FanNation - The Republic of Sport

 The Big East is one of the best conferences but some of their teams are being hurt by the current expanded membership of the conference. The problems of the Big East stem from it's lack of unified identity. You have the football playing schools and non-football playing schools and unfortunately, those non-football playing schools (with the exception of Georgetown and perhaps Villanove) have suffered in their attempt to compete athletically with the football playing schools. I believe the solution will be

1. An expansion of the Big East Football conference to 12 teams ( this would include University Central Florida [a natural rival for USF], Memphis, East Carolina University and perhaps University of Delaware (traditionally strong 1-AA program that shouldn't have problems moving up from 1-AA) or Villanova (moving up from 1-AA) [UMass would be another option in the Northeast corridor]. I don't believe that Georgetown has any inclination to move up from 1-AA but of course first preference would be to offer existing members first choice in options to go to the Big East Football Conference. With 12 members, you would still have a strong BCS conference with a basketball conference that perennially would have 5 - 6 members in the NCAA field (Memphis, Louisville, UConn, Syracuse, Pittsburgh and a sixth member to be named [Cincinnati or W Virginia). The conference would have the ability to split into north and south divisions for an attractive conference championship game which would at least be the equal of the ACC Conference Championship game. Proposed North/South Divisions would be :

North: UConn, Syracuse, Rutgers, Delaware/Villanova/UMass (if neither of the latter two wants to move up), Pittsburgh, Cincinnati

South: USF, UCF, ECU, Memphis, Louisville, West Virginia

The remaining schools would maintain close ties to the Big East with preferred non-conference scheduling amongst the participants:

The remaining league members (basketball only schools) would be :
St. Johns, Marquette, NDame, Seton Hall, Depaul, Georgetown, Villanova, Providence [UMass, Dayton, or Xavier could be invited for admission if any of the Catholic schools decide to move up to 1-A Big East football] Total league size optimally could be 12 members so addition of other schools like St., Josephs, Richmond and Charlotte, and other stronger A-10 teams etc.. can be considered.

League Makeup: St. Johns, Marquette, NDame, Seton Hall, Depaul, Georgetown, Villanova, Providence, Dayton, Xavier, Richmond (?), St. Josephs ?, George Washington ?.

Finally, the Big East Tournament could then be the biggest most important tournament of all as you would have a 24 team bracket culminating in the awarding of the United Big East Members Tournament at MSG in March. There would have to be some kinks worked out from this tourney format of course but I feel they are minor. In addition, from the basketball only schools, we would have at minimum 4-5 entries guaranteed into the NCAA tournament each March. Lets hear feedback on these proposals and then submit to Mike Tranghese and colleagues for action!