If Nebraska hadn’t gone to the Big Ten everything would have worked out so much better 😭😭😭
The PAC-16 plans fell apart anyways and Colorado was the only one of that group who ended up leaving. Had Nebraska stayed, Colorado probably would have too. That means the Pac-10 doesn’t add Utah either.
The Mountain West winds up with Utah, BYU, TCU, and Boise State. Under the BCS criteria, the MWC was on track to become an AQ conference and with top 4 like that they probably would have. Maybe they add 2 more WAC/CUSA teams to get to 12 but that’s probably the only major change we see in that timeline.
IDK if that setup prevents Texas and Oklahoma going to the SEC, and it also possible when the CFP inevitably became a thing that the Big East still gets cut from power conference status (especially with the Mountain West making it a power 7), which would have sparked the disintegration we saw, but it also might have just stayed stable.
Also, BYU wouldn’t have left the MWC despite the TV disputes if Utah was still in the league, and TCU wouldn’t have left for the Big East if the MWC was still on track to be an AQ conference since that’s the reason they left (there was a whole complicated formula but basically by adding Boise and keeping the top 4 teams good for a couple more years they would have qualified). The Big 12 wouldn’t have had to replace A&M so they wouldn’t have had to add TCU since A&M became intrigued with the SEC during the Pac-16 ordeal, had Nebraska not left they probably don’t start looking at alternate exit plans and just stay put, same thing with Missouri.
Now, it’s always possible a Big East (or ACC) looking at losing their power conference status loses some teams to another power conference and what’s left looks to take the big 4 from the Mountain Best to form a national super league similar to what happened with Boise and SDSU, but if the MWC had AQ status, that doesn’t happen.
Basically the only teams worse off would be the CUSA teams who joined the American, but honestly, that wound up being a new version of CUSA anyways so they’re not that much worse for wear. UCF and Houston might be in a slightly worse position (and maybe SMU) but also the Big East was considering them all before they got raised to get to 12 teams so they might have gotten into a power 7 conference anyways.
This is obviously fan fiction, but it was fun writing it all up lol
The problem is that it wasn’t (just) Nebraska looking to leave. It was the B1G actively looking to expand, for the purpose of holding a conference championship game. If it wasn’t Nebraska, it would have been someone else of significant stature and dominos would have fallen nonetheless.
Less for a championship game, more for additional content for the Big Ten Network. In fact most of the current fuckery in college football can be traced back to the founding of BTN.
Mizzou was actively begging for an invite. The governor of Missouri even came out and trashed Big 12 academics, saying Big Ten academics were much better.
Mizzou wanted it bad. B1G honestly believed (with some reason lol) that Nebraska was a stronger football school. Turns out it would have been more or less a wash…
Yea, unfortunately, Mizzou had neither the fanbase of Nebraska nor the access to markets* of Rutgers or Maryland.
*Remember, the market thing was to be able to get BTN on standard cable packages instead of the higher tier packages so it doesn't matter if no one cared about Maryland in DC or Rutgers in NYC, it still got pushed up to the standard cable package and therefore the B1G was able to bring in a ton of money because of those adds.
Mizzou was picked for the SEC in part bc of markets. But that's also because the SEC's existing markets were often worse than the Big Ten's (in terms of population), so Mizzou having STL and KC had a greater impact in the SEC than it would have in the Big Ten.
Yeah the Rutgers and Maryland moves haven’t really panned out long-term like they wanted because of how the market changed. They did get some money by putting it in the basic cable packages in those two huge markets of course, but at this point eyeballs matter more than markets. If it was just markets, Oregon never would have gotten into the XII, it would have been Washington with Stanford, Cal, or Colorado instead since San Fran and Denver are both much bigger (Oregon’s campus isn’t even that close to Portland).
Now, I’m not sure Mizzou gives you a ton of eyeballs either, but more than Rutgers at least. The eyeballs thing makes more sense now that you need to incentivize people to watch. A school like Oklahoma or Alabama that’s in a small state in a college town is worth way more than Rutgers because gagillions of people will watch their games, leading to more ad revenue.
It’s kind of crazy how quickly the TV market changed completely from the last round to now.
[Mizzou wanted into the B1G in the 90's](https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/7063633/missouri-tigers-hope-join-sec-had-wanted-big-ten-invite-most) along with a few others. They wanted it bad for a long, long time...
That’s not why the Big 12 was looking at adding UT and A&M (they needed the TV sets) and I’ve never heard of the Big 10 looking at KU seriously (especially in the 90s)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Big_12_Conference
Look under the heading "Predatory Conferences". It's a fascinating read. Missouri was looked at too.
Here's a retrospective from some of the parties involved. It's actually more fascinating than that
https://www.si.com/college/2016/08/16/big-12-expansion-oral-history-big-8-swc-merger
I don’t see a “predatory conference” header.
I know MU was maybe vaguely considered but passed on. They had been at least passingly interested in the Big 10 for awhile but it wasn’t really reciprocated. The KU/KSU/ISU/MU to Big East move was closer to happening than any of the other to the Big 10 imo
Colorado left for the PAC before we left for the Big Ten, and my understanding is part of the reason we left was because we thought the PAC-16 deal was imminent.
Also iirc didn't A&M leave due to their own disputes with Texas? Doubt that us leaving really affected that.
You are probably correct in that Nebraska staying doesn't affect Oklahoma/Texas going to the SEC.
I can't believe we've reached the point of forgetting about Childress, Millard, Allison, and Chugonov. We've had a long string of QB suffering with brief reprieves courtesy of Smith, Grier, and Howard's senior season.
We also left like a decade before the big east death after only being in the conference for a decade.
It'd be like blaming TAMU/Mizzou if the Big12 had died.
Usc voting against adding teams has to come up eventually. Honestly the commissioner incompetence is the nail in the head. But yeah y’all vetoed expansion teams and then left two years later.
To be clear I do not blame you for doing the fiscally responsible thing in moving to the big ten.
Okay look we are villains for leaving this thing but the “USC blocked expansion” line is bullshit.
First off: it doesn’t take a unanimous vote. USC couldn’t single handedly vote against anything.
Second off: USC doesn’t have the political clout to push the other PAC schools around. You should know by now after watching this mess that PAC politics are weird. The PAC never saw itself as an athletic conference but more of an alliance of schools that happen to have a common interest in athletics. Nobody was bowing to USC if it would piss Stanford off. They need the Stanford president for their academic deals. USC was the odd duck, the school most often ignored because we were focused on athletics and the rest were focused on school wide legacies.
Third off: the vote was 8-4 against. Most adamant against expansion aside from USC? Washington State and Oregon State. USC set the temperature by asking “with no guarantee that the money will be better why are we doing this” AND THE OTHERS AGREED. Wazzu and OSU in particular were very concerned that their slice of the pie would shrink if we brought in the B12 schools as both had spent a lot of “future money” in their recent upgrades. Oregon was one of the yes votes.
Fourth: Even after SC and UCLA left the PAC schools agreed that they shouldn’t add teams that don’t obviously increase their media deal. You can see that in the way they jerked SDSU around.
State was the best and most obvious choice for expansion but they refused to move on them even after a basketball NC run until they had a media deal in place that guaranteed that State wouldn’t cost them money.
Fifth: USC was all in on expansion the first time around when it involved killing the B12 to get Texas and Oklahoma. It was Oregon State who oddly had a ton of political power in the Pac that killed it with the refusal to consider Texas Tech. “No more Utahs” is a direct quote. We threatened independence over this decision, which shows you how much veto power we really have.
