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

For most college basketball fans, the professional brand of the game they love has never resonated in the same endearing way. For reasons ethical and not, the general perception of NBA hoops is not a good one. It is, with few exceptions, terrible. Whether it’s the isolation-heavy offense, lack of defensive organization and discipline, or the fuzzy conception-based judgment that the game just isn’t played the right way in the professional ranks, there are few more infuriating three-letter sequences for college hoops fans than NBA. I’ve never quite understood the origins or the staying power of this criticism, nor do I subscribe to the same viewpoint. Every year, the NBA offers us a nearly six-month slate of the best basketball in the world, played by the best athletes in the world – most of which come from the programs college fans invest their time, money and passion enjoying. It’s not the same as the college game; the differences are as obvious as they are numerous. But if you enjoy basketball played at the highest level, robbing yourself of the sport’s greatest compilation of talent, spectacle and athletic brilliance seems silly. Whatever your opinions on the NBA the organization, it’s awfully difficult to come up with a sound argument justifying your lack of attention to the league’s on-court product. These guys are really, really good. That alone should pique your hoops-watching impulses enough to flip-on at least a few games each year.

With Wallace speaking out against the NBA’s competitive integrity, college fans’ complaints gain a layer of credibility (Photo credit: Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images).

Perhaps the most frequent gripe with NBA basketball brings us to the realm of intangibles, the vague qualities that enhance (or devalue) the tenor of the game’s flow of play. The NBA’s lack of passion or fire or intensity, or whatever descriptor suits your position, is raised with alarming consistency in just about any anti-NBA diatribe. The typical argument proceeds as follows: College players lose their competitive drive when they reach the NBA and receive their first paychecks. Financial incentives, so the narrative goes, rob college players of the passion and unbridled joy that made them so fascinating to watch at their respective programs. If you share this mindset (as this is a college basketball blog, there are no doubt at least a few readers who most definitely do), you are not alone. One NBA contemporary is on your side. Rasheed Wallace – former North Carolina Tar Heel, first-round pick, four-time All Star, all-time NBA bad boy first-teamer, and most recently, New York Knicks frontcourt relief option – opened up with Brian Lewis of the New York Post Wednesday to reveal the reasons behind his unlikely age-38 comeback.

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

Conference realignment has not been kind to college basketball. There are exceptions to this statement: The Atlantic 10, who over the past year added VCU and Butler, very much won out. But on the whole, hoops leagues have watched flagship programs jump ship to chase lucrative media rights contracts and better positioning in the increasingly football-oriented college athletics landscape. The winds of change prompted high-profile departures from the Big East (West Virginia, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, Syracuse), pillaged the CAA (Old Dominion, Georgia State, VCU) and swiped thriving outfits from other leagues. While the reasons sometimes differed – with a few exceptions, football and TV money reigned supreme; the variant motives were more a matter of degree than type – the overall result was mostly unilateral. Hoops conferences were weakened, either by losing teams to football-savvy and/or more monied leagues, taking on substandard replacements or having natural rivalries eroded. The good news is we’re witnessing a temporary conference-hopping lull after a summer teeming with realignment buzz. The college hoops offseason is a long and frustrating stretch that challenges the outer limits of creative resolve. Filling that gap with realignment news, particularly when that news includes negative consequences for the sport’s competitive balance, is not fun. We should probably enjoy this peace while it lasts, because conference loyalty is hardly the same enduring relationship it used to be. These are massive changes with lasting impacts. College hoops may never be the same.

It will fall on programs like New Mexico State to carry the WAC’s flagship going forward (Eric Jamison/AP).

Through all the program-hopping and controversial departure dates and spiteful conference tournament bans (I’m looking at you, CAA), there is no league that learned the perils of realignment in a more devastating way than the Western Athletic Conference. Over the past two decades, the once-thriving mid-major outfit has suffered a slow and agonizing decline, with a whopping 24 schools leaving for greener pastures. The extended bout of membership attrition prompted the WAC to steep to new levels of realignment hopelessness. That’s no disrespect to Cal State Bakersfield and Utah Valley, which the league announced Tuesday will gain full membership by July 1 of next year and begin competition in 2013, but is this the best the WAC can do? When your membership has been whittled down to four and league administrators have relegated football to the BCS ranks (a tell-tale sign of league futility), the answer is, almost invariably, yes.

