BE Split/No Split: Great Article from GU

[TyBull]

Posted: 25 Oct 2006 02:53 pm    

Post subject: Big East Football Helps GU  

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Somewhere in Providence, R.I., Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese has a mile-wide smile plastered across his face. It has probably been there all week. Somewhere in Greensboro, N.C., you might find ACC Commissioner John Swofford, shaking his head and wondering just how his master plan went awry.

Tranghese has plenty to be happy about. Big East football is the strongest it has been in years. There are seven undefeated teams in Division I-A football right now, and the Big East is home to three of them. West Virginia is considered by many to be one of the favorites to win the BCS National Championship; Louisville has obtained a No. 6 ranking in the Associated Press poll despite a number of injuries, and Rutgers has run off six straight wins to start the season.

But what probably makes Big East football’s strong start even sweeter for Tranghese is the current state of ACC football. Traditional powers like Miami, Florida State and Virginia Tech have all fallen out of the AP Top 25. Akron, Southern Mississippi, Western Michigan and Richmond (a I-AA program) are just a few of the many teams that hold victories over ACC programs this season.

And while Swofford tries to restore the conference’s image after the now-infamous Miami-FIU brawl last Saturday, Tranghese can rest easily knowing that the thugs at “The U†(and their equally criminal counterparts in Blacksburg) are no longer his problem.

See, for anyone who may have forgotten (and Tranghese sure hasn’t), Swofford and the ACC made what many called a power play to try to kill the Big East as a conference in 2003 when they persuaded Miami and Virginia Tech (and later Boston College) to jump ship and join the ACC.

At that time, almost everyone had written off the Big East as being left for dead, and popular opinion was that the ACC would become both the best basketball and the best football conference in the country. Less than four years later, the ACC’s “raid†has all the makings of a complete debacle, while the “New Big East†is thriving.

A lot of Georgetown fans may be apathetic about Big East football, assuming that it has no bearing on them whatsoever. After all, the Hoyas play in the I-AA Patriot League, and the Big East football conference is composed of teams that we generally root against in basketball. Such an assumption, however, would be erroneous and would ignore the delicate interrelationship of football, basketball and non-revenue sports that currently characterizes the Big East.

When Virginia Tech, BC and Miami left the Big East and Louisville, Cincinnati, the University of South Florida, DePaul and Marquette were brought aboard, the New Big East was precariously split along football lines.

Eight of the Big East schools played Big East football, and eight did not. And since eight is a relatively small group for a major college football conference  the smallest of any BCS Conference, in fact  much speculation ensued that the Big East would split again as soon as the current contract expired, with the football schools forming their own conference apart from the Catholic schools.

Such a split could be disastrous for the Hoyas and the other Catholic schools that don’t play division I-A football. With an athletics budget that is already comparatively small, Georgetown would be in poor shape if during basketball season it was relying heavily on opponents like Providence, DePaul or Seton Hall to sell tickets at Verizon Center.

Even though it has regained some of the national prominence we once had, Georgetown still needs high profile programs and perennially strong teams like Connecticut, Pittsburgh and Syracuse to ensure ticket sales and television revenue.

A conference of all Catholic schools would represent a step down in quality of opponents and almost certainly would mean fewer proceeds. For a small budget team with poor facilities and no arena of its own, less revenue would make an already difficult situation exponentially worse for the Hoyas.

But then, suddenly, things started to turn around for the new Big East. West Virginia won the Sugar Bowl, proving to many that the Big East was a legitimate football conference (and the Mountaineers haven’t lost a game since).

The 16-team basketball conference, which many had doubted, put an unprecedented eight teams into the NCAA tournament, including two No. 1 seeds. And as mentioned above, this season has been a banner year thus far on the gridiron.

The attitude of most Big East football fans seems to have changed from, “We need to split from the Catholic schools and start our own conference if we want to compete with the ACC†to “We’re already superior to the ACC, in both football and basketball.â€Â

A successful conference is a stable conference, which is great for Georgetown. At a time when the Big East was supposed to be dying a slow death, the league is instead as healthy as it has ever been.

So this weekend when you’re watching one of the numerous important Big East football games on television (three out of the four Big East games will be on ESPN or ESPN2), remember that these squads represent not just themselves, but our conference, and their success is in the best interest of all conference members, including Georgetown.

Raymond Borgone is a junior in the McDonough School of Business. He can be reached at borgone@thehoya.com. BLEEDING BLUE appears in HOYA SPORTS every other Friday.

LINK

http://www.thehoya.com/sports/102006/sports6.cfm

[smazza]

be doesnt have to split

\but i would try to force ND to play more games against big east teams

[bulls96go]

we aare strong