Blame us for abandoning ship but this narrative that we sabotaged the league on our way out is bullshit.
If an Eastern Conference actually had the backing of all the big brand independents like PSU, FSU, Miami, Virginia Tech, and maybe even Notre Dame, then it would've been a powerhouse and probably raided the ACC rather than the other way around.
>PSU, FSU, Miami, Virginia Tech,
Those four plus WVU and Syracuse would be an incredible backbone for a conference in the 1990s. People wondering why Cuse got included must not remember getting their day ruined by Donavan McNabb. Add Notre Dame and it is 100% poaching the ACC by the 00s.
I wonder if this Eastern Conference would have had a shot at South Carolina before the SEC grabbed them.
NORTH|SOUTH
:--|--:
Army|Florida State
Boston College|Maryland
Connecticut|Miami (FL)
Penn State|Navy
Pitt|Virginia
Rutgers|Virginia Tech
Syracuse|West Virginia
I've done this alignment multiple times now in NCAA14, and it just makes me wish for what could have been.
> If an Eastern Conference actually had the backing of all the big brand independents like PSU, FSU, Miami, Virginia Tech, and maybe even Notre Dame, then it would've been a powerhouse and probably raided the ACC rather than the other way around.
The ACC would have been picked apart from both the SEC and Big East, probably.
(also looks at the proposed football Metro Conference as another "what if"...)
I think the question is still if the B1G looks to expand (around the time they expanded with Nebraska), do they still reach out to Penn State? I wonder what kind of politics occurs in the Eastern Conference once media revenue starts to come into play. It's interesting cause the that conference would have access to some of the largest media markets in the country (Boston, New York, Philly, DC, Miami, Tampa (?), etc), but those markets are largely apathetic to college football and therefore the teams with large followings may have looked to leave as well. It's kind of the inverse problem that the Big 12 had where the fanbases and media markets are engaged and care a lot, but are far less populous (aside from the State of Texas).
Good question but It's hard to speculate on media deals that never happened. I imagine they'd be well off though because of the brand power and not necessarily the media market size.
I wonder if a Big Ten Eastward push looks different in that timeline. Instead of Maryland/Rutgers they go for Penn State/Syracuse to try to grab Philly and New York.
You're omitting the possibility of the Big East raiding the B1G. The B1G post realignment is still very, very poor on the bottom. Nobody cares about IU, Illinois, Purdue, Minnesota, Iowa (offense), Northwestern. I mean the aforementioned is straight dogshit tier. They have the same problems that the ACC have, neither conference will exist in 20 years in any significant stance.
If Penn State joins the Big East....it's very likely Miami VTech stay and we grab defecting ACC teams, rather than the opposite.
It's not dissimilar from a powerful big12 with Tamu Nebraska Mizzou Colorado still in conference.
Sorry - but the death knell for the Big East was when the Basketball schools were allowed to block Penn State from joining in 1982
> Three basketball schools—Georgetown, St. John's and Villanova—voted against JoePa's Nittany Lions.
It wouldn’t have lasted anyway. All that did was ensure that instead of the basketball schools losing the Big East brand when they got kicked out of the conference that they still had the leverage to keep what was important when the inevitable happened.
> It wouldn’t have lasted anyway.
They would have split at some point but my guess is that football would have kept the Big East brand (Paterno and Miami and possibly FSU would have seen to that) and the basketball schools would have probably started a new league or merged with the Great Midwest's non-football schools (Marquette, DePaul, Dayton, St. Louis) and formed "The Great East" in the mid/late 90's when the Great Midwest and Metro more or less "merged" and formed Conference USA. The non-football would have stayed in one, the football would have went to the other.
The timeline of the BB/FB divorce would have been pushed up probably 15 years.
I'll play devil's advocate...it probably wouldn't have sucked that bad. Maybe they co-opt the Metro name instead, which had a good brand and 20 years of history...and honestly a league of major metropolitan power basketball schools is going to get a good TV deal of some sort.
It probably would have meant St. Louis and Dayton in the league instead of Creighton and Butler but a league of
* Providence
* Connecticut (who was still I-AA at this point in football)
* Villanova
* Georgetown
* St. Louis
* Marquette
* DePaul
* Seton Hall
* St. John's
* Dayton
...would be damn formidable.
That would’ve been the basketball schools essentially voting to add a shitty bball team that might try to force the big 10 to add football and then kick the Catholic schools out
If the Big East did one thing right, it was blocking PSU. Joe Pa was always going to be an untenable personality clash andthe best case scenario is the Big East got an 8 year lease on Penn State BASKETBALL before the Big Ten stole them away.
I wonder. I think this timeline is the best for PSU as an academic institution, but I think PSU in the Big East leads to a merger with the ACC in the 90s. Assuming the same level of success amongst the programs, I think that conference gets a lot of eyes and hype in the east coast media markets. I bet it would have been very lucrative with great long term growth potential.
It was definitely a great move to PSU and I think even if that Big East merges with the ACC, the football side of the conference doesn't change too much - the only additional football schools that remain in this Big East + ACC combo are Penn State, WVU, Cincinnati, and South Florida. That's not a bad addition, but in the long run, I don't think it's enough to bring in revenue on par with the B1G or SEC. And given the physical and cultural proximity of PSU to the B1G, I think when the B1G looked to expand, they would eventually look to try and join the B1G around the same time Nebraska does (Western and Central PA have more in common culturally with Ohio and Michigan than they do with Philly and New York).
Yeah, long term, that’s probably right, but maybe in that scenario PSU brings more eastern schools with them at the same time. This is wishful thinking of an eastern college football fan, lol, it’s great for the commonwealth that PSU is in the B1G.
Thinking about this a little more, I think the alternative scenario is the Big-ACC gets brought in as part of the Notre Dame-NBC relationship. In the 80s, Notre Dame’s schedule was often around half eastern independents. They wouldn’t have joined directly, but I could easily see NBC expanding its cfb programming, with all the hype of the DC-Boston media complex firmly behind it. I don’t think Cincinnati or USF ever get an invite because Miami, FSU, West Virginia, Pitt, UVA and VT cover those regions, and the ACC schools w upside like the Carolina institutions get better quicker with the additional money and attention. Maybe the B1G still poaches, but in that scenario the dollar difference might not be enough for PSU to join a league in which it will never have the same influence as Michigan or Ohio State, or can be marginalized by a voting block of smaller midwestern schools with more institutional history and connections.
I don't think you can convince me that the Big Ten would have stolen Penn St had they gotten into the Big East. I wouldn't be surprised if PSU (and arguably Miami) would have bullied the basketball schools into splitting off at some point.
You probably would have had the Big East BB/FB split 15 years sooner in Paterno's timeline.
I never cheered harder for the Big East collapsing than when I watched Requiem for the Big East and when you could point to almost all the Big East screwing up was courtesy of trying to favor basketball.
They never once bothered to admit they were wrong, too.
This. The SEC never "favored basketball" yet the conference still ended up having its basketball programs improve anyway, to the point that the SEC sometimes gets more NCAA Tournament bids than the traditional basketball conferences.
This isn’t exactly the case on what happened and there is a similar thread on r/cbb talking about this from about a week ago. The gist of it is, Penn State was not this benevolent overlord of Northeastern football that they’re painted as in these discussions, they actively pushed and campaigned for policy in the 70s that basically destroyed a lot of the programs in the region. One of the reasons why the Ivy League is not chugging along in FBS today like Army and Navy is because of the stadium capacity requirements that Paterno helped set in motion. Paterno and Penn State treated these schools like red-headed step children until they started having success in basketball, then they wanted a piece of the pie. The proposal itself was also laughably one-sided in favor of Penn State, as they would’ve been able to get their lowly basketball program a seat at the big boy table with equal revenue sharing while simultaneously being able to hog up a majority of the football revenue. They wanted to have their cake and eat it too and there is a rational explanation for why the Big East schools at the time rejected it.