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

For a player with transcendent basketball talent and potential, a No. 1 recruiting ranking, Sports Illustrated coverboy hype, and the enormous expectations of living up to the unfair if burdensome labeling as “The Best High School Basketball Player Since LeBron James,” Jabari Parker’s immediate basketball future isn’t as simple as what meets the eye. In a vacuum, you’d think a player like Parker would go on to a high-major powerhouse, with practically no limits on his range of destinations. He would enjoy a high-profile one-year existence on the college scene, send his draft stock through the roof as he dominates the competition, accumulate numerous accolades and generate widespread debate over the fairness of the NBA’s one-and-done age stipulations and, hopefully, have some fun along the way before joining the professional ranks. But Parker, as you may have heard (and if you haven’t, I heartily recommend visiting the timeless SI vault for Jeff Benedict’s brilliant feature), is not like most No. 1 recruits. For one, Parker – cover story notwithstanding – has deftly insulated himself from the growing high school and grass roots hoops media spotlight, instead funneling pertinent information through his parents and, on occasion, Twitter. Up until this weekend, when Parker cut his lengthy list of suitors down to five schools (Duke, Michigan State, Stanford, BYU and Florida), the Chicago Simeon (IL) product kept his preferences under wraps – Even after narrowing down his list, we still don’t have a great feel for where Parker will eventually end up. Perhaps most puzzling, particularly in light of the Harrison twins recent commitment to Kentucky after a heated six-year courtship with Mark Turgeon at Maryland, is Parker’s elimination of the Wildcats from his list. It’s not often you see a recruit reject John Calipari, nor is it normal for any prospect – no matter his ranking – to turn down Kansas and North Carolina; these days, if you’ve already rebuffed Coach Cal, dropping the Jayhawks and Tar Heels is borderline irrational.

The age adjustment, which presents a roundabout way in which Parker could enter the NBA without playing in college, could affect Parker’s college hoops timeline (Photo credit: Charles Rex/AP Photo)

By conventional blue-chip recruiting standards, Parker’s recruitment is unusual. This much is clear. But it’s his personal background that could alter his college basketball timeframe. Thanks to a newly-imposed age requirement for religious missions in the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-Day Saints, Parker, a practicing Mormon, is rethinking how he schedules his two-year sojourn. Sonny Parker, Jabari’s father and media conduit, told ESPN Chicago’s Scott Powers Monday that Jabari has not decided on when, or if, he will serve his mission, but that the new rule – which lowered the threshold for mission service age to 18 for males and 19 for females – could influence the way his son handles his religious and basketball priorities. The rule change eliminates the divided eligibility timeline whereby Mormon players play one season with their respective programs, leave for two years on religious duty, then finish out their eligibility at a later date. But for Parker, the downshift may not matter. According to Powers, Parker is exploring new ways to fulfill religious obligations without embarking on a conventional two-year mission. This is the same path taken by former BYU guard Jimmer Fredette and quarterback Steve Young, who Parker spoke with to gain a greater perspective on handling service requirements. In the most extreme case, Parker could serve his mission after high school, circumvent college basketball altogether and enter the NBA Draft upon returning. The latter seems remotely improbable. Spending two years away from high-level competition at arguably the most important time of Parker’s basketball career could jeopardize his NBA future. However he chooses to handle his religious obligations, the final stretch (he expects to commit in November) of the Jabari Parker recruiting saga will be fascinating to watch.

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

The growing cause for a dismantling of the NCAA’s ruling structure is reaching a breaking point. The Ed O’Bannon lawsuit, filed in 2009 in the hope of ending the NCAA’s practice of securing lucrative media rights and video game contracts without compensating student-athletes, is gaining steam in advance of the seminal legal showdown expected to go on trial in early 2014. The government is making headway, too, as just last week California signed into law a Student-Athlete Bill of Rights for the Golden State’s four Pac-12 schools. These are legitimate challenges that threaten to destabilize the NCAA’s authoritative grip on collegiate athletics, along with the ideological underpinnings that justify its amateurism model. As the clamors for change grow louder and the NCAA is increasingly shoved under the national spotlight and parsed for its standards of handling academic and impermissible benefits scandals at different institutions, the argument will continue to hit home with strong-willed onlookers – like O’Bannon and his class action lawsuit. For the NCAA, it’s only going to get worse before it gets better. Until a reasonable resolution is reached, and its administrative wherewithal is reconciled with the slew of legal and ideological challenges it currently faces, the NCAA will have to weather a steady dose of overwhelming public disapproval and fear the distinct possibility of new sources arising to debunk its legitimacy. That’s a mouthful of high-brow legal nuance, but there is no easy way to frame the legitimate threats posed by NCAA’s growing opposition.

