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Marquette Wire

The student news site of Marquette University

Marquette Wire

The student news site of Marquette University

Marquette Wire

GRESKA: MU’s Big East bubble burst

Andrei Greska

Welcome to Marquette Fr. Pilarz!

First you dealt with sexual assault claims against athletes all summer, which in some form or another led to the outing of Athletic Director Steve Cottingham.

Then you witnessed Milwaukee becoming Compton where armed robberies were as common as the sun rising in the morning.

And just as your inauguration ceremony is set to take place, fellow Big East schools Syracuse and Pittsburgh decide they no longer want to be a part of the current conference limbo, applying for membership in the ACC over the weekend and putting the Big East’s future in jeopardy.

Oh conference realignment, how we hate thee.

It’s no secret that Marquette hit the jackpot when it was called in to play with the big boys of the Big East in 2005.

Yet, the days of the Big East as we know it are dwindling with the announcement that Syracuse and Pittsburgh will depart for the ACC.

Football has assumed the throne, and it is a ruthless master that feeds on greenbacks. But billions of dollars in revenue aren’t enough. It wants every last penny.

Enough with the poetic prose though, let’s go through this one step at a time.

Football makes tons of money for universities and obtains billion dollar television contracts. While basketball is No. 2, it doesn’t even scratch the surface.

Herein lies the problem. Basketball was No. 1 in the Big East. So while it may have been stacked and produced national championships and whatnot, it paled in comparison to the other conferences when it comes to TV money.

Under current contract situations, the ACC gets $1.86 billion for 12 years, the Big Ten $3.8 billion from two sources through at least 2016, the Big 12 gets $1.5 billion for at least eight years, the SEC $3.1 billion for 15 years,  and the Pac-12 $3 billion for 12 years.

The Big East earned mere decimal points compared to the other leagues. The contract, set to run out in 2013, was only worth $200 million and had to be split 16 ways. The greatest basketball conference ever couldn’t lay a finger on anyone else.

This is where things get hazy and tempers start to flare. The Big East was in contract negotiations with ESPN this summer for a bigger, better contract, reportedly worth $1 billion over nine years. When it looked like a deal might be reached, conference leaders decided to halt negotiations and wait to see if they could get an even better deal.

Pittsburgh’s Chancellor Mark Nordenburg headed those negotiations. That’s right, the guy that just bolted for a different conference said no to a bigger contract for the league, making his path towards traitordom that much simpler.

“He was keeping everybody together and asking everybody to be unified,” Louisville’s Director/Vice President of Athletics Tom Jurich told newspapers on Saturday. “I think everybody trusted him.”

So what does this mean for Marquette?

Will our basketball team automatically suck? Will we be forced to join the Horizon League? Will we cease to exist? No, of course not.

Marquette has survived conference musical chairs before and it will again. The key is to maintain at least a core of the conference so as to keep the Big East brand. Ideally the Big East picks up Kansas, Kansas State and Missouri from the hard-struck Big 12, but even if the worst should happen and all the football schools desert us — which it appears may happen — the basketball-only schools must remain bonded.

If the football schools depart, then ideally Georgetown, Villanova, St. John’s, Providence and DePaul stick with us and some basketball schools like Xavier are added to the mix. Playing Xavier may not have the appeal of facing Connecticut or Syracuse, but it beats having to play Wisconsin-Green Bay and Valparaiso.

Recruiting will become more difficult, attendance will drop a bit and national television appearances aren’t guaranteed.

There is a simple solution: winning. The athletic department is committed to the program, pumping in more funds than any other school not named Duke, and it must reaffirm its commitment. Our Big East bubble has been burst, but basketball can still thrive.

On that note, if you had any doubts about buying tickets this year, this should have put those to rest.

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  • B

    BoyeeOct 10, 2011 at 9:41 am

    If the football schools get poached by other conferences and they are down to the 8 Catholic basketball schools, they can add Xavier, Dayton, St. Joseph’s, Saint Louis, La Salle, Duquesne, St. Bonaventure and Niagara (to have all 3 American Vincentian universities (DePaul, St. John’s and Niagara). This will give them 16 teams again you could possibly also sub Creighton for St. Bonaventure.

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  • B

    BoyeeOct 10, 2011 at 9:35 am

    While it won’t necessarily make Big East football a super power, adding Temple and UMass for all sports and Army, Navy, Air Force and ECU for football-only is the best way the Big East can keep basketball at 16, have 12 teams so they can have a championship in football while adding 2 quality basketball schools in Temple and UMass (giving the Big East a Boston area team again since they lost BC). This plan limits Conference USA team expansion to 1 football-only.

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  • B

    BoyeeSep 20, 2011 at 3:34 pm

    The newly formed Catholic basketball conference could also add Seattle and Gonzaga to have a NW zone in the conference and become a 16 team powerhouse conference.

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  • B

    BoyeeSep 20, 2011 at 3:13 pm

    The remaining Big East basketball schools will not suck, but they will be reeling from the loss of the 2 (and possible 3 or 4) of the most successful basketball members.

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  • B

    BoyeeSep 20, 2011 at 3:09 pm

    If Connecticut goes to the ACC, it is pretty much assured that the remaining football members will flee to other conferences where they feel they have a better opportunity.

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  • B

    BoyeeSep 20, 2011 at 3:07 pm

    If the Big East falls apart including the basketball schools, there is always the Missouri Valley Conference for Marquette and DePaul.

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  • B

    BoyeeSep 20, 2011 at 3:04 pm

    If all the FBS (I-A) Big East teams leave, the Big East would still have DePaul, Georgetown, Marquette, Notre Dame, Providence, St. John’s, Seton Hall and Villanova. If they add Dayton, Saint Louis, Xavier and St. Joseph’s, they would have a strong 12 team Catholic basketball conference, which is what the Big East was originally meant to be all along. This could be a very strong conference. They could also add St. Bonaventure and Duquesne to go to 14 teams if they choose. They would keep the Big East name because it would be the football members that left.

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  • T

    Tim SeemanSep 20, 2011 at 2:00 pm

    A core of GU, VU, SJU, MU, ND (the Irish still want their football independence, which keeps their Olympic sports up for grabs), XU, Butler and DPU would still be a better basketball conference than the SEC. A couple more high mid-majors that don’t play big-time football (think Richmond, ODU, George Mason, Dayton, Temple, etc., who would all field better teams than what TCU was going to put on Big East courts) would make for a very attractive basketball league to put on TV.

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