When Big Monday was Actually Big
Forget the NBC Thursday night sitcom slate; as a basketball-obsessed kid in the ‘90s, Must-See TV truly lived on Mondays.
ESPN’s Big Monday debuted in 1987, before my time. Once I became a hoops junkie, the weekly hoops tripleheader grew into a genuine event in the vein of Monday Night Football.
That’s not to say Big Monday ever approached the popularity or cultural impact of MNF, of course. But it is fair to cite Big Monday as indicative of, if not partially responsible for, an era when college basketball was presented as a top-tier national sport in months other than March.
Big Monday remains indicative of college basketball’s packaging today — which is to say, it’s largely neglected and treated as filler.
The label is still used in 2022, but nothing about it feels particularly big. The most notable and damaging change came from the elimination of the late-night West Coast game.
ESPN launched Big Monday directly coinciding with UNLV’s peak under Jerry Tarkanian: January ‘87, three months before the Runnin’ Rebels played in the first of three Final Fours in five years.
UNLV’s home Big West Conference occupied the nightcap of the tripleheader. While the Runnin’ Rebels were well ahead of the pack, the Big West of this era was a damn good league.
The 1990 NCAA Tournament that ended with UNLV destroying all competition en route to the national championship featured another two Big West teams as at-large entrants into the field: New Mexico State and UC Santa Barbara. The conference arguably deserved a fourth team in Long Beach State, which went 23-9 with two wins over NMSU (including in the Big West Tournament) and at Texas.
While the 49ers were left out of the field, UCSB arguably owes its at-large bid into the Big Dance to Big Monday.
The Gauchos headlined one of the season’s last tripleheaders with an upset for the ages, handing UNLV its last loss until the fateful Final Four defeat against Duke 13 months later.
The Big West endured some trying times in the years to follow, not the least of which was the NCAA hammering UNLV with sanctions1. Coinciding with Cal State Fullerton and Long Beach State shuttering their football programs, the conference was forced to make dramatic changes that impacted its make-up and rendered it a less attractive option for that significant timeslot.
But as the decade went on, a new contender emerged from the Western Athletic Conference in the Rick Majerus-coached Utah teams, New Mexico boasted one of the most intimidating home-court advantages in the country while playing for Tournament bids, and thus the WAC was a perfect option to fill out the Big Monday schedule.
With the pillars of the Big East and Big 12 still in their spots, Big Monday marched on into the new millennium.
Now, the 2000s were pivotal for college basketball’s stature on the national sports landscape. Early exits of elite talent for the NBA grew exponentially before the 21st Century — so much so that one article in 1997 lamented Tim Duncan’s departure from Wake Forest as the farewell of the last true college basketball star.
By the 2000s, breakout stars were rarely staying past their second year — if they made it onto a college roster at all. High schoolers going pro had become so en vogue that it was actually creating a problem in the NBA. The league’s solution of a so-called One & Done Rule in 2005 arguably hurt the college game even more for the next decade or so in a way that college hoops is still trying to overcome.
Coinciding with ESPN acquiring broadcasts right for the NBA didn’t help. College basketball was a tentpole of ESPN airtime throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and the game was marketed like a big deal; Big Monday was born from this strategy.
The NBA muscling in relegated college hoops to status as my least favorite Bristol buzzword *shudders* inventory.
Even comparing the promotional materials from its heyday and more recent years reflects the degradation of Big Monday. The Robert Goulet commercials of the ‘90s were fan-favorites:
And while not specific to Big Monday, Goulet’s spots existed in the same era as the outstanding Chris Farley ads.
Forget having a big star as the face of a Big Monday (or college hoops in general) campaign today. Hell, I don’t even know if there is a Big Monday campaign nowadays.
I do know that this boring logo practically begs the audience not to care.
Yet, even so, Big Monday itself still felt big despite not being presented as such. Credit the West Coast Conference filling the late-night window of the Big Monday tripleheader. Just like UNLV in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s, Gonzaga’s rise to national powerhouse coincided with its conference occupying that TV real estate.
In the same way the Runnin’ Rebels buoyed Big West counterparts like New Mexico State and UC Santa Barbara, Gonzaga’s transformation from unlikely underdog in 1999 to routine top 10 program by the late 2000s bolstered the growth of Saint Mary’s.
Among the most memorable latter-day moments in Big Monday history is an SMC team with a freshman named Patty Mills knocking off a Gonzaga bunch with designs on the Final Four.
The WCC today is collectively better than at any point when the conference played on Big Monday. Gonzaga played in last spring’s national championship game and may well again this year, SMC has remained a consistent challenger to the Zags for more than a decade now, the addition of BYU adds a consistently strong member, and San Francisco is a legitimate contender for an at-large bid come Selection Sunday 2022.
But the Big Monday spot on which those teams would have been showcased in a bygone era no longer exists. Neither does Big Monday — not in any meaningful sense.
Yes, the title’s still used, but the lineup’s really indistinguishable from any other night of college basketball on ESPN.
Blame the death of the Big East football, at least in part.
With the league no longer supporting the chief revenue sport — some would argue and have argued as a direct result of ESPN2 — the Big East retooled and found a new home on FOX. While the ACC filled the early window of Big Monday, it’s just…never been the same.
It’s one of those phenomena that’s difficult to explain to someone who never experienced it, but the ACC Big Monday games have never delivered as consistently as the Big East used to. Consider it like Monday Night Football after it moved from ABC to ESPN. MNF still shows the NFL, and it’s still Monday nights, but there was something intangibly special lost when the TV staple moved to cable.
Likewise, the ACC just hasn’t provided the same Big Monday magic. In an ironic twist, the Big East on FS1 just doesn’t hit quite like the old FOX Sports Network ACC Game of the Week on Sunday evenings.
Big Monday Big 12 still routinely comes through. I contend the greatest regular-season basketball game of the 21st Century was the January 2016 showdown between Kansas and Oklahoma, which aired in the conference’s traditional Big Monday slot.
This instant classic leading into a showdown between Saint Mary’s and Gonzaga for a nightcap would have been too perfect, but that’s not Big Monday anymore.
While not as scandalous nor as impacting on the national college basketball landscape, New Mexico State — the most consistent challenger to UNLV in the Big West and the program that took up the conference’s banner upon the Runnin’ Rebels being placed in hoop purgatory — was hit with significant sanctions just a few years later.
A topic I plan to explore in more depth at some point soon is the ripple effects the death of Big East football created across multiple avenues.