Even after leaving the program, Lin’s collaborative deal could strike fear into NCAA enforcement (Photo credit: Michael Dwyer/AP Photo).

The legal and value-based screeds against NCAA policy we’ve seen to this point have risen outside the organization’s ruling constructs. The actors that constitute college athletics (institutions, student-athletes) have not presented a challenge to the amateurism-based restrictions from which its authority is derived. Other than scandals and rule breaks which occur under the noses of various programs’ officials, the challenges have come from the outside – from ex-players like O’Bannon or ruling bodies like California’s state government. It would take an exceptionally defiant program to completely do away with NCAA protocol and remove the legislative shackles limiting their student-athletes’ financial potential. But if such a program existed, the one rogue institution with the will to formally challenge the NCAA and embrace whatever punitive consequences came its way, it probably wouldn’t be Harvard. After all, we’re talking about the universal gold standard of academic integrity, the embodiment of the student-athlete paradigm the NCAA so thoroughly promotes and enforces. Known for its halls of scholarly achievement and its unofficial status as the ultimate sovereign of higher education, Harvard is not the type of program you’d expect to strike up and co-opt a lucrative advertising deal with one of its former athletes. Yet that far-fetched muse could become reality.

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

Even in this high-profile one-and-done era, where most top-tier prospects make their ultimate decisions not in the pursuit of the best four-year student athlete experience possible but to maximize NBA draft stock, the increasing preparedness of elite recruits to make immediate impacts has raised the stakes as coaches search for talents to elevate their teams and change their programs’ trajectories. There was no better example of this phenomenon than in 2011-12, when John Calipari took an insanely-talented 2011 recruiting class – led by otherworldly front court maestro Anthony Davis, hyper-intense perimeter dynamo Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and quick-learning point guard Marquis Teague – molded its star power around a host of savvy role players (and first-round pick Terrence Jones), crafted a coherent and disciplined unit, and surged to a 38-2 record and his first national championship. These weren’t your average freshmen; Calipari’s coup may go down as the most talented recruiting class since Michigan’s Fab Five outfit. But across the nation, each class’s blue chip prospects are increasingly entering the college game with a greater potential for immediate contribution, often in major and lasting ways. Kentucky’s title season – which officially debunked the age-old myth that one-and-done players didn’t have the intangibles to withstand pressure-packed NCAA Tournament games – paired three top-10 players with a coach well-versed in the sort of ego-grooming and steadfast discipline required to overcome any freshmen transitional issues. The match of immense talent and coaching acumen was practically seamless. Not every elite recruiting haul reaches that level of success that quickly. Freshmen talent, however large or promising the selection, does not equal championships, at least not right away.

If the Harrisons choose Maryland, it could propel Maryland’s rise to ACC and national contention (Photo credit: coast2coasthoops.com).

That’s the motivation fueling the enormous hype surrounding the recruitment of Andrew and Aaron Harrison, two top-five players in the class of 2013 who have been open about their intentions to attend the same program and thus form, in recruiting parlance, perhaps the best “package deal” in college hoops recruiting history. Left in the running for the twins, who plan to announce their decision tonight at 5 PM ET, are Kentucky and Maryland, with SMU coming in at a distant (I repeat: distant) third. For the reasons I mentioned above, and a host of other enticing qualities, Calipari’s involvement is hardly shocking. Maryland’s courtship hinges on a spate of various connections: namely, Aaron Harrison, Sr.’s, Baltimore childhood and relationships with program staffers along with the twins’ longstanding association with Under Armour and the corporate bridge it constructs between their UA-backed AAU team and the Terrapins. Though Calipari has rarely missed out on a recruit(s) he set his sights on, the Harrisons and their sheltering father have shielded their preferences internally. Neither program would be a surprise. Whoever the victor, the on-court benefits are fairly straightforward: two transcendent backcourt pieces brimming with potential and promise. For Kentucky, wrapping up Harrison-squared would be business as usual, par for the course in Calipari’s recruiting history. But for Maryland, the potential long-term implications of landing two NBA-bound basketball destroyers-of-worlds, at least from a reputation standpoint, are positively transformative.