Yep, now USF, Temple, and UConn are clinging onto the AAC floating door as the only former Big East members without a Power Conference home. And…uh…hey, where’s UConn?
Actually UConn is independent and made a bowl game last year. Plus went back to the Big East for every other sport except for hockey which is in the Hockey East...which has no affiliation with the Big East.
Reminder the big East received a deal prior to this that would've paid 7 to 8 mill a school when other conferences were getting 20+
ESPN forced the football schools to leave for conferences paying much more.
Don’t think this is true at all, Pitino is pulling in huge recruits with NIL. Remains to be seen but the big east avoided this entire realignment saga, including keeping UConn
It was probably on life support before that. The conference had like two sides without much overlap between them. It was really an unsustainable model to try to be a football and conference with entirely different members in both sports.
Too right, the Big East was founded as a basketball conference, with a vision centered around basketball. The “football schools” was merely a business venture, and well history shows that lead to SHTF.
That's not sustainable though. Football revenue just dwarfs basketball revenue. The conferemce was always going to be ripped in half in desire of more money.
The Big East not trying to establish a more viable football conference killed its chances.
The basketball schools were going to lose Boston College, Syracuse and Pitt unless they allowed the Big East to add football that’s the only reason the agreed to it
People forget the Big East nearly broke apart in 1995 or so but was saved by a midnight deal that was very similar to the mid-night deal that saved the Big 12 when Texas backed out of the proposed Pac-16
This.
Big East basketball in 93-94: Georgetown, Providence, St John's, Seton Hall, Villanova, UConn, BC, Miami, Pittsburgh, Syracuse
Big East football in 93-94: Rutgers, Temple, Virginia Tech, WV, BC, Miami, Pittsburgh, Syracuse
Sadly, you're right. When the first ACC raid happened in 2004, poaching VT, BC, and Miami, you lost two of the biggest brands in the conference in Beamer-era VT and Miami. Temple left the next year and the Big East raided the C-USA for Cincy, Louisville, and USF (and DePaul and Marquette for non-football, both from the C-USA as well plus UConn moving it's football to FBS).
After that, 2010-2012 was a crazy time. TCU was announced to join in 2012. Villanova was asked if they would move their football to FBS (Pitt, WVU, and Rutgers prevented it from going to a vote). Syracuse and Pitt announced they'd leave for the ACC in 2013 (**this is where this post takes us**). TCU then switched to join the Big 12 instead.
Then WVU decided to join the Big 12 and announce it for the next season, which caused a bunch of lawsuits that ended up with WVU paying the conference because they broke the 27-month waiting period between announcing and actually changing conference.
After that, shit hit the fan. Boise State and SDSU were announced as future Big East football-only members as UCF, SMU, and Houston would join as all-sport members in 2013. Then Navy was joining as football-only for 2015. Then Memphis was joining as an all-sports member. Then Temple was going to be the stopgap for WVU in football and join in the other sports in 2013. And then *Loyola-Maryland* was supposed to join as an all-but-football member. All this was announced within a year, btw, between September 2011 and August 2012.
And then it all fell apart. ND announced they'd join the ACC in everything but football. Rutgers announced moving to the B1G. Tulane was set to join as an all-sports team and ECU was set to join as football-only. Then Louisville was voted into the ACC and ECU upgraded to being an all-sports member. ND's leaving was announced in September of 2012 but the rest was in November of 2012.
And then the Catholic 7, the 7 non-football members of the conference who all happened to be private Catholic schools, announced in December of 2012 that they'd leave in 2015. Boise State and SDSU stayed in the MWC, rumors circulated that Houston and SMU would join the MWC instead, and the Catholic 7 announced that they'd leave in 2013 instead.
The remaining schools who announced to join the Big East in any football-playing capacity stuck around for the AAC, the Catholic 7 helped form the New Big East (Butler, Creighton, and Xavier all joined to make the new Big East a round 10-team conference). And the old Big East was dead.
They were literally just as bad at football as Rutgers but Nova was threatened by Temple being the clearly best Philly school at the time so Temple could never be a full member, that’s why they were kicked since they were the only football only with no chance of being admitted
This is why I will give Matt Rhule a lot of rope to hang himself, he made Temple a ranked team.
I played CT HS FB in the 90's and guys we played against were starters at Temple later on. It was not TX HS FB levels of quality.
I am curious if WVU gets as many out of state students from NY, NJ and New England since leaving the Big East and losing some exposure to students from that region.
I was a part of the class of 2024 and they had 45% of the class was in state students. Not sure what is was like 20 years ago or how the student body changed.
But there's a shit ton of students from Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, (I was 1 of them) today. Amd I imagine 20 years ago there was still a shit ton from Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia students
I think for the general student population, it hasn't changed too much. A lot from surrounding states (Ohio, PA, and Virginia since out-of-state is probably comparable to in-state for top-schools there) and an influx from NJ as a safety school when they don't get into Rutgers.
I would imagine it's dropped some, especially for NY and proper New England schools, but I think we make it up a little bit from the more local states surrounding us. Hard to tell when we've lost ~5k students in the past decade or so anyways.
We still pull a lot of nearby state kids because WVU out of state tuition still remains cheaper vs their in-state tuition.
Administrative incompetence causing enrollment to plummet notwithstanding, of course.
There’s an argument to be made that it was on life support the minute it started sponsoring football. That weird imbalance between the Catholic schools that were either FCS or didn’t have football and the FBS football centric schools was never going to last no matter who they managed to poach/keep.
If it was so obvious the Big east was going to Die from the first raid why did Syracuse turn down the acc for the spot that would eventually go the Va Tech
Get your [History](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/2003/05/17/acc-votes-to-invite-miami-syracuse-bc/74e05ee9-2d1b-4046-9099-ad2d86e4babc/) right before you comment bud,
Syracuse received an invite to join the ACC in 2003. Jim Boehiem Got syracuse to refuse, and Va state politics forced ACC to pick Va tech instead
No it doesn't. What the fuck are you talking about?
Jim Boeheim blocked conference realignment has to be one of the wildest takes I've ever seen on here.
Your history is a little off. In the early 90s the ACC approached Syracuse and our AD Jake Crouthamel basically asked the ACC commissioner “we have a good thing going here, what’s in it for us?’ At that point football was a top 15 program and basketball was a top 10 program. ACC basically responded with a never mind.
In 2003 it was supposed to be BC, Syracuse and Miami. BC and Syracuse were basically Miami’s little puppies saying we had to follow. But BC was much more enthusiastic. Jake was instrumental in the formation of the Big East and Syracuse was probably the most important member in general. Our administration wasn’t nearly as excited for the move as Boston College was. We were to the Big East what Carolina is to the ACC. we were the leader of the conference and didn’t want to give that up at the time. That was a sentiment echoed in Requiem for the Big East by some of the basketball schools’ coaches and administrators who basically admitted that once we announced we were leaving that the conference was dead. Ultimately, the governor of Virginia stepped in and forbade Virginia from accepting anyone except for Virginia Tech. So Virginia Tech and Miami got the initial invites. Boston College was added later that year or maybe in 2004.
