The interesting story of how the Big East was rebuilt

[ISiddiqui]

I found this to be a very interesting story of how, when people thought the Big East was heading for disolvement after Miami and Virginia Tech left, the leaders of the Big East (mostly Tranghese) came up with a brilliant plan to save the conference and make it stronger today than was when Miami and VT left:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/02/sp...ast.ready.html

November 2, 2006

Rebuilt Big East Gets Big Bounce From Football

By PETE THAMEL
PROVIDENCE, R.I., Oct. 31 — Down the hall from the home of the Rhode Island Philharmonic, in a stale downtown office building, is the headquarters of one of the greatest comebacks in recent college football history.

Three years ago at the Big East office, the situation looked so bleak that Commissioner Michael Tranghese spent three weeks preparing a tactful way to dissolve the conference. The defections of Miami and Virginia Tech to the Atlantic Coast Conference in June 2003 had athletic directors plotting a breakup.

“That was probably the darkest time, only because this thing created in 1979 was going to split,” Tranghese said in an interview at his office Tuesday.

Now, it appears, the road to college football’s national championship will run through the Big East. On Thursday night, No. 3 West Virginia plays at No. 5 Louisville in a conference meeting of unbeaten teams that will help position the winner to play for the Division I-A title.

The turning point on the field came last January, when West Virginia upset Georgia in the Sugar Bowl in Atlanta. That gave the Big East a desperately needed credibility boost. But the more intriguing story is off the field, where creative scheduling, aggressive marketing, a savvy consultant, strong leadership and a dollop of luck have transformed the league’s fortunes.

From 2003 through 2005, the Big East endured relentless criticism in football, particularly from the Mountain West, for retaining its Bowl Championship Series bid.

This season, however, the Big East has three teams in the B.C.S. top 12, as many as the powerful Southeastern Conference. Rutgers (8-0) is the third conference team, behind West Virginia and Louisville (both 7-0). The A.C.C.’s highest-ranked team is No. 15 Boston College. The Mountain West has no teams in the B.C.S. top 25.

“This league is where it is today because of Mike Tranghese,” Tom Jurich, the Louisville athletic director, said. “He had a ship with a bunch of cracks in it and not only patched them, but rebuilt it to the envy of a lot of people.”

The new Big East was formed with breaking up in mind. In the fall of 2003, conference officials decided to reconfigure to an eight-team football league and a 16-team basketball league. Both have lucrative television deals through 2013.

The meeting that shaped this vision actually happened without Tranghese. In the summer of 2003, Kevin O’Malley, a sports consultant and former executive at CBS, met at the Newark Liberty International Airport Marriott with the athletic directors of the remaining Big East football programs: Boston College, Syracuse, Rutgers, Pittsburgh, West Virginia and Connecticut.

O’Malley said the gathering was contentious. Amid talk of the football universities’ pulling away from the basketball programs, O’Malley said, he made a major point: “If they broke up, they were on the verge of taking a precipitous step backwards. They had to step back and ask why they’d do it.”

Many of the Big East’s assets could be saved, including its automatic N.C.A.A. tournament berth, its B.C.S. bid and some of the country’s largest television markets.

“We hadn’t been formal and polite, but it was important for them to listen,” said O’Malley, who serves as a consultant to several conferences, the B.C.S. and Notre Dame.

The league pressed on. But after meeting with Cincinnati and Louisville at a Hyatt hotel in Pittsburgh in October 2003, Tranghese received a phone call from Boston College’s president, Father William Leahy, to say that the university would be leaving. That call came on a Sunday. By that Friday, the league’s presidents had met with South Florida officials at Newark Airport to fill the vacancy.

The next week, Marquette and DePaul, which were known for basketball, were taken aboard to increase the league to 16 members. That was the culmination of five exhausting months.

“Working to rebuild the Big East conference was one of the most time-consuming and energy-consuming initiatives in more than 11 years of being chancellor here,” Mark Nordenberg, Pittsburgh’s chancellor, said. “And it was also one of the most rewarding.”

The league retained its B.C.S. bid in February 2004, only to endure a year of criticism. Then Pittsburgh was crushed by Utah of the Mountain West in the Fiesta Bowl.

“Then the second year comes, and before we even played a game, we got blitzed every day,” Tranghese said. “All I told our people was, ‘Please don’t lash back.’ ”

Tranghese said he knew respect could come only on the field. It arrived with West Virginia’s victory over Georgia. From there, the Big East showed its strength in the boardroom.

O’Malley said that one of the league’s strategies was to have its teams play nonconference games against opponents from B.C.S. conferences.
“There’s no other standard you can use,” he said. “Who’d you play, and who’d you beat?”

For example, West Virginia has won at Mississippi State, Rutgers has won at North Carolina and Louisville has won at Kansas State. The Big East has six nonconference road victories against B.C.S. conference teams, compared with one for the SEC (Vanderbilt at Duke) and none for the Big 12.

The Big East has also been creative in showcasing itself. After ABC’s telecast of last season’s triple-overtime game between Louisville and West Virginia went to only 11 percent of the country, the league gladly accepted a Thursday night slot on ESPN. Instead of fighting Michigan and Penn State for viewers, like Big East teams did last season, the biggest competition for the game Thursday night will be “Grey’s Anatomy.”

“We personally think Thursday night has developed into the ‘Monday Night Football’ of college,” said Nick Carparelli Jr., the league’s associate commissioner in charge of football scheduling. “It’s a big event.”

The league also devised its schedule so that its top four teams — West Virginia, Louisville, Rutgers and Pittsburgh — would wait well into the season to play one another. As the top teams have kept winning, the perception of the league has improved.

