competition, but maintain their independence). This addition brings the ACC to 15 teams, an unwieldy number that could have nightmarish scheduling implications. Swofford told ESPN.com that the league has no plans to add a 16^th member, citing the disruption of football division equality, among other factors. Since the league isn’t divided into divisions for basketball, there is no immediate impetus to add another team, but it stands to reason that the ACC will eventually look to move to an even number of hoops teams, and what better place to address the problem than the beleaguered, battered, on-life-support (ok, maybe it’s not that bad) Big East? What follows is a brief analysis of a few potential candidates for that 16^th spot, should it open up in the coming years, with an eye toward each team’s purported value from a hoops perspective.

*Unless Notre Dame decides to relinquish its football independence, it would seem unlikely that the ACC will take on another fully engaged football member so as to preserve its current seven-team divisional configuration. This analysis, therefore, is limited only to basketball-centric schools without major football programs.

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Chris Johnson is an RTC columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn.

When word leaked nearly two weeks ago of a massive academic scandal at Harvard University, it was easy to overreact at the prospect of some of the nation’s brightest and most academically qualified students setting aside baseline expectations of academic honesty and integrity. After all, this is Harvard, long held as the putative gold standard of collegiate institutions, the dream school for practically every high school nerd with Ivy League aspirations. But when you dug into the details, which the New York Times provided one day after the allegations surfaced, none of it seemed particularly groundbreaking. Students enrolled in a 2012 spring Introduction to Congress class, which according to students had a reputation as one of the easiest classes at the school, colluded on take-home tests, questioned the fairness of graduate teaching assistants across sections and appealed to those assistants after reaching a consensus on unfamiliar exam terminology. There was a general understanding among enrollees that their actions were much less intentional than a product of a flawed conception of the school’s academic policies. All of which, at least as far as I could tell, undermined the severity of the transgressions. The only mildly surprising aspect of the story was the sheer number (125) of students implicated. It was a minor stain on Harvard’s sterling academic reputation, sure, but it certainly looked as if it would all dissipate in time.

The defining storyline of the 2012-13 for the Crimson will be the academic scandal that enveloped Curry and Casey (Photo credit: Getty Images).

The ongoing investigation has now crossed into the athletic realm, per Luke Winn of SI.Com, who reported early Tuesday morning that co-captains Kyle Casey and Brandyn Curry, two cornerstones of the Crimson’s 2012-13 Ivy League title defense efforts, are in jeopardy of missing their senior seasons. Casey decided to withdraw before Tuesday’s fall enrollment deadline. While he is yet to receive punishment for his alleged involvement in the widespread academic fraud, Casey ran the risk of losing his final year of eligibility by attending classes this fall if school administrators render an unfavorable verdict. Curry hasn’t made a final decision as of this writing, but is expected to follow Casey and forgo the upcoming academic year. In surrendering their eligibility this season, both players are expected to return for the 2013-14 season. A third men’s basketball player, along with a score of football players, could also face renounced or curtailed academic schedules this year.

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Chris Johnson is an RTC columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn.

It always seemed slightly awkward that the Final Four, college basketball’s marquee postseason event, is played out in 70,000-seat football arenas across the country, rather than buildings actually designed to house basketball events. Fans spend the season watching their teams compete in basketball arenas across the country, many of which offer unique, quaint environments that are as much a part of the program as the team itself. In world where ticket revenue maximization and logistical considerations are the driving forces behind stadium construction and renovation, it’s these college hoops atmospheres – Hinkle Fieldhouse, Cameron Indoor Stadium, the Palestra – that give the sport a certain level of authenticity. There’s something endearing about the program-specific uniqueness that envelops college arenas, something vaguely intangible the sport simply wouldn’t be the same without. It would only make sense to have college basketball’s national champion determined under the same setting – not only for familiarity reasons, but to preserve college basketball’s amateur feel at the highest levels of competition. At the very least, basketball arenas – if not college structures, then NBA stadiums – offer settings far more tolerable than the large and unseemly football dome monoliths that have been adopted for college basketball’s three most important games (two national semifinals, and the championship game).

Large Domes like Ford Field have exclusively hosted the Final Four since 1997. That’s likely to continue for the foreseeable future (Photo credit: David J. Phillip/AP Photo).

But its no secret why the NCAA has opted for these awkward hosting sites. For one, bigger stadiums means more seats, which means more ticket revenues. If fans are willing to fill a reasonable proportion of a football dome’s enormous seating capacity in spite of several unattractive features – poor viewing angles, increased ticket prices – then it’s hard to argue with keeping the games in these large structures. From a revenue perspective, it just makes sense. But there are a host of other concerns to consider: space for increasing media contingents, infrastructural necessities (restaurants, hotels, parking, etc.), the conventions and parties and fan events that accompany major sporting events like the Final Four. Large football domes, despite all their aesthetic shortcomings, are better-equipped to handle the event in this regard. In short, football arenas in large cities offer the optimal blend of seating accommodations and resourceful necessities for hosting a sporting spectacle as massive and as important as the Final Four.

