The writing was on the wall. It was inevitable that someday the uneasy alliance between football and basketball factions in the Big East would deteriorate to the point that a split would be discussed openly and publicly. I won't recount the tale of how the Big East has come to this point but I will say that the basketball schools are much to blame for the current dilapidated state of the Big East because they never allowed the football schools to exercise enough power to keep the football conference stable. What has happened is that the 7 basketball schools Providence, St John's, Seton Hall, Villanova, Georgetown, and DePaul are unhappy with the current state of the Big East and either want more power or the right to leave. They could vote to disband the conference. With only 10 full members--the others being Cincinnati, UConn, and South Florida, currently in the conference that are not scheduled to depart and thus obliged to abstain in voting they would have the necessary two-thirds majority to do so. There seems however that there is problem though. Temple claims that they have the right to vote as well despite being only a football affiliate this year and not becoming a full member until next year. Conference Commissioner Mike Aresco seems to agree with Temple that they do have a vote and if Temple has a vote and votes no then the 7 Catholic schools no longer have the requisite majority.
The Atlantic Ten has already extended their hand to the 7 Catholics. Offering a 21 member conference with two divisions and a 20-game conference schedule in basketball. This would give the 7 Catholics a conference home, television dollars from the A-10's NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament Shares, and the A-10's automatic bid to the tournament. The downside is that the A-10 has a lot of dead weight programs like Fordham, Rhode Island, and St Bonaventure that either are terrible at basketball, have no television market or following, or both.
Another idea I have been a proponent of is the creation of a new conference by cherry picking the best of the A-10. The only problem is this new conference would begin on a shaky financial grounds. All the schools involved would likely old their old conferences exit fees, the new conference would have no stockpile of tourney shares, and no immediate automatic bid to the tournament. This would be harder to accomplish.
I think their is one way that the Catholic 7 could pull off dissolution of the Big East and thus escape the Big East exit fees and give themselves a better financial footing regardless of whether they chose to go to the A-10 or found a new league. This would essentially require buying Temple's vote. The Catholic 7 could offer membership in their new league and payment of whatever fees required to put the Owls back into MAC football. (It might also require giving Temple back the $1 Million bribe they were required to pay Villanova in order to get in the Big East.) This might not be a bad idea for Temple. It would keep them with Northeastern basketball schools (for those who don't know Temple is a northeastern school that is good at basketball), sparing them the lengthy roadtrips in basketball and Olympic Sports that they would have to make if they stayed with the football faction. With the BCS era and the playoff era beginning the football schools no longer have an advantage over the MAC when it comes to access to the biggest post season stage in college football and as this season has demonstrated, when the MAC has a good year they are capable of breaking the glass ceiling.
Getting out of the Big East without paying exit fees would give the Catholic 7 and Temple a much better financial situation and they would be better able to afford starting their own league and lure away the cream of the A-10 to create a dream urban Catholic League spanning the Northeast and Midwest.
If dissolution by vote and/or an amicable split between the factions cannot be attained then I think, like I have reiterated multiple times on this blog, the Big East should simply start behaving like two conferences under one umbrella. Add ECU and Tulsa as full members and put them in a division with the football schools while UConn and Temple play with the Catholic 7 in two divisions of 9. Each division plays double round-robin conference schedule and a handful of crossover games with the other division to fill out the conference schedule. The Catholic 7's association with the "unworthy" C-USA upgrades would be minimized as would the effect on their RPI by playing weaker schools.
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