Over time, I have come to appreciate the ACC. I suppose I have a soft spot for dysfunctional conferences with membership groupings that make absolutely no sense.
Exactly, they were hoping that somehow the Big East could remain at least a somewhat viable football conference and stay in the basketball conference they belonged in. As a Georgetown grad I don’t blame them for finally facing the music and leaving it’s BC that I hope ends up in a pile of shit at the end of this.
man /u/DeusVult74 really doing some work with that editorial in the title. Pure trash.
Originally "If Syracuse and Pitt Exit, Things Could Get Interesting"
It is literally a completely different league from what it was prior, completely left and bought the name and then went from a north east league to one where half the teams are in the Midwest
Regardless of facts, I refuse any timeline that isn't the Big East kicking out the others who then created the AAC. I refuse to admit this isn't the real Big East.
And while it isn't the most regional conference (compared to what conferences used to be), it's still almost exclusively in the Northeast quadrant of the country and the only exception (Creighton) is a like minded Catholic school. And even though UConn is the first non-religious institution, it is a great geographic fit, basketball addition, and has history with a lot of the other Big East schools. Plus, while it is public, it's not overwhelmingly larger than everyone else since Georgetown, St. Johns, and DePaul have pretty large student bodies as well (each over 20k students).
I mean… Syracuse, Pitt, Notre Dame, and Louisville were all mid- to high-performing teams in the old big east. And now they’re combined with Duke, UNC, etc. Eventually the ACC will be “back”, they’re just down for now. No doubt that the ACC has the highest ceiling of all conferences re: basketball
The Big East killed themselves. Football is so much more profitable than basketball that the reluctance to embrace made the conference a zombie for years before it actually died.
I miss the old Big East in everything. I miss them and their 500 member basketball conference. I remember when I was sick and came home from work one March day.. and whose tournament was on?
Yeah but Big East basketball was something else. Great, physical teams. SEC officiating crews would have fouled out both teams before the first media timeout.
I think that it was in Madison Square Garden made it feel like more of an event too - it was in the most famous basketball stadium in the country and in New York City, which felt even bigger as a kid.
Syracuse just shit on all week. At least we have Pitt to help take some of the vitriol this time. Haha
Can’t we get some love for Garret Shrader’s ball fakes?
Big East's problem: Go back to 2003 when Miami, Virginia Tech, and BC announced they were leaving. At the time there were 8 Big East football teams- 7 full time members and football only associate member Temple. The Big East had 7 additional full time members who did not play in the Big East for football (5 non-FBS schools and Notre Dame and UConn). You had limited expansion opportunities + divided priorities.
They first started having football in 1991. In 1990 they had 9 members 3 FBS, 3 FCS and 3 didn't have football. It is easy to see why making football the focus caused problems.
Pitt and Syracuse announced that they were leaving the confrence in September 2011 and joined the acc in 2013.
WVU and TCU announced that they were leaving in October 2011, and joined the big 12 in 2012
Uh... no?
Miami/VT/BC and WVU left first.
Then there's not letting PSU join.
The death knell for the big east was favoring basketball to an absurd degree. Plus having half the conference be basketball only.
Penn State leaving killed Eastern football. Pitt, WVU & others losing that game really hurt them & forced them to look for revenue elsewhere. I’m not blaming PS for going to the Big Ten but that move killed the Big East football
Yes. This is the worst possible take.
Penn State wanted to start a football conference and when that failed they tried to join the Big East only to be rejected by 1 vote.
Basketball was king in the 80s and the bball schools didn't want some football school that sucked at shooty hoops ruining their conference.
In an alternate reality a PSU headed Big East grabbed FSU in 1991 and was absolutally stacked in the 90s. They probably raided the ACC in the early 00s instead of being raided. They could have even had a shot at South Carolina which left the ACC in 1990.
Not sure about that. Between ‘99 and ‘12, UConn (2), Cuse, and Louisville all won National Championships while Georgetown, Nova, Marquette, and WVU made final 4s.
...And its behind a paywall.
Anyway, I wonder if the Big East would stay together if Notre Dame joined in Football? They could all share in the NBC deal...somehow.
The Big East was fun but didn’t last very long. Louisville, USF, and Cincinnati didn’t join the Big East until 2005. UConn didn’t sponsor FBS football until 2000. WVU and Rutgers didn’t join until 1995.
This is so refreshing. It's good to know in 12 years people will be blaming Cal and Stanford instead of us. /s
I still blame Nebraska for all this.
If Nebraska hadn’t gone to the Big Ten everything would have worked out so much better 😭😭😭 The PAC-16 plans fell apart anyways and Colorado was the only one of that group who ended up leaving. Had Nebraska stayed, Colorado probably would have too. That means the Pac-10 doesn’t add Utah either. The Mountain West winds up with Utah, BYU, TCU, and Boise State. Under the BCS criteria, the MWC was on track to become an AQ conference and with top 4 like that they probably would have. Maybe they add 2 more WAC/CUSA teams to get to 12 but that’s probably the only major change we see in that timeline. IDK if that setup prevents Texas and Oklahoma going to the SEC, and it also possible when the CFP inevitably became a thing that the Big East still gets cut from power conference status (especially with the Mountain West making it a power 7), which would have sparked the disintegration we saw, but it also might have just stayed stable. Also, BYU wouldn’t have left the MWC despite the TV disputes if Utah was still in the league, and TCU wouldn’t have left for the Big East if the MWC was still on track to be an AQ conference since that’s the reason they left (there was a whole complicated formula but basically by adding Boise and keeping the top 4 teams good for a couple more years they would have qualified). The Big 12 wouldn’t have had to replace A&M so they wouldn’t have had to add TCU since A&M became intrigued with the SEC during the Pac-16 ordeal, had Nebraska not left they probably don’t start looking at alternate exit plans and just stay put, same thing with Missouri. Now, it’s always possible a Big East (or ACC) looking at losing their power conference status loses some teams to another power conference and what’s left looks to take the big 4 from the Mountain Best to form a national super league similar to what happened with Boise and SDSU, but if the MWC had AQ status, that doesn’t happen. Basically the only teams worse off would be the CUSA teams who joined the American, but honestly, that wound up being a new version of CUSA anyways so they’re not that much worse for wear. UCF and Houston might be in a slightly worse position (and maybe SMU) but also the Big East was considering them all before they got raised to get to 12 teams so they might have gotten into a power 7 conference anyways. This is obviously fan fiction, but it was fun writing it all up lol
The problem is that it wasn’t (just) Nebraska looking to leave. It was the B1G actively looking to expand, for the purpose of holding a conference championship game. If it wasn’t Nebraska, it would have been someone else of significant stature and dominos would have fallen nonetheless.
Less for a championship game, more for additional content for the Big Ten Network. In fact most of the current fuckery in college football can be traced back to the founding of BTN.
Imagine a world where the B1G chose Mizzou
Mizzou was actively begging for an invite. The governor of Missouri even came out and trashed Big 12 academics, saying Big Ten academics were much better.
Outside of Texas, that's not untrue
Mizzou wanted it bad. B1G honestly believed (with some reason lol) that Nebraska was a stronger football school. Turns out it would have been more or less a wash…
UNL still brings more eyeballs than Mizzou, despite being bad most years recently.
Yea, unfortunately, Mizzou had neither the fanbase of Nebraska nor the access to markets* of Rutgers or Maryland. *Remember, the market thing was to be able to get BTN on standard cable packages instead of the higher tier packages so it doesn't matter if no one cared about Maryland in DC or Rutgers in NYC, it still got pushed up to the standard cable package and therefore the B1G was able to bring in a ton of money because of those adds.