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Chris Johnson is an RTC columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn.

The following names are listed as “clients” on the website of Rafaello & Co. Jewelers: Drake, Jay-Z, T-Pain, Lil Wayne, Rihanna, Justin Bieber. I’m barely scratching the surface of the illustrious canon of entertainment superstars and hip-hop moguls associated with the famous New York jeweler, but you get the point. This is not your average knock-off thrift shop. You don’t walk into Rafaello & Co. unless you have some serious cash to splash. So it’s not at all surprising that Lance Thomas, a starting forward on Duke’s 2010 National Championship team and a current member of the New Orleans Hornets, needed nearly $100,000 to purchase a black diamond necklace, a diamond-encrusted watch, a pair of diamond-stud earrings, a diamond cross and a black diamond pendant in the shape of Jesus’ head. No, what’s surprising is how Thomas was able to pony up $30,000 just two days after Duke defeated then-No. 15 Gonzaga at Madison Square Garden, in the midst of the Blue Devils’ title-winning season. And how Thomas was extended a nearly $70,000 loan to complete the glamorous spending spree. Even more puzzling is the fact that Thomas was expected to repay the loan within 15 days, and that Rafaello & Co. waited over two years to file a suit against him demanding he break even on the very credit he sought when he made purchase.

The NCAA will likely investigate Thomas’ involvement in a potential improper benefits scandal, endangering Duke’s 2010 National Championship (Photo credit: AP Photo).

There’s plenty to be resolved here, and it’s far too early to draw conclusions. But unless Thomas somehow managed to accumulate $30,000 (and was expected to raise nearly $70,000 on top of that within the next 15 days) while undergoing one of the more rigorous academic curricula in the nation and, mind you, the added time spent practicing, lifting, studying film and playing basketball at Duke, this situation has the looks of a hanging curve ball, slowly arching its way into the heart of the strike zone, awaiting its bludgeoning from the NCAA’s sanction-laced Louisville Slugger. If college athletics’ ruling body is determined to achieve one mission with its quirky and vaguely byzantine rulebook, it is to sustain the notion of amateurism. Student-athletes are not to use their extra-curricular activities as leverage to obtain financial benefits or other gifts unavailable to non-athletes. Which means Thomas must have received no outside assistance in making a five-figure lump-sum payment at a world-renowned jeweler. He had to have made the money himself. Nor could he have used his status as “Duke forward” to persuade the jeweler into giving him the loan. That’s the baseline assumption we’re making for his innocence. However, if an outside source provided aid when Thomas completed his transaction nearly three years ago, things could get ugly for one of college basketball’s marquee programs and the patron saint that bosses its sidelines.

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Christopher Johnson is an RTC columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn.

When programs are so closely associated with one legendary coach, it’s often difficult to properly gauge their sustainability and staying power. Coaching leadership and innovation, when harnessed in the right ways, can ignite and maintain momentum. In these instances, when sideline legends engineer complete turnarounds at places with little or no previous historical success, the burning question is whether the building project and subsequent rise has set the stage for long-term security and continuity, or if the inevitable coaching change will undo the trailblazing predecessor’s foundational work. UConn men’s basketball is one of these programs. The Huskies’ success is impossible to extract from its longtime head coach Jim Calhoun. UConn garnered some regional recognition as a member of the Yankee Conference under Hugh Greer, but it was only when Calhoun took over – not to mention UConn’s move to the Big East in 1979, a conference created with the goal of assembling the region’s best basketball programs – that the Huskies truly hit their stride on the national stage. In 1986-87, Calhoun’s first season as head coach, UConn finished 9-19. Two years later, the Huskies won their first national postseason tournament when they knocked off Ohio State en route to an NIT championship. By 1990, UConn had claimed its first Big East title along with a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. More importantly, UConn debuted its new on-campus home, Gampel Pavilion, signaling a positive turn in the school’s administrative support for the ascendant Huskies. Nine Big East titles and three National Championships later, UConn has clearly established itself among the college hoops elite. It seems unlikely the Huskies will ever recede into their pre-Calhoun irrelevance, but there remains a sneaking suspicion that UConn will lose at least some measure of its national prestige once their pioneering head coach calls it quits.

It sounds as if Calhoun is ready to leave the program he elevated to elite status (Photo credit: Streeter Lecka/Getty Images).

