Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, December 1, 1993 TAG: 9312010094
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogacyzk
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Not 10, the number of Big East basketball members. Not eight, the number of football-playing Big East schools. And not four, the number of Big East schools that play both revenue-producing sports.
The numbers to crunch are $8.85 million and $9.54 million.
The four football-only Big Easters - Virginia Tech, West Virginia, Rutgers and Temple - offer those figures to their basketball brethren as reasons to become one bigger, happy family.
If unbeaten and frustrated WVU gets the Sugar Bowl berth it wants, that's what Big East Football Conference schools will earn from bowls and network television dates, respectively, this season. If the Mountaineers drop to the Cotton, the money bowl still only shrinks by $1 million.
That could be $18.4 million reasons why making the Big East an all-sports conference could make dollars and sense. Why should Seton Hall and Providence care about a game they don't even play? It's much more than a $64,000 question.
The Big East isn't going to make its basketball revenue pool larger. The league already has the big Eastern TV markets, contracts with ESPN and CBS, and an even split of net profits from the Big East tournament and the league's basketball TV package.
The league gives a school a $120,000 share for each round it advances in the NCAA Tournament. A prime-time football appearance on ESPN is worth three times that. What the football-only schools have to sell the Hoyas, Friars and others on is that once football revenue is shared in a more socialistic fashion (by 1995) that they won't make any less in an all-sports league - and are likely to make more.
However, one administrator in the Big East office said Tuesday this is a decision that must be made with binoculars. For the Big East hoopheads to base their decision solely on 1994 football dollars would be a mistake. The league must speculate on where it and its competitors in college athletics - and their TV potential - are headed.
Is there strength in numbers? If the Big East doesn't take Rutgers for basketball, will the Scarlet Knights go Big Ten? Maybe. Does the Big East want Bobby Knight, a Fab Four and Penn State visiting its back yard for hoops, taking its prospects, pre-empting its TV time?
The much-improved Atlantic 10, which climbed over the Big East's back for basketball glory last season, will be greatly damaged if it loses Temple, WVU and Rutgers. The Big East knows that. The Big Ten is going to grow, maybe by Missouri and more. The Southwest and Big Eight conferences could become one, even if Texas and Texas A & M enlarge the Southeastern to 14 members.
Will the ACC try to subtract Miami from the Big East? Is the Metro, where Virginia Tech has vainly tried to fill its baskets, only a Louisville defection from dialing Dr. Jack Kevorkian? What does it mean to Syracuse if West Virginia, without Big East hoops to shoot, bolts to the ACC?
There also is another school that often has been mentioned in connection with Big East expansion.
Not Louisville. No matter how much the Cardinals want to believe their name is at the top of the Big East list, they should know it isn't even on the list.
No, the great beyond for the Big East always has been Notre Dame. It still is. Why should Notre Dame look for a football league when it has its own TV network? Why shouldn't it look for a basketball league when it's an independent like Sacramento State and Southern Utah?
The church ties are numerous, too - Boston College, St. John's, Georgetown, Seton Hall, Providence, Villanova. And where Notre Dame goes, can DePaul and maybe even Marquette be far behind? Hey, it really doesn't take a Polish Catholic columnist to figure this out.
If it's going to happen, it will happen sooner than later, six months max. There likely are hoops schools in the Big East that won't buy this, but the potential impact of this decision is more sizable than having three teams in the 1985 Final Four was.
Everyone wondered how long it would take Big East football to have an impact. How about one full season?
by CNB