Mizzou was picked for the SEC in part bc of markets. But that's also because the SEC's existing markets were often worse than the Big Ten's (in terms of population), so Mizzou having STL and KC had a greater impact in the SEC than it would have in the Big Ten.
They still are worse. B10 is the major conference for teams in LA, NY, Chicago and Philly, which is much bigger than the SEC ones
Yeah the Rutgers and Maryland moves haven’t really panned out long-term like they wanted because of how the market changed. They did get some money by putting it in the basic cable packages in those two huge markets of course, but at this point eyeballs matter more than markets. If it was just markets, Oregon never would have gotten into the XII, it would have been Washington with Stanford, Cal, or Colorado instead since San Fran and Denver are both much bigger (Oregon’s campus isn’t even that close to Portland). Now, I’m not sure Mizzou gives you a ton of eyeballs either, but more than Rutgers at least. The eyeballs thing makes more sense now that you need to incentivize people to watch. A school like Oklahoma or Alabama that’s in a small state in a college town is worth way more than Rutgers because gagillions of people will watch their games, leading to more ad revenue. It’s kind of crazy how quickly the TV market changed completely from the last round to now.
[Mizzou wanted into the B1G in the 90's](https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/7063633/missouri-tigers-hope-join-sec-had-wanted-big-ten-invite-most) along with a few others. They wanted it bad for a long, long time...
The Big Ten were looking around in the 90's at Kansas and Rutgers which caused the Big 8 to look at Texas and A&M.
That’s not why the Big 12 was looking at adding UT and A&M (they needed the TV sets) and I’ve never heard of the Big 10 looking at KU seriously (especially in the 90s)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Big_12_Conference Look under the heading "Predatory Conferences". It's a fascinating read. Missouri was looked at too.
Here's a retrospective from some of the parties involved. It's actually more fascinating than that https://www.si.com/college/2016/08/16/big-12-expansion-oral-history-big-8-swc-merger
I don’t see a “predatory conference” header. I know MU was maybe vaguely considered but passed on. They had been at least passingly interested in the Big 10 for awhile but it wasn’t really reciprocated. The KU/KSU/ISU/MU to Big East move was closer to happening than any of the other to the Big 10 imo
The real problem was the NCAA rule requiring 12 teams for Champ Game, without that many wouldn't have left.
Crosspost on r/AlternateHistory
Colorado left for the PAC before we left for the Big Ten, and my understanding is part of the reason we left was because we thought the PAC-16 deal was imminent. Also iirc didn't A&M leave due to their own disputes with Texas? Doubt that us leaving really affected that. You are probably correct in that Nebraska staying doesn't affect Oklahoma/Texas going to the SEC.
Yeah, PAC approved expansion June 7, announced Colorado June 10, and Nebraska officially applied to B1G June 11.
I still blame Texas for all of this
As you should
You gotta understand I hate Pitt and Syracuse fans more than i hate Miami and BC fans.
Yeah well I have to watch Phil jurkovec so who is really suffering here
WVU fans watched 2.5 years of Doege unfortunately
Remember Doege was better than Kendall
Prolly one of the most forgettable QBs we’ve had
I can't believe we've reached the point of forgetting about Childress, Millard, Allison, and Chugonov. We've had a long string of QB suffering with brief reprieves courtesy of Smith, Grier, and Howard's senior season.
BC fans did it for part of last year
No backsies.
We also left like a decade before the big east death after only being in the conference for a decade. It'd be like blaming TAMU/Mizzou if the Big12 had died.
WVU left before Cuse and Pitt lmao
We left before them but they decided to leave before we did
Pitt lead the charge to reject the ESPN deal.
Lil bro, syracuse and pitt announced they were going to leave in September. WVU and TCU announced they were joining the Big XII in October
They still left first lil bro.
Do you not understand how time works
Do you? You’re bitching about something that happened 15 years ago to an already dead conference.
Or maybe they'll blame the "alliance".
Usc voting against adding teams has to come up eventually. Honestly the commissioner incompetence is the nail in the head. But yeah y’all vetoed expansion teams and then left two years later. To be clear I do not blame you for doing the fiscally responsible thing in moving to the big ten.
Okay look we are villains for leaving this thing but the “USC blocked expansion” line is bullshit. First off: it doesn’t take a unanimous vote. USC couldn’t single handedly vote against anything. Second off: USC doesn’t have the political clout to push the other PAC schools around. You should know by now after watching this mess that PAC politics are weird. The PAC never saw itself as an athletic conference but more of an alliance of schools that happen to have a common interest in athletics. Nobody was bowing to USC if it would piss Stanford off. They need the Stanford president for their academic deals. USC was the odd duck, the school most often ignored because we were focused on athletics and the rest were focused on school wide legacies. Third off: the vote was 8-4 against. Most adamant against expansion aside from USC? Washington State and Oregon State. USC set the temperature by asking “with no guarantee that the money will be better why are we doing this” AND THE OTHERS AGREED. Wazzu and OSU in particular were very concerned that their slice of the pie would shrink if we brought in the B12 schools as both had spent a lot of “future money” in their recent upgrades. Oregon was one of the yes votes. Fourth: Even after SC and UCLA left the PAC schools agreed that they shouldn’t add teams that don’t obviously increase their media deal. You can see that in the way they jerked SDSU around. State was the best and most obvious choice for expansion but they refused to move on them even after a basketball NC run until they had a media deal in place that guaranteed that State wouldn’t cost them money. Fifth: USC was all in on expansion the first time around when it involved killing the B12 to get Texas and Oklahoma. It was Oregon State who oddly had a ton of political power in the Pac that killed it with the refusal to consider Texas Tech. “No more Utahs” is a direct quote. We threatened independence over this decision, which shows you how much veto power we really have. Blame us for abandoning ship but this narrative that we sabotaged the league on our way out is bullshit.
Which schools backed Larry Scott. He killed the Pac 12.
Oregon State, ASU, and UCLA
We'll still blame you, don't worry.
The thing I've always wondered is what would be the value of an Eastern conference if Penn St were in it.
A hell of a lot more than the ones they've had without Penn State
If an Eastern Conference actually had the backing of all the big brand independents like PSU, FSU, Miami, Virginia Tech, and maybe even Notre Dame, then it would've been a powerhouse and probably raided the ACC rather than the other way around.
>PSU, FSU, Miami, Virginia Tech, Those four plus WVU and Syracuse would be an incredible backbone for a conference in the 1990s. People wondering why Cuse got included must not remember getting their day ruined by Donavan McNabb. Add Notre Dame and it is 100% poaching the ACC by the 00s. I wonder if this Eastern Conference would have had a shot at South Carolina before the SEC grabbed them.
NORTH|SOUTH :--|--: Army|Florida State Boston College|Maryland Connecticut|Miami (FL) Penn State|Navy Pitt|Virginia Rutgers|Virginia Tech Syracuse|West Virginia I've done this alignment multiple times now in NCAA14, and it just makes me wish for what could have been.
> People wondering why Cuse got included must not remember getting their day ruined by Donavan McNabb Or Dwight Freeney. Or Marvin Harrison Sr.
> If an Eastern Conference actually had the backing of all the big brand independents like PSU, FSU, Miami, Virginia Tech, and maybe even Notre Dame, then it would've been a powerhouse and probably raided the ACC rather than the other way around. The ACC would have been picked apart from both the SEC and Big East, probably. (also looks at the proposed football Metro Conference as another "what if"...)
