League defends its pursuit of Conference USA quintet

Wednesday, November 05, 2003

By Milan Simonich, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

NEW YORK -- In the dog-eat-dog world of major-college sports, the Big East Conference gobbled up five schools yesterday, then staged a celebratory news conference in the ballroom of a Manhattan hotel.

Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese said the raid was necessary to save the league, which is losing its football powers to the Atlantic Coast Conference.

The Big East's new members are Cincinnati, Louisville and South Florida, which will compete in all sports, and DePaul and Marquette.

The first three will give the Big East an eight-team football conference. DePaul and Marquette do not have football teams but will be part of a 16-team Big East Conference in basketball and most minor sports.

All five newcomers are defecting from Conference USA. They will begin Big East play in 2005.

Tranghese defended the Big East taking schools from a rival league. He said what the Big East did could not be compared to the ACC's tactics.

"The ACC had a choice. We had no choice," he said.

Pitt Chancellor Mark Nordenberg, incoming chairman of the Big East university presidents, took the same position.

For the Big East to remain in business, it had to have at least eight football schools. It was down to five and in "a crisis," Nordenberg said, after the ACC lured away national powers Miami and Virginia Tech, as well as Boston College.

The ACC is expanding from nine teams to 12 and will split into two divisions for football and bank millions from a league championship game.

Nordenberg said the Big East did not set out to enrich itself by secretly recruiting members of another league. Rather, he said, it was honest in saying it needed new schools to save its football program.

Cincinnati, Louisville and South Florida will join Pitt, West Virginia, Syracuse, Rutgers and Connecticut as conference football schools.

Critics immediately complained that the new Big East looks stellar in basketball with the additions of Cincinnati, Louisville and Marquette, but watered down in football.

Pitt athletic director Jeff Long said he takes a different view. "I wouldn't characterize the football as weak at all. None of the new teams rival Miami, but they have a tremendous upside, and may be stronger than Virginia Tech was when it arrived" in the Big East three years ago.

Nordenberg was not as upbeat.

"We are excited about the conference as a basketball conference," he said. "On the football side, we have some work to do, obviously."

Still, Nordenberg said, the Big East has found five strong new partners that will improve the conference's visibility.

DePaul, a Catholic university with 25,000 students, gives the Big East a presence in Chicago, the country's third-largest television market. South Florida, with 40,000 students, keeps a Big East team in Florida and opens up the Tampa market.

Big East publicists say the newly configured conference will reach television viewers in about one of every four American households. But that number applies only to basketball.

Louisville and Cincinnati have marquee coaches in Rick Pitino and Bob Huggins. Marquette reached the Final Four last season and has one of the Midwest's most storied programs.

"On balance, from a basketball perspective, we're better off with this," said the Rev. Edmund Dobbin, president of Villanova.

Tranghese said he is optimistic about Big East football. He said it will still be among the top half-dozen conferences and good enough to advance its best team to the Bowl Championship Series.

"In 1990, when Big East football started, there weren't a lot of people saying positive things then, either," Tranghese said. "Our football group is solid."

But he predicted the new basketball matchups -- games such as Louisville at Pitt and Syracuse at DePaul -- will invigorate the league and entice TV executives.

"In basketball we're clearly as good as any conference ever," Tranghese said.

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