New All Sports League?

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Cincinnati, UConn talk of new all-sports league, could leverage ACC offer

Published 1 hour and 51 minutes ago Last updated 1 hour and 22 minutes ago

Mike DeCourcy Sporting News

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With the likelihood their athletic programs will be left without a conference as soon as next season, officials at longtime Big East members Connecticut and Cincinnati are exploring multiple options regarding their future.

The seven non-football Catholic universities in the Big East are expected to formally announce their withdrawal from the league soon, and the other members are operating under the assumption the Big East as they know it will not be in operation next year.

UConn and Cincinnati could lead the way for a new league that includes current Big East and Mountain West programs. Or it could all just be a leverage ploy against the ACC.

Sources close to the discussions told Sporting News on Friday that one possibility to give the Bearcats and Huskies a home, which is at the early stages of discussion, would be a cross-continent all-sports league involving disenfranchised members of the Big East as well as the most prominent members of the Mountain West.

The proposed entrants would be UConn, Cincinnati, South Florida, Memphis, Temple, Boise State, San Diego State, UNLV, New Mexico and possibly BYU or Central Florida. Such a league would include football programs that are comparable and competitive, as well as extraordinary basketball featuring eight teams that reached the NCAA Tournament last season. NBC Sports Network is likely to be approached to gauge its interest in such a property.

In order to form such a league, however, UConn and Cincinnati would have to make some sort of profound commitment -- perhaps even a “grant of rights†similar to the Big 12’s, meaning they’d lose their media revenue for the length of time if they leave -- to convince the Western schools involved that they would not exit immediately if invited to join the ACC.

That could become leverage to convince current members of the ACC -- especially some of its more vulnerable longtime schools, such as Duke and Wake Forest, to invite Cincinnati and UConn now and bring the current conference membership to 16.

Because at some point, perhaps soon, the Devils, Deacons and one or two others might be left behind as ACC core members with more football power (Florida State, Clemson, Virginia Tech), larger fan bases (North Carolina, NC State, Virginia) and bigger markets (Georgia Tech) are swept up by the far-richer Big Ten and SEC and the slightly richer Big 12.

There is no short of awareness inside the ACC that such possibilities exists.

They’ll have Syracuse, Pitt and Louisville to help keep them company if several members depart, but would that be enough?

If they can get UConn and Cincinnati at a discount, why not move now?

Should the “Transcontinental Conference†became a reality, it would include three former NCAA basketball champions (UConn, Cincinnati, UNLV) and two others with multiple Final Four appearances (Memphis, Temple). Plus, UConn, Cincinnati and Boise State have all made BCS bowl games in the past five seasons.

Travel would be an obvious hassle for all involved, particularly in regards to non-revenue sports, but options are not plentiful for those teams that either have been in the Big East for years or were planning to join in the near future.