Big East = Big Recruits
November 07, 2003 03:11 PM | General
November 7, 2003
Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese answers questions Tuesday afternoon in New York City (Steve Smith photo)
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Three days ago the Big East Conference went back to its basketball roots in hopes of rebuilding the damage caused to its football league by the ACC taking two of its most marketable grid programs in Miami and Virginia Tech.
Boston College, which has never finished higher than third in the Big East, was a throw-in to give the ACC 12 teams and a football championship game.
That caused the Big East to go hunting for three football programs to add to a menu that includes West Virginia, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Rutgers and Connecticut. What the Big East came up with were three up-and-coming football schools that also happened to play good basketball. In the case of Louisville and Cincinnati: two schools that play great basketball.
And while those three won’t necessarily help West Virginia, Pitt and Syracuse sell football season tickets in two years, Big East boss Mike Tranghese is banking on history as a guide in his quest to recreate his 25-year-old conference.
“When this conference was formed, when Dave Gavitt sat around a table with Jake Crouthamel, John Toner, Frank Rienzo and Jack Kaiser and they announced that they were going to create the Big East, people weren’t applauding us; they said, ‘Yeah, this is going to be a nice group,’ Tranghese said Tuesday. “Well … it became more than a nice group. It became a footprint of Eastern college basketball.
“Then, in 1990, Jake and I and – God rest his soul – Bill Flynn and Ed Bozick and Sam Jankovich sat around a table and we created the Big East football conference. There weren’t a lot of people saying a lot of positive things at the time, but we worked hard, and in both instances we proved to be very successful,” Tranghese added.
Now, Tranghese is proclaiming that the Big East is going through a “third phase in its history.”
That “third phase” starts once again with basketball. The future league has seven teams ranked in the Top 25 right now and the appeal of having Bobby Huggins (Cincinnati), Rick Pittino (Louisville) and Tom Crean (Marquette) bring their teams into Big East gymnasiums is alluring. DePaul is a traditional power and South Florida has been to postseason play in the past. Getting Big East basketball games on television won’t be a problem and the conference administration is coy enough to use their new-found basketball clout to land the best possible football deal.
The football conference is going to have to bide its time until South Florida, Louisville, Connecticut and Cincinnati can catch up and get its feet on the ground.
Louisville, South Florida and Connecticut appear to be the closest to making an impact – all three boast winning records this year and have shots at earning bowl bids.
More importantly, the Big East’s newest members have already begun to reap the benefits in recruiting.
South Florida, situated in Tampa, can draw a 25-mile circle around its campus to sign all of the football players its needs to become a national contender.
One of Florida’s top three quarterbacks recently added South Florida to the list of schools he’s considering. The Bulls have also gotten positive responses from local prospects that were once solely considering schools like Kansas State, Pitt and West Virginia.
Cincinnati coach Rick Minter has noticed a change in players’ attitudes, too.
“Perception is reality,” Minter said recently. “For so long around here, people have referred to other schools as big-time. What are we? We’re a Division I-A school, we play some of the best teams in the country; we’ve beaten some of the best. Our fans, students and players can begin to think this as good as it gets, that there’s no more saying someplace else is big-time.”
Minter says he now looks forward to some head-to-head recruiting battles with Ohio State for Buckeye-state prospects. Even if Cincinnati can’t land Ohio State-caliber players, Minter knows the second wave isn’t too bad either. Now that his program is going into the Big East, Minter believes that schools like Purdue, Pitt, Boston College and West Virginia will have a tougher time luring away local players. That remains to be seen.
The new football programs are also using Virginia Tech as a model to build from. The Hokies parlayed a membership in the Big East as a way to turn around a program that won just two games the year before it joined the league. Now Virginia Tech is an annual Top 25 contender.
Adding the three new football schools and the two new basketball schools may also help the existing Big East schools in recruiting.
West Virginia basketball coach John Beilein explains, “We were already there with the Big East but this doesn’t hurt, especially now if you’re recruiting a kid from Chicago, or from Kentucky or from Southern Ohio. Those areas don’t have a great deal of identification with the Big East. Now you have that Midwestern flavor and I think it will help geographically.”
According to information provided by the Big East, the league will now encompass 25 percent of the television households and 27 percent of America’s population. In exchange for Boston, the Big East is picking up the Chicago market. The Big East is also picking up Tampa in exchange for Miami. Louisville takes the place of Blacksburg, Va.
Making things even more interesting was a curious column in Thursday’s South Bend Tribune that at least broaches the subject of Notre Dame football entering into the fray.
While most Eastern onlookers believe it is a long shot at best trying to lure the Fighting Irish into the Big East, having a South Bend sportswriter analyze the possibility means that some in Irish Nation are beginning to whisper the topic. Whether or not they continue to discus it hinges on Tyrone Willingham’s ability to return Notre Dame football to national prominence and how successful Notre Dame is at negotiating a new television contract.
Notre Dame has received only one BCS invitation in the last six years despite meeting the criteria three times. Being aligned in the Big East gives Notre Dame a much easier path to a BCS bowl, and Notre Dame most certainly could name its own terms to get into the league. Also, don't discount what the Big East has done for Notre Dame's Olympic sports and the Irish are well aware of that, too.
Yet even a bad Notre Dame football team can exist quite comfortably without any help from others. That is at least for now.
That being said, Big East football has plenty of work to do on its own. Of the remaining schools only Pitt and West Virginia will finish the season with an average attendance of more than 50,000. The Panthers have rebuilt their fan base behind some creative promoting, a preseason national ranking and an attractive home venue in Heintz Field. Pitt is averaging 57,000 fans per game and that number will only increase after Saturday’s game against Virginia Tech.
West Virginia’s season attendance figures have annually ranked among the Big East’s best and will get a boost on Nov. 15 when a sell-out crowd watches WVU take on Pitt.
No other Big East program averages more than 40,000. The next best is Louisville at 39,000, followed by Syracuse (38,000), Connecticut (36,000) and South Florida (30,000).
Both Rutgers and Cincinnati average less than 30,000 and in the case of Cincinnati, the Bearcats have the smallest venue with Nippert Stadium capable of seating just 35,000.
The new schools will undoubtedly get a boost from having Syracuse, West Virginia and Pitt come to its facilities; the same, however, can’t be said for the West Virginias, Pitts and Syracuses. Those schools are going to have to schedule attractive non-conference opponents to keep fans interested.
More importantly, they are going to have to win their fair share of games to keep the Big East interesting.
