BE Landscape Changing?

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The more we hear about Big Ten expansion, the more certain we are that the Big East as we know it cannot survive its next raid.

Rutgers will be in the Big Ten in two or three years, and Pittsburgh and/or Syracuse could join them to form a 14-team league.

So where does that leave UConn?

Probably begging to get into the Atlantic Coast Conference with its good friend (cough) and neighbor Boston College.

So what do Rutgers, Pitt and Syracuse have to offer the Big Ten that UConn doesn’t?

Here’s what. Every member of the Big Ten is also a member of the Association of American Universities, an association of 62 leading research universities in the U.S. and Canada. Rutgers, Pitt and Syracuse are members. UConn is not. Yale, a member of the AAU, has a better chance of getting into the Big Ten than UConn.

I realize I’m suggesting that the sky is falling on the Big East, but I can see no way the Big East can survive as a football league, and any Big East basketball conference in 2015 will be a vastly different entity.


http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2010/03/14/sports/031410_i_was_thinking.txt

 

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Pitt can't afford to be left behind.

You think Pitt shouldn't at least look into the possibility of joining the Big Ten Conference?

You think it automatically will be better off staying in the Big East?

Think again.

You might change your mind after you read what former Big East commissioner Michael Tranghese said Monday.

"The whole expansion thing with the Big Ten is very, very unnerving. ... If the Big Ten comes and takes multiple teams from the Big East, I think the Big East is in trouble. It's a tough situation because I don't think there's anything the Big East can do to prevent it. I think everyone is sort of sitting on pins and needles."

That includes the powers that be at Pitt.

"I think they will be OK," Tranghese said. "I am not as worried about Pitt as I am some of the others. But that's easy for me to say because I'm not sitting in [chancellor] Mark Nordenberg's chair or [athletic director] Steve Pederson's chair. If the Big Ten does expand and you get left behind, it can have a significant impact on the football program."

Tranghese, who stepped down in June after 19 years as the Big East commissioner and 30 years with the conference, made his comments on the "Vinnie and Cook" show on 93.7 The Fan. They came just a few days after West Virginia football coach Bill Stewart talked openly of the Big East disbanding during an interview with a Parkersburg, W.Va., television station. And they came only a week after Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick mentioned for the first time the possibility of the Irish giving up their independent status and joining a football conference.



Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10075/1043132-142.stm#ixzz0iMZK4mMK