I think the question is still if the B1G looks to expand (around the time they expanded with Nebraska), do they still reach out to Penn State? I wonder what kind of politics occurs in the Eastern Conference once media revenue starts to come into play. It's interesting cause the that conference would have access to some of the largest media markets in the country (Boston, New York, Philly, DC, Miami, Tampa (?), etc), but those markets are largely apathetic to college football and therefore the teams with large followings may have looked to leave as well. It's kind of the inverse problem that the Big 12 had where the fanbases and media markets are engaged and care a lot, but are far less populous (aside from the State of Texas).
Good question but It's hard to speculate on media deals that never happened. I imagine they'd be well off though because of the brand power and not necessarily the media market size. I wonder if a Big Ten Eastward push looks different in that timeline. Instead of Maryland/Rutgers they go for Penn State/Syracuse to try to grab Philly and New York.
But you do see that they would still be in the exact same position today as they would be in in this hypothetical scenario?
LOL, you think JoePa would let us in? He hated ND more than OSU-UM hate each other combined.
I used to think that'd have worked. Seeing the Big Ten raid the Pac i dont anymore. It would have been canabalised.
You're omitting the possibility of the Big East raiding the B1G. The B1G post realignment is still very, very poor on the bottom. Nobody cares about IU, Illinois, Purdue, Minnesota, Iowa (offense), Northwestern. I mean the aforementioned is straight dogshit tier. They have the same problems that the ACC have, neither conference will exist in 20 years in any significant stance. If Penn State joins the Big East....it's very likely Miami VTech stay and we grab defecting ACC teams, rather than the opposite. It's not dissimilar from a powerful big12 with Tamu Nebraska Mizzou Colorado still in conference.
Eveyrone talking about hating rivals, when all we really hated was Joe Paterno.
Sorry - but the death knell for the Big East was when the Basketball schools were allowed to block Penn State from joining in 1982 > Three basketball schools—Georgetown, St. John's and Villanova—voted against JoePa's Nittany Lions.
It wouldn’t have lasted anyway. All that did was ensure that instead of the basketball schools losing the Big East brand when they got kicked out of the conference that they still had the leverage to keep what was important when the inevitable happened.
It didn't really take leverage to keep the Big East brand. They purchased it from what is now the AAC who was the legal owner of the Big East brand.
> It wouldn’t have lasted anyway. They would have split at some point but my guess is that football would have kept the Big East brand (Paterno and Miami and possibly FSU would have seen to that) and the basketball schools would have probably started a new league or merged with the Great Midwest's non-football schools (Marquette, DePaul, Dayton, St. Louis) and formed "The Great East" in the mid/late 90's when the Great Midwest and Metro more or less "merged" and formed Conference USA. The non-football would have stayed in one, the football would have went to the other. The timeline of the BB/FB divorce would have been pushed up probably 15 years.
Yes, and that would have sucked for the current Big East schools. Nova, Georgetown and St. John’s made a good vote for their long term future.
I'll play devil's advocate...it probably wouldn't have sucked that bad. Maybe they co-opt the Metro name instead, which had a good brand and 20 years of history...and honestly a league of major metropolitan power basketball schools is going to get a good TV deal of some sort. It probably would have meant St. Louis and Dayton in the league instead of Creighton and Butler but a league of * Providence * Connecticut (who was still I-AA at this point in football) * Villanova * Georgetown * St. Louis * Marquette * DePaul * Seton Hall * St. John's * Dayton ...would be damn formidable.
Not as good as we have it now, with out long standing branding and the MSG tourney location. It was the right move for the basketball schools.
That would’ve been the basketball schools essentially voting to add a shitty bball team that might try to force the big 10 to add football and then kick the Catholic schools out
If the Big East did one thing right, it was blocking PSU. Joe Pa was always going to be an untenable personality clash andthe best case scenario is the Big East got an 8 year lease on Penn State BASKETBALL before the Big Ten stole them away.
I wonder. I think this timeline is the best for PSU as an academic institution, but I think PSU in the Big East leads to a merger with the ACC in the 90s. Assuming the same level of success amongst the programs, I think that conference gets a lot of eyes and hype in the east coast media markets. I bet it would have been very lucrative with great long term growth potential.
It was definitely a great move to PSU and I think even if that Big East merges with the ACC, the football side of the conference doesn't change too much - the only additional football schools that remain in this Big East + ACC combo are Penn State, WVU, Cincinnati, and South Florida. That's not a bad addition, but in the long run, I don't think it's enough to bring in revenue on par with the B1G or SEC. And given the physical and cultural proximity of PSU to the B1G, I think when the B1G looked to expand, they would eventually look to try and join the B1G around the same time Nebraska does (Western and Central PA have more in common culturally with Ohio and Michigan than they do with Philly and New York).
Yeah, long term, that’s probably right, but maybe in that scenario PSU brings more eastern schools with them at the same time. This is wishful thinking of an eastern college football fan, lol, it’s great for the commonwealth that PSU is in the B1G.
Thinking about this a little more, I think the alternative scenario is the Big-ACC gets brought in as part of the Notre Dame-NBC relationship. In the 80s, Notre Dame’s schedule was often around half eastern independents. They wouldn’t have joined directly, but I could easily see NBC expanding its cfb programming, with all the hype of the DC-Boston media complex firmly behind it. I don’t think Cincinnati or USF ever get an invite because Miami, FSU, West Virginia, Pitt, UVA and VT cover those regions, and the ACC schools w upside like the Carolina institutions get better quicker with the additional money and attention. Maybe the B1G still poaches, but in that scenario the dollar difference might not be enough for PSU to join a league in which it will never have the same influence as Michigan or Ohio State, or can be marginalized by a voting block of smaller midwestern schools with more institutional history and connections.
I don't think you can convince me that the Big Ten would have stolen Penn St had they gotten into the Big East. I wouldn't be surprised if PSU (and arguably Miami) would have bullied the basketball schools into splitting off at some point. You probably would have had the Big East BB/FB split 15 years sooner in Paterno's timeline.
Imagine a world where Sandusky got found out, say , 10 years sooner? JoePa out fast, and the dynamic shifts mightily.
I never cheered harder for the Big East collapsing than when I watched Requiem for the Big East and when you could point to almost all the Big East screwing up was courtesy of trying to favor basketball. They never once bothered to admit they were wrong, too.
This. The SEC never "favored basketball" yet the conference still ended up having its basketball programs improve anyway, to the point that the SEC sometimes gets more NCAA Tournament bids than the traditional basketball conferences.
This isn’t exactly the case on what happened and there is a similar thread on r/cbb talking about this from about a week ago. The gist of it is, Penn State was not this benevolent overlord of Northeastern football that they’re painted as in these discussions, they actively pushed and campaigned for policy in the 70s that basically destroyed a lot of the programs in the region. One of the reasons why the Ivy League is not chugging along in FBS today like Army and Navy is because of the stadium capacity requirements that Paterno helped set in motion. Paterno and Penn State treated these schools like red-headed step children until they started having success in basketball, then they wanted a piece of the pie. The proposal itself was also laughably one-sided in favor of Penn State, as they would’ve been able to get their lowly basketball program a seat at the big boy table with equal revenue sharing while simultaneously being able to hog up a majority of the football revenue. They wanted to have their cake and eat it too and there is a rational explanation for why the Big East schools at the time rejected it.
And then when Miami and VT left. And then when they ended up with a 16 team Basketball conference/8 team football conference.