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

Scores of columns, blog posts and features have focused on the imminent decline of Big East basketball. The central themes – conference realignment, fooball-motivated injustices, the evils of media rights contracts destroying competitive purity – are for the most part identical. It’s basically the same ideas recreated and refined across different platforms and outlets. And we’ve only reached the tip of the iceberg. Starting in 2013-14, when Syracuse and Pittsburgh (and possibly Notre Dame) head off to the ACC, the defeatist Big East literature will resurface in greater frequency. Like many fellow college basketball scribes, I believe the Big East will lose some of its competitive intrigue once conference realignment commitments fall into place. But I do not abide by the notion that conference realignment is a unilateral force destroying college basketball, or that all realignment-related decisions by definition neglect the happenings on the hardwood and/or affect negative change to the sport’s league structure. Case in point: the Atlantic 10. Thanks to the addition of two emerging programs by way of realignment (Butler and VCU), the A-10, despite also losing Temple and Charlotte, has positioned itself to stake its claim as one of the top three or four basketball leagues in the country.

Adding Butler to the fray gives the A-10 another perennial Tournament contender (Photo credit: David J. Phillip/AP Photo).

The positive outlook in A-10 country is not lost on college hoops TV rights negotiators. They proved as much on Tuesday, when broadcast giants ESPN, CBS and NBC committed to the league long-term by securing eight year partnerships, which, according to the conference’s official release, will “give the league unprecedented reach, distribution and marketing, allowing the Atlantic 10 to better serve its fans in its extensive media footprint and to leverage the promotional platforms and marketing assets of these three major media companies.” With the league’s undeniably positive trajectory, this move was an eventuality, a no-brainer proposition for media companies seeking to leverage an untapped source of national viewings gold. There’s little doubt the A-10 has reached power conference-level status, even if it’s not regarded as such. Bolstered by the otherwise gloomy optics of conference realignment, the league is primed to cement its footprint among the sport’s elite. It has a potent mix of thriving programs capable of challenging and stealing NCAA Tournament bids from high-majors; now the broadcast and financial baselines are locked in. The A-10 is, in short, booming. But does it have the staying power to upstage the withering Big East?

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

If there’s a college basketball coach who deserves a pay raise, Bill Self probably qualifies. At face value, that statement may come off as snobbish or patronizing – many believe college athletics coaches are grossly overpaid, that their lofty range of compensation would be better spent elsewhere – but if you’re willing to accept today’s coaching salary standards as a premise for discussion, Self is long past due on the list of coaches meriting an augmented payment scale. In nine seasons at Kansas, Self has won five Big 12 Tournament championships and at least a share of eight consecutive regular season titles, led his teams to six Sweet Sixteens, five Elite Eights, two Final Fours and one National Championship, all while winning three Big 12 coach of the year awards, two national coach of the year awards and grooming nine NBA first-round draft picks. Dating back to the 2006-07 season, Self’s 197 wins are the most for a six-year period in NCAA Division I history. Even by Kansas’ elevated standards, that’s a remarkable track record. The Jayhawks rewarded Self for his unprecedented tenure Friday by extending his contract through the 2021-22 season and increasing his annual salary by $480,000 per season. The new deal guarantees Self $3.856 million per year, with multiple incentives and retention bonuses built in provided he coaches out the length of the contract.

There are few coaches who have provided better bang-for-buck value than Self (Photo credit: AP Photo).