Compare that with the A.C.C., which watched its marquee teams, Miami and Florida State, play on the season’s opening weekend. That game, a dreary 13-10 victory by Florida State, exposed the flaws of both teams and sent them and their conference into a downward spiral.

The Big East’s smarter scheduling has generated television demand for its games. The conference’s contract with ABC and ESPN requires that 14 games by league home teams be televised. The league’s strong play has Big East teams on track for at least 20 home appearances.

“We’ve tried to position our games annually where the networks thought we could be the most useful to them, be they on weeknights or the right Saturday,” said Tom Odjakjian, the Big East’s associate commissioner, who is in charge of television scheduling. “That’s been critical.”

In the next few weeks, the league will probably receive another test, as one-loss teams from the SEC, the Big 12, the Big Ten and the Pac-10 attempt to assert superiority over an undefeated Big East team.

Tranghese said he is not too concerned. “I’d be disappointed,” he said. “But if the worst thing that happens to the Big East is that we have a 12-0 team who finishes third in the country left out of the championship game, and we go play in another major bowl, it isn’t so bad.”

[SunDevil]

Thanks for posting the article.

[Klinglerware]

A great read.

Interesting about the OOC games. Since the Big East only plays 7 conference games, it seems like they almost have to play at least one tough OOC game to maintain strength of schedule. This will be even more important if the NCAA finally implements the 12 game schedule.

[General Mike]

Originally Posted by from the article

“This league is where it is today because of Mike Tranghese,” Tom Jurich, the Louisville athletic director, said. “He had a ship with a bunch of cracks in it and not only patched them, but rebuilt it to the envy of a lot of people.”

I don't know about that one. West Virginia beating Georgia in the Sugar Bowl last year, combined with the ACC falling on its face has gotten the heat off the Big East in football. Everyone knew the basketball conference would be solid.

[timmynausea]

I think good coaches have had more to do with the Big East's resurrection than Tranghese. I do think the week night games have helped bring a lot of exposure to the league and the individual programs, though.

[ISiddiqui]

Good coaching definately has helped, but the league had to be kept together for that to flourish. Tranghese is one of many of the BE's top brass that were instrumental in keeping it all together and dealing well with the perception of weakness, especially after Pitt got beat down by Utah in the BCS Bowl a few years back.

[albionmoonlight]

And so the cycle begins. "Our goal is to play tough OOC games against quality opposition in order to demonstrate to the country that we are a top-tier conference. Once we are seen as a top-tier conference, we will start scheduling various schools for the blind as our opposition because all of our coaches will become paralyzed with fear at the thought of losing."


*Note, I am not making fun of the Big East here, but at the thought process of 95% of the "Big Dog" football schools out there.

[cthomer5000]

Originally Posted by Klinglerware

Since the Big East only plays 7 conference games, it seems like they almost have to play at least one tough OOC game to maintain strength of schedule. This will be even more important if the NCAA finally implements the 12 game schedule.

Yeah, totally agreed. With the system the way it is, the Big East teams probably have the most incentive to go out and schedule some real out of conference opponents.

[Swaggs]

The Big East teams need to really show up for their bowl games this season. WVU, Rutgers, Louisville, and Pitt are all bowl eligible right now and South Florida and Cincy each need one more win to get there.

Last season, the Sugar Bowl was the only one of the BE's four bowls that we won. If we can manage to post a winning record in bowl games this season, it will really do a lot to legitimize the conference.

[waltwal]

i think it was a great article and actually will reread it. i do think there are good teams in the big east but the fact that at this stage of the season there are still 3 undefeated teams leads me to conclude that it is not a top conference but rather middle of the road.

i think without a doubt the SEC is the toughest football conference and there are no undefeated teams and this has hurt the rankings of those teams.

i follow the pac-10 which this year is a pretty tough conference but i think quite a ways below the SEC. but what drives me crazy about the rankings is this. Cal went out and played Tennessee. Prior to the season this game looked a llittle easier than it usually would be. as it turned out Tennessee was much better than expected. my thoughts now are why did cal schedule such a potentially tough opponent. if Cal were to run the table (which i am not counting on but is possible) they will not be a #2 tream. but if they had played Ball State an won it would have helped them far more than a bad loss to Tennessee. i just think that to go by records of teams is just not a great indicator of a teams strength. what really tells you how good a team is - is when they have to play 2 or 3 tough games and 3-5 solid opponents. the problem is that somewhere along the way the opportunity for a really good team to lose 2 games is very possible and that takes them out of the BCS.

i think there is no doubt that West Virginia, Louisville are good teams. i really admire the job Schiano has done at Rutgers and Pitt is on the way up. but to think that these teams have proven their rankings is just not the case. by the way i put Boise State in this same boat. the best ream they have played is Oregon State. and while Oregon State (or Hawaii) are solid teams it just isn't the same when you have to play solid teams week after week.

let's face it there should be no rankings but a playoff system. that tells you who is the best.

however i do applaud the job that the Big East has done after losing 3 top teams.

[ctmason]

The Big East has certainly done a fantastic job, particularly in scheduling. To play devil's advocate though, would we be having this conversation if Virginia Tech, Miami and Florida State were not having relatively poor seasons?

What are the odds that those three teams again repeat mediocrity in the same season? In my mind, not very good. Those are three powerhouse programs that have no trouble recruiting top-notch talent. If they are all one-loss teams or one of them is undefeated then the Big East, even with three undefeated teams, unfortunately goes to the back burner again.

As someone said, Louisville and West Viriginia have built great programs, Rutgers is building a very good program, Pitt has a pretty good progrm, but everyone else in the conference has a LONG way to go in my mind. And it is going to take a LOT of winning to overcome the recuriting advantage that most ACC schools have over Big East schools.