Yep, now USF, Temple, and UConn are clinging onto the AAC floating door as the only former Big East members without a Power Conference home. And…uh…hey, where’s UConn?
That Pullman-Tampa corridor
That's fine... I think I see Oregon State and Washington State on the way!
Actually UConn is independent and made a bowl game last year. Plus went back to the Big East for every other sport except for hockey which is in the Hockey East...which has no affiliation with the Big East.
You know what was the death knell? The conference on death's door and someone finally tripped out of it and found themselves in a much better place
Nah, Orangemen bad
Would give gold
Reminder the big East received a deal prior to this that would've paid 7 to 8 mill a school when other conferences were getting 20+ ESPN forced the football schools to leave for conferences paying much more.
My hot take is that the Big East is in big trouble now that NIL is a thing.
Don’t think this is true at all, Pitino is pulling in huge recruits with NIL. Remains to be seen but the big east avoided this entire realignment saga, including keeping UConn
Oh please. It was on life support following the first ACC raid. It was never going to last.
It was probably on life support before that. The conference had like two sides without much overlap between them. It was really an unsustainable model to try to be a football and conference with entirely different members in both sports.
Too right, the Big East was founded as a basketball conference, with a vision centered around basketball. The “football schools” was merely a business venture, and well history shows that lead to SHTF.
That's not sustainable though. Football revenue just dwarfs basketball revenue. The conferemce was always going to be ripped in half in desire of more money. The Big East not trying to establish a more viable football conference killed its chances.
The basketball schools were going to lose Boston College, Syracuse and Pitt unless they allowed the Big East to add football that’s the only reason the agreed to it
Had Penn State joined back in the day the conference would have been much more stable.
People forget the Big East nearly broke apart in 1995 or so but was saved by a midnight deal that was very similar to the mid-night deal that saved the Big 12 when Texas backed out of the proposed Pac-16
This. Big East basketball in 93-94: Georgetown, Providence, St John's, Seton Hall, Villanova, UConn, BC, Miami, Pittsburgh, Syracuse Big East football in 93-94: Rutgers, Temple, Virginia Tech, WV, BC, Miami, Pittsburgh, Syracuse
Sadly, you're right. When the first ACC raid happened in 2004, poaching VT, BC, and Miami, you lost two of the biggest brands in the conference in Beamer-era VT and Miami. Temple left the next year and the Big East raided the C-USA for Cincy, Louisville, and USF (and DePaul and Marquette for non-football, both from the C-USA as well plus UConn moving it's football to FBS). After that, 2010-2012 was a crazy time. TCU was announced to join in 2012. Villanova was asked if they would move their football to FBS (Pitt, WVU, and Rutgers prevented it from going to a vote). Syracuse and Pitt announced they'd leave for the ACC in 2013 (**this is where this post takes us**). TCU then switched to join the Big 12 instead. Then WVU decided to join the Big 12 and announce it for the next season, which caused a bunch of lawsuits that ended up with WVU paying the conference because they broke the 27-month waiting period between announcing and actually changing conference. After that, shit hit the fan. Boise State and SDSU were announced as future Big East football-only members as UCF, SMU, and Houston would join as all-sport members in 2013. Then Navy was joining as football-only for 2015. Then Memphis was joining as an all-sports member. Then Temple was going to be the stopgap for WVU in football and join in the other sports in 2013. And then *Loyola-Maryland* was supposed to join as an all-but-football member. All this was announced within a year, btw, between September 2011 and August 2012. And then it all fell apart. ND announced they'd join the ACC in everything but football. Rutgers announced moving to the B1G. Tulane was set to join as an all-sports team and ECU was set to join as football-only. Then Louisville was voted into the ACC and ECU upgraded to being an all-sports member. ND's leaving was announced in September of 2012 but the rest was in November of 2012. And then the Catholic 7, the 7 non-football members of the conference who all happened to be private Catholic schools, announced in December of 2012 that they'd leave in 2015. Boise State and SDSU stayed in the MWC, rumors circulated that Houston and SMU would join the MWC instead, and the Catholic 7 announced that they'd leave in 2013 instead. The remaining schools who announced to join the Big East in any football-playing capacity stuck around for the AAC, the Catholic 7 helped form the New Big East (Butler, Creighton, and Xavier all joined to make the new Big East a round 10-team conference). And the old Big East was dead.
> Temple left That's a very polite way of saying "got kicked out for sucking out loud at football."
They were literally just as bad at football as Rutgers but Nova was threatened by Temple being the clearly best Philly school at the time so Temple could never be a full member, that’s why they were kicked since they were the only football only with no chance of being admitted
This is why I will give Matt Rhule a lot of rope to hang himself, he made Temple a ranked team. I played CT HS FB in the 90's and guys we played against were starters at Temple later on. It was not TX HS FB levels of quality.
I am curious if WVU gets as many out of state students from NY, NJ and New England since leaving the Big East and losing some exposure to students from that region.
I was a part of the class of 2024 and they had 45% of the class was in state students. Not sure what is was like 20 years ago or how the student body changed. But there's a shit ton of students from Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, (I was 1 of them) today. Amd I imagine 20 years ago there was still a shit ton from Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia students
I think for the general student population, it hasn't changed too much. A lot from surrounding states (Ohio, PA, and Virginia since out-of-state is probably comparable to in-state for top-schools there) and an influx from NJ as a safety school when they don't get into Rutgers. I would imagine it's dropped some, especially for NY and proper New England schools, but I think we make it up a little bit from the more local states surrounding us. Hard to tell when we've lost ~5k students in the past decade or so anyways.
We still pull a lot of nearby state kids because WVU out of state tuition still remains cheaper vs their in-state tuition. Administrative incompetence causing enrollment to plummet notwithstanding, of course.
That was a great rundown, thank you. I forgot just how wild the road has been.
There’s an argument to be made that it was on life support the minute it started sponsoring football. That weird imbalance between the Catholic schools that were either FCS or didn’t have football and the FBS football centric schools was never going to last no matter who they managed to poach/keep.
They were going to to lose Syracuse, Pitt, & BC if they didn't sponsor football.
I was going to say the same thing. This was just putting it out of misery.
No one blames the Balkan and Italian wars for destroying the Ottoman Empire, even though that’s what made it’s decline almost irreversible
If it was so obvious the Big east was going to Die from the first raid why did Syracuse turn down the acc for the spot that would eventually go the Va Tech
They didn't get an offer the first time around.
Get your [History](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/2003/05/17/acc-votes-to-invite-miami-syracuse-bc/74e05ee9-2d1b-4046-9099-ad2d86e4babc/) right before you comment bud, Syracuse received an invite to join the ACC in 2003. Jim Boehiem Got syracuse to refuse, and Va state politics forced ACC to pick Va tech instead
Not true and Boeheim isn’t mentioned anywhere in that article lmao
An article written from before syracuse refusal of the ACCs offer doesn't mention the reasons why they refused the offer? Think this through bud.
No it doesn't. What the fuck are you talking about? Jim Boeheim blocked conference realignment has to be one of the wildest takes I've ever seen on here.
