The Big East Football Conference is undergoing its biggest changes since its founding in 1991. Gone are perennial powerhouses Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College, as well as league doormat Temple. New to the conference are Louisville, Cincinnati and South Florida. Some call the changes crazy; while others believe that the conference will shake off its losses and move forward with more strength and wisdom.
Three cards have hurt the Big East Conference in recent years. They are: ACC. ACC, like the Atlantic Coast Conference, which attracted and then convinced three Big East schools to jump into the ACC. For the Big East, the three schools represented the top football powerhouses in the league, as well as two high-performance men’s basketball squads: Boston College and Miami. In this age of lucrative television contracts and superconferences, the three failing schools took the money and walked away.
Purists were left howling at the exits and ACC trolling of the Big East Conference. Some suggested lawsuits, while others claimed there was no legal obligation for the schools to stay.
Once the three departing schools were confirmed to be leaving, the Big East Conference was faced with a dilemma that could only undermine its ability to not only thrive, but to survive. It had previously been decided that Temple would be forced out as his program wasn’t up to Big East Conference standards, or so it’s been said. Still, Temple was not invited back, and the Big East began looking elsewhere for schools to fill its depleted ranks. So the Grand Orient turned to Conference USA.
Louisville, Cincinnati and South Florida, along with Marquette, who doesn’t play football, were persuaded to leave Conference USA for the Big East. For some, this is where the madness begins.
Are the three new schools keeping up with the programs they are replacing? Absolutely not. Louisville comes closest and is likely to be about equal to Boston College in strength, but its football program doesn’t compare to either Virginia Tech or Miami. Cincinnati compares much more favorably to the departed Temple team, while South Florida is a new Division 1-A program and only added to replace Miami as the league’s hot-weather school. Just kidding… I think.
The remaining conference schools are Connecticut, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, Syracuse, and West Virginia. West Virginia is the current conference leader, while Rutgers is taking advantage of a weakened conference and is also near the top. The remaining schools are being rebuilt, making the Big East Conference weaker this year.
Pundits and forecasters know that the Big East is reeling and understand that there is no guarantee that the league’s current setup will produce football programs at the level of defunct members. In my opinion, give the conference two or three years, and just a couple of years of great recruiting may well bring out new leaders. Perhaps now is the time for Rutgers, Louisville and South Florida to step up, thereby securing valuable television rights and lucrative conference bowl deals.