What once felt like an unimaginable outcome – that Calhoun, after morphing UConn into the national powerhouse it is today, would step down – has inched closer and closer to reality. In fact, the timetable for his retirement could dictate that Calhoun has seen his last moments on the Huskies sidelines. In a candid interview with SI.com’s Mark Blaudschun, Calhoun spoke with humbling acceptance and resignation of the circumstances surrounding his health and the program he practically built from the ground up. Calhoun, 70, is coming off his 26^th season at the helm, just two years removed from winning his third – and arguably his most impressive, given the talent on hand – national championship. The Huskies, who returned much of their championship rotation (minus Kemba Walker) and welcomed in one of the nation’s best recruiting classes, vastly underperformed in their title-defense season. Calhoun missed three games due to recruiting violations, and UConn was notified it had been banned from the 2013 postseason thanks to its inability to meet the NCAA’s increasingly stringent APR standards. Still, Calhoun, undeterred by the variety of factors weighing against him, thought he could extend his career on the sidelines, if only to lead UConn out of the grim short-term outlook it now faces. That may still be the case, but an offseason bike injury requiring hip surgery seems to have sapped the competitive drive that has long defined Calhoun’s coaching psyche. From Blaudschun’s story:

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Christopher Johnson is an RTC columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn.

Conference schedule releases, no matter how far in advance of their realization on the court, inevitably spawn anticipatory discussion and analysis of teams and the relative difficulty of their matchups at hand. The excitement prompts some to pencil in their sports-watching travel arrangements, while others pull out calendars and simply mark down designated college hoops viewing days. This year’s Big East docket is not at all different. Of the 135 games on this year’s regular season Big East slate, 75 will be nationally televised, 100 will feature at least one NCAA Tournament team from last season and 37 will match two such opponents. It’s arguably one of the best leagues in the sport, so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that most Big East competition is defined by high-quality matchups between nationally successful programs. Still, it’s refreshing to see the specifics of league play – not just in the Big East, but for most of the sport’s high-major conferences – in  plain view and know that those gritty, high-stakes conference matchups aren’t too far off. What follows is a list of my 10 most intriguing games on this year’s Big East slate. The vagaries of nonleague play can alter each team’s outlook before they begin conference games, but from my distant vantage point, these are the fixtures (in chronological order) that inspire the most competitive draw.

The Bearcats are featured in several appealing Big East matchups this season (Photo credit: Jessica Hill/AP Photo).

Cincinnati at Pittsburgh (Monday, December 31 – ESPN2). The first game of league play sets up as one of the most entertaining, a match-up of two hard-nosed teams with established track records and fervent fan bases. The Oakland Zoo has long held a reputation as one of the sport’s most raucous and rowdy courtside environments. Cincinnati brings back its starting backcourt of Sean Kilpatrick, Jaquon Parker and Cashmere Wright from last year’s Sweet Sixteen team, while Pittsburgh hopes to rebound after missing the NCAAs for the first time in 10 seasons with fifth-year senior point guard Tray Woodall, a vaunted frontcourt tandem in Talib Zanna and Dante Taylor and a promising batch of new recruits. The stylistic contrast between the Bearcats’ talented backcourt and the Panthers’ ferocious low block duo should make for an interesting strategic chess match. A must-see showdown of league contenders to send us into the new year: What could be better?

Georgetown at Marquette (Saturday, January 5 – Big East Network). Both teams lose large swaths of minutes and production after earning #3 seeds in last year’s Tournament. The Hoyas do return Otto Porter, a potential league player of the year candidate poised to make an impressive freshman-to-sophomore leap, and welcome in four star-recruits Stephen Domingo and D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera. All the eyes will be fixed squarely on Porter in this one, but the Golden Eagles may have a star of their own in junior guard Vander Blue, an explosive 6’4″ scoring dynamo who should see his shot opportunities increase with the departures of Jae Crowder and Darius Johnson-Odom. These two programs are in the midst of semi-rebuilding projects, but both have more than enough talent and depth to make return runs to the NCAA Tournament. Plus, whenever Buzz Williams takes the floor, it’s always must-see viewing. 

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Christopher Johnson is an RTC columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn.

The short-term outlook for Mark Turgeon and the Maryland Terrapins was already bright. On Tuesday, though, the program received an added boost thanks to a timely pickup on the free agent transfer market. Dezmine Wells, who was expelled from Xavier on controversial sexual allegations charges that were later challenged and struck down by an Ohio grand jury, prompted an open recruiting war between some of the nation’s top programs for his services. After more than a week of visits and deliberations, Wells chose Maryland over Memphis, Oregon and Kentucky. He made the decision official on his Twitter account with a repentant and humbling message to his four suitors. And with that conclusion, Wells turned down the defending national champion and the NBA talent-grooming coach that inhabits its sidelines, a Memphis program poised to strengthen its brand name and recruiting footprint with an impending move into a revamped Big East, and the Nike-backed Oregon Ducks, who offer all the amenities and perks any elite college hoops star could ever hope to enjoy at his program of choice.