Guaranteeing any coach that level of length and/or value is risky, no matter his previous track record or positive momentum. But for Self, who has been college basketball’s overall most successful coach during his time in Lawrence, it’s hard to fret over the move. In fact, when you compare Self’s new deal with some of the sport’s most lucrative engagements, Kansas may have struck college hoops’ thriftiest salary bargain. According to USA Today’s College Basketball Coaching Salary Database for 2011-12, the newly-compensated Self now ranks fourth among college basketball coaches. Kentucky’s John Calipari ($4,497,578), Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski ($4,699,570), and Louisville’s Rick Pitino ($3,900,000) cash in ahead of Kansas’ program figurehead. Measured against these coaching heavyweights, none of whom have won as many league championships or garnered more coaching accolades than Self over the last nine years, Self is not overpaid. That’s not to say wins and championships and awards are the only factors by which coaches are assessed – there’s recruiting, off-court endeavors, programmatic impact, and so on. The point is, all things considered, Self’s status as one of the game’s four best coaches (and now one of its four highest-paid) isn’t exactly arguable. Kansas normalized his deal with the sport’s elite coaches because that’s exactly what Self is: an elite coach. Much less a pronounced splurge on behalf of the Jayhawks’ athletic department, Self’s deal was arguably a cost-savings negotiation.

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

The wave of appeals to change the NCAA’s amateurism model, and increasing scrutiny therein, is not a new phenomenon. Various ethical questions and proposals were raised in different forms and distinctions over the years as the framework of the modern college athletic scape was tested by a series of scandals. Most recently, the organization has come under sharp criticism for its perceived inaction against Duke and North Carolina, two preeminent programs where an overwhelming swath of evidence points to severe allegations – one academic (UNC) and one amateur-related (Duke). The backlash is as much a byproduct of a widespread desire to see the Tar Heels and Blue Devils face punishment as it is a critique of the NCAA’s approach. But for the most part, the public outcry deals not with the organization’s failure to swing around its punitive heft, but the very structure from which it derives its power. There is a general disagreement with the notion that the organization can leverage the competitive product offered by its athletes – by securing lucrative media rights deals and showcasing its athletes on national networks – without actually compensating those athletes. Fundamental moral reasoning is invoked to criticize the revenue-producing college athlete’s inability to advance himself financially (beyond what’s already provided by athletic scholarships). Free market principles, along with appeals to the decades-old literary-conceived “American Dream” concept, are conjured up to blast the NCAA’s apparent limitations. Whatever the origin or direction of their complaints, the NCAA has weathered a diverse range of challenges to its ruling power, challenges that for the most part have fallen on deaf ears.

With Brown signing into effect the Student Athlete Bill of Rights, the door has been cracked open for future government intervention in NCAA policy (photo credit: Lucy Nicholson/ Reuters).

For years the organization occupied something of an impenetrable perch of incontrovertible truth, as if its methods and guidelines were beyond reproach. But lately, we’ve witnessed a gradual chipping away of that unquestioned status. The Ed O’Bannon lawsuit, which has the potential to dismantle the NCAA’s amateurism structure once and for all (and is scheduled to go on trial in early 2014), is building considerable momentum in advance of what figures to be the landmark athletics court case of the 21^st century. An improved public understanding of the organization’s practices and rules has fanned the anti-NCAA flame. Prominent columnists and sports commentators have made bashing the NCAA a monthly, even weekly, practice. The mounting scorn could soon reach a tipping point. Another authoritative challenge materialized Thursday, this time from a ruling body whose power decidedly trumps that which rules college athletics. California governor Jerry Brown signed into law a powerful piece of legislation devised specifically to address student-athletes at the state’s four Pac-12 schools. It’s called the “Student-Athlete Bill of Rights,” and it connotes exactly what you might expect. Much like the document our Founding Fathers concocted amidst the fight against British tyranny – only slightly less primal, and not nearly as influential, of course – the bill secures fundamental freedoms for student athletes beginning in 2013.

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

There has been no shortage of discussion surrounding the impending basketball decline in the Big East. By now, you’ve surely heard that by 2015, the loaded league we all came to know and love will have lost a sizeable chunk of its upper-echelon talent. I’m talking about Pittsburgh, Syracuse, West Virginia and Notre Dame – four valuable hoops entities who, as is the case with most realignment movement, are chasing more lucrative football-fueled media rights packages (Notre Dame, whose TV contract with NBC is college sports’ most unbreakable bond of broadcast loyalty, is the lone exception). But the Big East itself, the league, the brand, the unit, isn’t going anywhere. Sure, it has settled on some bizarre geographic additions, but Temple and Memphis are valuable upgrades – elite programs that, from a purely basketball-centric perspective, pretty much any league would welcome with open arms. Combined with holdovers Georgetown, Villanova, Marquette, Cincinnati, Louisville and St. Johns, that’s a diverse but promising collection of strong programs. Conference realignment may have staggered the Big East, and it’s unlikely the league will ever regain its status as the nation’s best basketball conference, but the new-look membership is more than passable in the context of power conference hoops. I’d argue it’s still one of the top five leagues in the sport, particularly if SMU’s Larry Brown experiment generates the national attention and relevance that program sorely lacked, and if Central Florida can overcome its NCAA penalties.

