2022-23 College Basketball Epilogue, Part 6: More Conferences Should Aspire To Be The Big East

UConn’s completion of one of the most dominant NCAA Tournament runs since the formation of modern March Madness in 1985 scored a victory for traditionalists in the ongoing war for college sports’ future.

The Huskies’ championship marked the third a Big East conference team won over the last seven Tournaments. Throw it back a full decade, and the Big East’s four national titles stand alone.

Go back 12 years to the Big East’s six, or two decades in which the conference claims eight championships, and the story remains the same.

Atlantic Coast Conference teams account for the most championships over the modern Tournament era with 11; the Big East falls behind thanks to a drought from Villanova’s first in 1985 to UConn’s first in 1999.

But in terms of both ushering in what we know today as March Madness with a Final Four featuring three of its members, and setting the championship standard of the 21st Century, the Big East provides a model other conferences could — and perhaps should — emulate amid the tumult of conference realignment.

I chose now for this installment of the 2022-23 College Basketball Epilogue, almost three months after the season’s completion and as I’m beginning work on Lindy’s Sports 2023-24 College Basketball Preview, because it doubles as prologue.

A retrospective on the brief life and abrupt death of Big East football will be landing in your inboxes shortly, in which I note the conference’s gridiron failure was rooted in the league always being intended first as basketball-focused.

The Big East launched in 1979 with designs on bringing together the Northeast’s best basketball programs. And, to that end, it succeeded.

In its first 10 years, the Big East was one of four leagues that sent multiple teams to the Final Four in the same postseason. Unlike the Big 8 (Kansas and Oklahoma in 1988) or the mighty ACC (North Carolina and Virginia in 1981), the Big East did so twice in the decade (Villanova, Georgetown and St. John’s in 1985; Providence and Syracuse in 1987).

And though the Big Ten landed both Iowa and Purdue in the 1980 Final Four and Michigan and Illinois in the ‘89 edition, the Big East in ‘85 remains the only league to ever send three teams to the same Final Four.

What’s more, the Big East produced the most diverse collection of Final Four participants in that decade with a remarkable six different programs:

• Georgetown (1982, 1984, 1985)

• Providence (1987)

• Seton Hall (1989)

• St. John’s (1985)

• Syracuse (1987)

• Villanova (1985)

The Big Ten produced five in that stretch, the ACC had four and the SEC had three. And with four of the six reaching the National Championship Game, the Big East again set the bar.

All of this — and the first signs that Jim Calhoun was building a powerhouse at UConn with a 1988 NIT championship and a No. 1 seed with an Elite Eight trip in 1990 — went down before a single Big East football game was ever played.

While the Big East’s basketball championship drought overlaps with the first eight years of the conference getting into football, that’s pure coincidence. John Thompson still had excellent Georgetown teams in the ‘90s, UConn’s breakthrough under Calhoun was oh-so-close before ‘99, and Jim Boeheim coached Syracuse back to the National Championship Game in 1996.

But while getting into the football business didn’t impact the quality of basketball produced in the Big East, the conference’s bloating by the turn of the millennium did dilute the brand.

That’s not to posit the caliber of hoops diminished, as evidenced in the conference producing national championships in 1999, 2003 and 2004. If anything, 2000s Big East almost rivaled 1980s Big East in that the conference always boasted contenders with NBA-level talent, and as a result you were guaranteed an engaging game any day the league played.

What I wouldn’t give for the Big East to return to its rightful place as the lead-in for ESPN Big Monday.

But what the Big East boasted in its quantity of quality, it lacked identity in this era. Writing the Epilogue entry on Conference USA was at times confusing, because it’s really easy to mix up the two leagues before roughly 2010.

It’s the same issue the American Athletic Conference — the football-focused off-shoot that spawned from the Big East 10 years — has now. The ACC suffers from it since poaching a variety of former Big East members a decade ago, too; not so much that the ACC could be confused with Conference USA, but more so that it lacks a clear, easily recognized identity.

Some of that can be chalked up to the influx of former Big East members that took considerable steps back as basketball programs upon joining the ACC have pulled down the ACC’s image.

To that end, enough of the programs that left the Big East have struggled to recapture their past success over a long enough period of time that perhaps it’s no coincidence: Leaving a conference that prioritizes basketball for one chasing football glory (but more so money) hurts a basketball program.

Compare the ACC tenures of old-school Big East members Boston College, Pitt and Syracuse to the impacts they made during their Big East membership.

Depreciation among members of the bloated, turn-of-the-millennium Big East isn’t quite as cut-and-dry: Louisville has taken a significant step back since its Big East days, but Notre Dame and Virginia Tech are arguably at similar levels.

Despite the cloud Bob Huggins’ abrupt resignation leaves over the program, West Virginia has maintained a comparable standard since leaving the Big East for the Big 12. However, the Mountaineers still feel like an odd fit even after a decade.

It’s ironic that the former Big East program most suited for the ACC instead exists as an outpost of a Midwestern conference — and it’s going to feel real uncomfortable when West Virginia shares a space with BYU.

Of all the former Big East basketball members, the only one to point to and indisputably deem better off is Miami. And I don’t think it’s any coincidence at all Miami just feels like a better fit as a member of the ACC at an institutional level.

The athletic brass at reigning national champion and Big East prodigal son UConn should consider all this — as well as its own past experiences leaving the conference once before — amid mostly unsubstantiated but still present murmurings of an impending invitation to the Big 12.

While a Big 12 with UConn joining Kansas, Kansas State, Baylor, Houston, TCU, Iowa State and possibly adding Gonzaga reads like a super-conference, we have evidence these super-conferences fall short of expectations.

It’s happened with the ACC, despite the continued success of its traditional members. It happened to the Big East when it attempted to balance its hardwood emphasis with football dreams.

The true basketball super-conference already exists in the present Big East. The league reclaimed its identity a decade ago with the dissolution of its football presence and became the standard for basketball in the process.

This blueprint is one other conferences should follow: Building a brand around quality basketball rather than chasing football dreams that I think, frankly, aren’t reality.

Without expanding any further, the Big 12 could realistically position itself as a basketball-centric conference and build a strong brand. Adding UCF and BYU were missteps to this end — Memphis would be a better fit geographically and for emphasizing basketball as the league’s soul.

Of course, UCF and BYU were added for football purposes and as a matter of survival. The Big East has sufficiently debunked some of the paranoia over a lack of perceived football strength killing a conference, however, so long as hoops is built on a strong foundation.

The Three-Man Weave Podcast had this breakdown of basketball program budgets last year that shows the Big East in the same community as the Big Ten, Pac-12 and its most frequent raider, the ACC.

Football glory and the resulting paychecks have higher ceilings, but college basketball delivers demonstrable viewership and interesting, and it’s a community of fans that have been badly underserved for at least 20 years.

The Big East has stepped up to fill that niche and has seen it pay off on the court.