Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 7, 1991 TAG: 9102070255
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: SCOTT BLANCHARD SPORTSWRITER
DATELINE: PROVIDENCE, R.I. LENGTH: Medium
The Big East Conference will not expand in basketball.
At the news conference Tuesday formally announcing the creation of the Big East's football league, that was the league's answer to those wondering whether football-only members Virginia Tech, West Virginia, Rutgers and Temple ever will join the Big East's lucrative and successful basketball show.
But the four football-only members - none of which has a prestigious basketball affiliation - seem likely to keep the basketball expansion issue squirming in years to come.
"We came into this conference knowing it was just a football conference," Tech athletic director Dave Braine said. "But when the football conference proves that it can make money and it's not going to take money away from the basketball schools, as time evolves, I think you'll see a change in thinking."
Then a satisfied-for-now Braine added his own qualifier:
"But if not, we're still in the Big East in football."
Tech, of course, would love Big East basketball membership, figuring the national profile and revenue-sharing would boost the basketball program the same way Tech expects a boost for its football team.
Is that as big a pipe dream as Hokies fans pining for the ACC to add Tech? Perhaps.
Boston College athletic director Chet Gladchuk, who spent most of last year working on Metro Conference expansion as Tulane's athletic director, was asked if he thought it possible that the Big East would expand its 10-team league.
"Those are not the ground rules today," Gladchuk said.
Miami's acting athletic director, Paul Dee, was just as stiff.
"We are at 10," he said. "I see nothing that would indicate we would be anything else."
Predictably, Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese was hit with The Basketball Question as he addressed media during the news conference.
"We are 10 for basketball, and we are going to remain 10 for basketball," Tranghese said. "The only way that's going to change is if seven [basketball] members of the Big East Conference choose to vote otherwise. Right now, there is no sentiment to going beyond 10. If you go beyond 10, you go to divisional play, and that's not the way to operate basketball."
Braine and others, however, are counting on the football league being able to generate enough revenue to convince the league's basketball schools that they ought to get a cut, the only way to do so being to add the same schools in basketball.
Eleven years ago, Dave Gavitt brought together nine Eastern basketball schools with little or no basketball legacy - Georgetown, St. John's, Providence, Seton Hall, Connecticut, Villanova, Syracuse, Pittsburgh and Boston College. The result was almost instant success on the court that translated into a national identity as high as any basketball league's.
Last year, the Big East schools voted in Miami in a move widely seen as necessary to form new football league and to keep Division I-A football members Syracuse, Boston College and Pitt from finding their own football league. Miami's weak basketball program adds little if anything to the Big East.
Some wonder why the Big East would ever tamper with its basketball again. And although the issue was squashed at Tuesday's gathering, no doubt it will be resurrected in the future.
"You add up the schools, and find there are four football-playing members and six who are not," Gladchuk said. "That means a lot of networking. . . . You never say never. But I will say there is a clear understanding [of the issue now]."
Braine, to judge by the glint in his eye, has a long-range plan.
"You sure don't ask a girl to marry you the first time you date her," he said, grinning, then referred coyly to Big East basketball expansion. "Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't."
by CNB