With so much turnover in the next few years, Cronin believes the Bearcats are on the rise in the restructured Big East (Photo credit: AP Photo).

For the remaining members, those loyal bystanders who abstained from the massive conference realignment wave, the departures of three historic programs leaves a significant power void at the top of the league’s competitive totem pole. Syracuse, Georgetown, West Virginia and Pittsburgh didn’t just deplete the Big East in the obvious, quantifiable way (the league now has four fewer members). It fundamentally altered the conference’s identity. For decades the Big East served up a steady dose of riveting rivalries, legendary coaches and a unique brand of hard-nosed east coast hoops. The realignment reshuffling has skewed that image, but it also presents a silver lining for the programs who chose to stick around. Cincinnati coach Mick Cronin understands the negative perception hovering around the Big East’s realignment defections, but he sees a rather opportune moment for his program. Long overshadowed by the likes of Syracuse and Pittsburgh and West Virginia, along with a handful of other Big East heavyweights, Cronin sees an opportunity to remold the league’s power structure, with the Bearcats claiming a prime position in the conference hierarchy. SNY.TV, a broadcast affiliate of the storied league, spoke with Cronin over the weekend.

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

Over the past three years, conference realignment has precipitated a shift of thriving programs away from the Big East into the ACC. Syracuse, Pittsburgh and Notre Dame, three valuable pieces of the Big East’s hoops power hierarchy, saw weakness in the Big East’s deteriorating leadership and declining status in the BCS power structure. They sought greater stability and a more lucrative TV payout in their new conference. The Big East was fracturing, so it was not at all surprising that these programs wanted out. It is hard to fault their move. But like so many of the realignment-related movements of late, their league hop had detrimental consequences on the Big East’s basketball league. For years Syracuse and Pittsburgh have contended for conference titles, played fierce rivalry games and did their part to help make the Big East one of the nation’s most compelling hoops leagues. Notre Dame is, by all accounts, a football school, but had itself risen among the league’s hoops upper-tier under head coach Mike Brey. When these programs announced their departures, it wasn’t just a blow to the league’s membership, but to the Big East brand itself, the very essence of which rested upon such fierce hardwood drama. This was a familiar wave of movement; it wasn’t long ago that the ACC poached Virginia Tech, Boston College and Miami, another football-motivated move that impacted its basketball competition at the expense of the Big East. These six defections over the last decade (Boston College, Miami, Virginia Tech, Notre Dame, Syracuse, Pittsburgh), along with West Virginia’s jump to the Big 12, has conspired to reconstitute the Big East into an amorphous heap of disparate programs, a depleted league robbed of much of its hoops equity.

The Big East won’t serve up the same tantalizing display of hoops heavyweights in its conference tournament after the current contract with Madison Square Garden runs out in 2016 (Photo credit: Chris Chambers/Getty Images).

The realignment-powered decline of Big East basketball is nothing new. It is a topic I (along with many other college hoops scribes around the web) have visited before in this space. This latest bit of news counts as a rare positive step for the revamped league, and it was brought to light Tuesday by ESPN.com’s Brett McMurphy. The ACC may have stolen the Big East’s basketball talent, but it can’t take its legendary conference tournament venue! Take that, conference realignment! Madison Square Garden, according to McMurphy, did not submit a bid for hosting rights to the 2016-21 ACC Tournaments. The newly-unveiled Barclays Center, home of the re-branded Brooklyn Nets, also passed up the soon-to-be hoops super-conference’s league tourney. The Big East’s current deal with MSG runs out in 2016, but an extension is in the works to keep the league’s tournament at the historic New York City arena through 2026, according to the New York Post.

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