Maryland won an intense bidding war for Wells’ services (Photo credit Streeter Lecka/Getty Images).

The decision marks yet another indication of positive momentum toward Turgeon’s goal of re-establishing Maryland as the perennial ACC and national title threat it once was. The putative benefits are obvious: Wells is a 6’ 5’’, 215-pound freight train with immense talent and upside, a dynamic scorer and playmaker adept at creating his own shot off the dribble, and one of last season’s truly impressive freshman talents whose steady scoring (9.8 PPG) and rebounding (4.9 RPG) production went somewhat unnoticed amid the tumult of XU’s post-brawl struggles. The Terrapins will likely have to wait until the 2013-14 season to reap the on-court rewards of their newest addition; Wells is expected to apply for a hardship waiver that would allow him to play next season, but CBSSports.com’s Jeff Goodman doubts the NCAA will grant his request. But with Wells in tow, the Terrapins are positioned well to challenge the elite ranks of the ACC down the line. Maryland boasts a young but promising rotation featuring rising talents like guards Nick Faust and center Alex Len – to say nothing of sure-handed junior point guard Pe’shon Howard – and welcomes two top-100 recruits (small forward Jake Layman and center Shaquille Cleare) into the mix. The young core should improve with another years’ development and maturation, just in time for Wells and Michigan transfer Evan Smotrycz (not to mention the legitimate prospect of adding super twins Andrew and Aaron Harrison) to enter the fold in 2013. That’s a deep and talented group, one with more than enough firepower to go toe-to-toe with perennial league contenders UNC, Duke and newbies Syracuse and Pittsburgh.

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Chris Johnson is an RTC columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn. 

Situated only 12 miles apart, an angst-inducing, traffic-clogged car ride away from one another, USC and UCLA have for many years sustained an adversarial existence on the athletic playing fields. The Trojans have dominated their cross-town rivals on the gridiron of late, while the Bruins have lorded over their cardinal-and-gold clad foes on the basketball court. The rivalry is alive and well, and both teams continue to make strides hoping to find ways to outperform one another in the revenue-producing sports. It starts with recruiting, the elemental building block to any successful program. Coaches at top programs like UCLA and USC must be able to seek out and sway the nation’s best high school players to their respective institutions. The meteoric rise of recruiting, propelled by expansive coverage from general scouting sites like Rivals, Scout, 247sports and ESPN Recruiting Nation, has pushed the art of courtship into the national spotlight, and coaches/programs are now judged on their ability not only to win games and draw fans but to also attract the best prospects in the country. The two LA schools have long stood as premium destinations for top-tier high school talents, but in today’s financially-intertwined recruiting market, these programs’ reputations, coaches, facilities and prime location – who doesn’t enjoy the comfort of a sunbath on the way to practice nearly every day of the year? – don’t hold the alluring force they once did. Often times persuading the cream of the high school crop requires more than what NCAA legislation allows.

The subject of an NCAA investigation, Anderson and Muhammad might not see the court in 2012-13 (Photo credit: Albert Dickson/SportingNews)

So even when an historic program like UCLA reels in the nation’s No. 1 recruiting class – as it did in 2012, built on the backs of four commitments and featuring the nation’s No. 1 overall prospect, Shabazz Muhammad – at least some measure of suspicion is warranted. Athletic director Dan Guerrero revealed on Monday that the NCAA has shifted its analytical eye toward that prized recruiting haul. In a statement released by the school, Guerrero confirmed that two members of the Bruins’ incoming class have yet to receive eligibility clearance for the upcoming season. A recent report by Scout’s BruinReportOnline.com  indicated three players (Muhammad, Kyle Anderson and Tony Parker) are in danger of losing their eligibility, but ESPN Los Angeles, citing an unnamed source, reported the ongoing probe concerns potential recruiting violations on behalf of Anderson and Muhammad. Parker, according to the same source, has been cleared to play this season. Muhammad’s recruitment has been subjected to NCAA scrutiny over the past several months, with particular concern over his relationship with financial advisers Ken Kavanagh and Benjamin Lincoln and his method of payment for several unofficial visits. Muhammad was held out of UCLA’s recent foreign exhibition tour to China, but Anderson and Parker both attended with the team (though Parker did not play due to injury).

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