Desperate Big East should come out swinging
By Dennis Dodd | SportsLine.com Senior Writer Follow DennisBig East commissioner Mike Tranghese needs to hit a home run. Unfortunately, he's swinging with a Wiffle Ball bat and Roger Clemens is pitching.
Tranghese's conference is breaking up around him after the ACC voted Tuesday to expand. The only remaining details, it seems, are what two schools from the Big East other than Miami are going to be invited.
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| ACC commissioner John Swofford is in the middle of a major drama. (Provided to SportsLine) |
All the scene needs is Harry Caray bellowing, "Heeeere's the pitch ..."
It also means don't count out Tranghese. Until a statement released Wednesday, Tranghese had been mute since blasting the ACC last month for poaching his teams. And when a smart, aggressive, outspoken administrator like Tranghese is silent, it means something is up.
Some ACC sources are at least concerned that the league didn't invite Miami and some combination of Syracuse, Virginia Tech and Boston College right on the spot this week in Amelia Island, Fla. Miami athletic director Paul Dee said his school will be "deliberate."
ACC commissioner John Swofford stressed that no invitations have been issued and "nothing is finalized."
There is just enough mystery here to suggest that Tranghese isn't done swinging yet.
"I will take John Swofford at his word that the ACC presidents have not formally voted," Tranghese said in Wednesday's statement. "I will also take Paul Dee at his word that Miami intends to take its time in reviewing its options. I am anxious to meet with our conference members in Florida and am prepared to do whatever it takes to preserve the 24-year history of the Big East Conference. This is a conference that is worth preserving and we should all look forward to the challenge."
The problem is, Tranghese has only a couple of options to save his league. They are named Penn State and Notre Dame.
While there is no indication from either school that they are considering propping up the Big East, you can bet that Tranghese has at least made inquiries.
The Fighting Irish and/or Nittany Lions would probably be enough to keep Miami in the fold and save the league's automatic BCS berth. Those programs are the only ones that have the television cache, the athletic programs and the geography to save a Big East that is on life support.
The only other option for Tranghese is to pull a complete end-around and invite Florida State and two other teams to the Big East. All of a sudden the league becomes a monster, at least on a par with a 12-team ACC and probably better.
"He's prepared to do something special," Temple athletic director Bill Bradshaw told the New York Times. "Do not rule out Mike Tranghese. There is not a better poker player in the game."
Dave Gavitt created the Big East as a television entity of some of the best basketball programs in the East. Tranghese helped bring in Miami in 1992 to form a football league. But from the time that happened, the Big East knew it was only a Hurricane away from breaking up.
With its five national championships and its prime recruiting territory, Miami has lots of clout. Like Oklahoma, Southern California, Notre Dame and others, it is one of the few national programs. The Hurricanes turn on televisions from Key West to Seattle when they play.
It took the confluence of the ACC's television contract with ABC/ESPN (expiring in 2005) and the BCS to force it to make this bold move.
Do the math: ACC football is the lowest-rated of any major conference on ESPN and ESPN2. The Big East had the highest-rated college football game on ESPN last season, Miami-Pittsburgh. The Big East was second only to the SEC on ESPN, thanks mostly to Miami.
The only way to save the Big East, then, as a football conference is to somehow keep Miami in the mix. It might be hopeless but Tranghese isn't quite done yet. An addition of Notre Dame and/or Penn State holds the Big East together and keeps the BCS berth. Anything else, and the league becomes a northeastern Conference USA.
It would be a money saver for Penn State, which is surrounded by Big East schools and is used to playing Syracuse, Temple and Rutgers from its old days as an independent. Its travel costs in the Big Ten have been prohibitive. Many alums have never felt comfortable in the Big Ten, and certainly not in love with the Rose Bowl as is the rest of the league.
In the post-Joe Paterno landscape, Penn State might have to consider what it wants to be: the Eastern-most Big Ten school that has been to the Rose Bowl exactly once in a decade or a traditional Eastern power aligned in the East.
Don't believe the hype about Syracuse and the New York market. New York City simply isn't a college football town in terms of demographics. Talk to the experts; the only two football teams that turn on televisions in the Apple en masse are Notre Dame and Penn State.
Notre Dame makes less sense for the Big East if only because it is such a longshot. Tyrone Willingham's success and the extension of the NBC deal make it far less likely that the school thinks it can prosper sharing its revenue in a conference.
"Not in my lifetime," said one Syracuse official about that Notre Dame possibility.
But what if NBC, which has lost the NBA and NFL, decides it wants to bid on a Big East that includes Notre Dame?
Once again, that's not likely to happen, but neither was the Fox Network when its flagship was Married With Children in the 1980s.
Industry insiders say that Fox will be the next player on the college football scene because of its ability to regionalize. It already has contracts with the Pac-10 and Big 12. Why not try to rule the world, as Rupert Murdoch has shown is his goal, with a Big East jewel.
What is assured is the Big East will change, there is no doubt about that. Separate football (with Miami) and basketball leagues are doable. That leaves the ACC in a lurch.
If Miami and two others leave, the Big East could remain a football entity, though a less enticing one.
The remaining five schools could add any combination of Louisville, Cincinnati, UConn (due to join the Big East anyway in 2005), and Temple (due to be kicked out after 2004). Any combination of those teams means the Big East (or whatever it would be called), would almost certainly lose its BCS bowl berth.
And that's what this is all about -- who, between Swofford and Tranghese, has the biggest set of footballs. When a $13 million bowl berth is on the line, commissioners will do almost anything. In the case of Tranghese, the college world can't wait to see what.