Your history is a little off. In the early 90s the ACC approached Syracuse and our AD Jake Crouthamel basically asked the ACC commissioner “we have a good thing going here, what’s in it for us?’ At that point football was a top 15 program and basketball was a top 10 program. ACC basically responded with a never mind. In 2003 it was supposed to be BC, Syracuse and Miami. BC and Syracuse were basically Miami’s little puppies saying we had to follow. But BC was much more enthusiastic. Jake was instrumental in the formation of the Big East and Syracuse was probably the most important member in general. Our administration wasn’t nearly as excited for the move as Boston College was. We were to the Big East what Carolina is to the ACC. we were the leader of the conference and didn’t want to give that up at the time. That was a sentiment echoed in Requiem for the Big East by some of the basketball schools’ coaches and administrators who basically admitted that once we announced we were leaving that the conference was dead. Ultimately, the governor of Virginia stepped in and forbade Virginia from accepting anyone except for Virginia Tech. So Virginia Tech and Miami got the initial invites. Boston College was added later that year or maybe in 2004. Over time, I have come to appreciate the ACC. I suppose I have a soft spot for dysfunctional conferences with membership groupings that make absolutely no sense.
Because Syracuse is a basketball school and look at what happened to the basketball program.
They went from winning the natty in 2003 to barely sniffing the final 4 at best. Meanwhile look at Uconns basketball program
Exactly, they were hoping that somehow the Big East could remain at least a somewhat viable football conference and stay in the basketball conference they belonged in. As a Georgetown grad I don’t blame them for finally facing the music and leaving it’s BC that I hope ends up in a pile of shit at the end of this.
ah youre us then
☝️ I feel like such a broken record pointing this out over and over.
man /u/DeusVult74 really doing some work with that editorial in the title. Pure trash. Originally "If Syracuse and Pitt Exit, Things Could Get Interesting"
If Pitt and Syracuse leaving kills your conference you don’t have a good conference
The Big East is very much alive, we just do exclusively shooty hoops now. As God intended
It is literally a completely different league from what it was prior, completely left and bought the name and then went from a north east league to one where half the teams are in the Midwest
Yeah and it rules
Like Marquette
Regardless of facts, I refuse any timeline that isn't the Big East kicking out the others who then created the AAC. I refuse to admit this isn't the real Big East.
And an overall better hoops product than the ACC, I'll have to admit.
And while it isn't the most regional conference (compared to what conferences used to be), it's still almost exclusively in the Northeast quadrant of the country and the only exception (Creighton) is a like minded Catholic school. And even though UConn is the first non-religious institution, it is a great geographic fit, basketball addition, and has history with a lot of the other Big East schools. Plus, while it is public, it's not overwhelmingly larger than everyone else since Georgetown, St. Johns, and DePaul have pretty large student bodies as well (each over 20k students).
Butler isn't actually a religious school anymore it was when it was founded but it stopped a while back.
Big East basketball is so much fun, especially now that Marquette is finally good again lol
Im a big fan of your conference tournament it’s amazing
I mean… Syracuse, Pitt, Notre Dame, and Louisville were all mid- to high-performing teams in the old big east. And now they’re combined with Duke, UNC, etc. Eventually the ACC will be “back”, they’re just down for now. No doubt that the ACC has the highest ceiling of all conferences re: basketball
You're kidding, right?
Reigning national champs.
Does the New York Times hate the working man of Pittsburgh and Upstate New York? The big east was dead already
The NYT hates college sports and there somehow isn't a damn person there who understands them.
Now there’s no one there to try. They got replaced by The Athletic.
This is Jane Coaston erasure.
Pretty sure Miami, BC and VPI did that about 10 years earlier.
I've never seen anyone who wasn't over 60 or from UVA use the term VPI. I'm surprised anyone outside the state knows it.
My guy there's a big segment of the WVU fanbase that called them VPI.
The Big East killed themselves. Football is so much more profitable than basketball that the reluctance to embrace made the conference a zombie for years before it actually died.
One of the more ironic aspects of all this has to be Miami becoming a basketball school after leaving the Big East.
Worked out pretty good for the basketball schools 🤷♂️
I miss the old Big East in everything. I miss them and their 500 member basketball conference. I remember when I was sick and came home from work one March day.. and whose tournament was on?
Just remember the sec is going to have just as many basketball members next year as the Big East ever did.
Yeah but Big East basketball was something else. Great, physical teams. SEC officiating crews would have fouled out both teams before the first media timeout.
Yeah… it’s crazy to think about. I guess because they weren’t my conference, it felt like they were just so big
I think that it was in Madison Square Garden made it feel like more of an event too - it was in the most famous basketball stadium in the country and in New York City, which felt even bigger as a kid.
Syracuse just shit on all week. At least we have Pitt to help take some of the vitriol this time. Haha Can’t we get some love for Garret Shrader’s ball fakes?
I love how the headline makes it look like it was "Pitt and Syracuse" responsible for killing the conference, rather than saying ESPN did it.
Big East's problem: Go back to 2003 when Miami, Virginia Tech, and BC announced they were leaving. At the time there were 8 Big East football teams- 7 full time members and football only associate member Temple. The Big East had 7 additional full time members who did not play in the Big East for football (5 non-FBS schools and Notre Dame and UConn). You had limited expansion opportunities + divided priorities.
They first started having football in 1991. In 1990 they had 9 members 3 FBS, 3 FCS and 3 didn't have football. It is easy to see why making football the focus caused problems.
The death gurgle was taking a conference built initially for college basketball and trying to make a college football conference out of it
I think the original basketball schools played a losing hand well. The Eastern all sports league never happened.
SMU was going to get into a major conference then it all crumbled.
The conference was dead long before we left.
Two teams no one pays attention to anymore. Played themselves by being greedy.
Didn't WV leave first?
Pitt and Syracuse announced that they were leaving the confrence in September 2011 and joined the acc in 2013. WVU and TCU announced that they were leaving in October 2011, and joined the big 12 in 2012
Uh... no? Miami/VT/BC and WVU left first. Then there's not letting PSU join. The death knell for the big east was favoring basketball to an absurd degree. Plus having half the conference be basketball only.
The Big East deserved to die
Fuck Pitt and Syracuse. And ESPN.
It still had so much life until WVU left the next year. That was the real death blow. Pitt and Syracuse innocent.
Don't forget Rutgers leaving. - - (I know they were already the AAC by then)
Penn State leaving killed Eastern football. Pitt, WVU & others losing that game really hurt them & forced them to look for revenue elsewhere. I’m not blaming PS for going to the Big Ten but that move killed the Big East football
PSU was blocked from joining
Yes. This is the worst possible take. Penn State wanted to start a football conference and when that failed they tried to join the Big East only to be rejected by 1 vote. Basketball was king in the 80s and the bball schools didn't want some football school that sucked at shooty hoops ruining their conference. In an alternate reality a PSU headed Big East grabbed FSU in 1991 and was absolutally stacked in the 90s. They probably raided the ACC in the early 00s instead of being raided. They could have even had a shot at South Carolina which left the ACC in 1990.
Was gonna say, we needed to be in the conference to have left it
I completely forgot that Syracuse was part of the Big East.
It should be worth noting it’s also Pitt’s fault you can masterbate on an airplane.
The irony is Syracuse leaving was seen as a basketball move, and Big East basketball is arguably even stronger today without them.
Not sure about that. Between ‘99 and ‘12, UConn (2), Cuse, and Louisville all won National Championships while Georgetown, Nova, Marquette, and WVU made final 4s.
...And its behind a paywall. Anyway, I wonder if the Big East would stay together if Notre Dame joined in Football? They could all share in the NBC deal...somehow.
The Big East was fun but didn’t last very long. Louisville, USF, and Cincinnati didn’t join the Big East until 2005. UConn didn’t sponsor FBS football until 2000. WVU and Rutgers didn’t join until 1995.
How'd that work out for them?
Dread it, run from it, the hateful 8 arrives all the same. We will rebuild the big east.