The Big East Is Back

It's been four years since the breakup of the Big East, which has been enough time for us to gauge the success of the split.  There have been definite winners and losers, but one thing is for sure.  The Big East has absolutely maintained its status as one of the premier conferences in college basketball.

The most obvious winner here has been Villanova.  Since the split, they've won four straight Big East regular season titles and won the tournament twice (after winning one title in the first 34 years of the conference's existence).  Oh yeah, and they won the National Championship last year, and they're the No. 1 overall seed in this year's NCAA Tournament.  So, yeah, I'd say remaining in the Big East has worked out pretty well for the Wildcats.

In fact, it's worked out well for the likes of Seton Hall and Providence, too.  Those two were overwhelmed in the supersized old Big East to the point where they were barely competitive.  But since everybody else left the conference, Seton Hall and Providence have both won a Big East Tournament title (their first since 1993 and 1994, respectively), and they're back to being NCAA Tournament regulars.  So, I'm sure if you were to ask the higher-ups at Seton Hall and Providence, they don't mind the fact that the Big East is back to being a smaller league.

All three of them hadn't won the Big East since the mid-90s (their last wins were three in a row, one each, from 1993-95).  Now, the three original Big East members (Villanova technically isn't an original member, but they joined in the Big East's second year, so they count) have kept the trophy "in the family" so to speak.  I'm sure we'll eventually see one of the newer members win the Big East Tournament at some point, but as someone who fondly remembers the old Big East, it's nice to still see those traditional teams winning (at least for now).

A lot of "experts" predicted that the Big East would never again approach the level of NCAA at-large bids it did when it was a 16-team superconference.  While it's impossible to reach the record 11 that the old Big East set in 2011.  We're not likely to see three Final Four teams or three No. 1 seeds coming from this version of the Big East, either.  But the people who saw the split as the beginning of the end of the Big East were sorely mistaken.  This year, there are seven Big East teams in the NCAA Tournament, second-most of any conference, and the Big East has put at least four teams in the Tournament every year since the split.

Meanwhile, the American, the other child of the old Big East is still trying to find its footing as a basketball league.  Yes, UConn won the National title in that league's first season.  But the Huskies were a seven-seed that year, and the American hasn't so much as had a team in the second week of the Tournament since then.  In fact, this is the second time in three years that the conference is being represented in the NCAA Tournament by just SMU and Cincinnati.  (And, the comparison isn't exactly fair, but one of the reasons the UConn women have never lost a conference game in the American is because they have literally NO competition.)

There's no question which league came out on top, at least on the basketball side of the split.  And you've got to feel for UConn and Cincinnati.  They're the two marquee schools in The American, yet they'd both prefer to be in any league but.  UConn desperately wants to join the ACC (and still might if they decide to add a 16th team), while Cincinnati is willing to jump to any major conference that will have them.  If one or either were to leave, that would be a major blow to The American, and further push the Big East ahead.

UConn and Cincinnati aren't the only former Big East schools that came up losers in this situation.  It hasn't exactly been roses for Syracuse and Pitt, the two that started all of this by joining the ACC.  Or Rutgers, which sucked in the Big East and is even worse in the Big Ten.  Rutgers has no business being in the Big Ten.  Everybody knows that.  But the Big Ten wanted a "New York" school, so Rutgers jumped at the opportunity.  You can't really blame them, but their athletic aspirations have, for the most part, been a colossal failure, and the school is hemorrhaging money.  And New Jersey taxpayers are not happy about it.

Back to Syracuse and Pitt, though.  They've suddenly found themselves in the same situation in the ACC that Seton Hall and Providence used to be in during those final years of the old Big East.  Syracuse, in particular, was always one of the marquee programs in the Big East.  In the ACC, though, they're just another middle-of-the-road team.  They went from being one of the best teams in the Big East and an almost guaranteed Tournament bid every year to one that's lucky to finish in the top half of the ACC.  Syracuse has missed the NCAA Tournament in two of the last three years and shouldn't have gotten in last year.  Yes, they made the Final Four.  That doesn't change the fact they didn't belong in the field.

Pitt's in even worse shape than Syracuse.  Not only are they a mid- to bottom-level team in the ACC, they don't have the brand name to make them automatically relevant the way Syracuse does.  I really think they're in danger of turning into another Boston College.  BC saw nothing but dollar signs when they joined the ACC 10 years ago, but look at them now.  They're irrelevant in both football and basketball, which really is hard to do.

Notre Dame and Louisville, meanwhile, made the Big East-to-ACC transition without missing a beat.  Notre Dame has arguably become a better basketball program since joining the ACC, while Louisville, after dominating the final years of the old Big East, has found a similar level of success in the ACC.  Louisville's football program definitely benefited from the move, too, so of all the former Big East teams now in the ACC, they're absolutely the ones who've performed the best since switching conferences.

Of course, the argument could be made that the new ACC is more competitive than the old Big East ever was.  That may be true, but it further illustrates my point.  In the ACC, Duke and North Carolina will always be top dogs.  Syracuse is just another team.  In the old Big East, though, Syracuse was one of those top dogs.  There were plenty of other rea$on$ for their move, but I don't see that changing anytime soon.

I'm sure the 10 remaining Big East teams don't miss Syracuse, Pitt, Notre Dame, Louisville and Rutgers, though.  They're perfectly happy being in the Big East as it is.  The conference will never be what it was.  But the Big East is still relevant come March.  And that's not going to change.