Bigger than the Beatles, Part I

I continue my conference breakdowns tonight with a breakdown of the Big East. Let's be honest here, the Big East is one good team and then a heaping pile of dog crap. "But TR," you might say, "ESPN said that the Big East would be the greatest college basketball conference ever, and that they could break the record of 7 for most teams in the NCAA tourney." Well, if I can take you away from Mike Tranghese's talking points for 5 minutes, think about the ACC in football.

Remember when the ACC expanded to 12 teams and we were told that the ACC would rule college football forever? I mean it was only like 3 years ago and we were told that a conference with Miami, FSU, Va Tech, Clemson, BC, and more would have to produce at least 2 BCS teams every year and be guaranteed a birth in the national title game every year. Yet three short garbage years later and the ACC was represented by Wake Freaking Forest in the Orange Bowl. Last year, they were represented by a 8-4 FSU team that was complete crap.
So what happened?
Well, first of all, Miami and Va Tech's constrant recruiting of thugs finally caught up with them. Bobby Bowden's hemmoraging of assistant coaches every year hurt FSU too, but still the ACC shouldn't be the worst BCS conference just because of that, right? The ACC has other issues however. First of all, the addition of 3 high profile teams and the addition of a conf title game brought the other programs more cash. Smart programs like Wake Forest and Maryland invested in their football programs. 8 years ago top ACC teams could count on an automatic win versus those teams, they certainly cannot anymore. In addition, adding 3 solid programs meant tougher conference schedules for everyone involved. Virginia and Clemson used to get to play Duke every year, now only one of them (and I dont know which) gets that game every year, the other has to play Miami or FSU every year and loses the Devils. Big difference. So the 5-8 teams got better at the expense of the 1-4 teams and the result is massive mediocrity in the ACC.

Re-wind to 2 years ago and the creation of the new Big East for basketball. Adding Louisville, Cincinatti, Marquette, and DePaul to go along with championship programs like Syracuse, Villanova, UConn, and Georgetown had to make this the mother of all megaconferences, right?

I mean, in my short lifetime, look at how many of these teams made final 4's or won titles, or had "top 5" programs over a short time:

Pitt: Top 5 program
Syracuse: Title
Gtown: Title
Nova: Title
St Johns: Final 4
UConn: 2 titles
Louisville: Title
Cincy: Final 4
MU: Final 4
Providence: Final 4
Seton Hall: Final 4
DePaul: Top 5 program (Early 80s people)

That is 12 of 16 teams. And the 4 I didnt mention:

Rutgers & S. Florida (duh)
West Virginia (a team minutes away from a Final 4 two years ago)
Notre Dame (one of the most known athletic programs in the nation)

So on paper this was a megaconference.

But then the same thing that plauged the ACC plauged the Big East. There have been fewer gimme wins for the 4-8 teams. Instead of getting to kick the snot out of Providence twice every year, Georgetown now has one game against Providence and one game at Louisville or at Cincy, or they have to welcome bi-polar DePaul to Washington. So in the past when the mediocre Big East teams that always scheduled 11 crap non-conf games and then the one game against a Pac-10 team where they would get slaughtered, and still knew that 8-8 in conference and a win in MSG would get them dancing now sees that 8-8 record become a 5-11 record and they dont even get a trip to the conference tourney. Some people might see that as a sign that the conference is strong 1-15. I see it as a conference mired in mediocrity, an overrated conference whose underlings constantly rode the coattails of the two best teams, now being devoid of those quality teams because everyone loses on the road and we get one good team and a load of 7 to 9 win teams that play Mount St. Mary's, Campbell, Rider, and Cornell for 3 months and show up to Midtown Manhattan in March with two good wins, three terrible losses and a need to win 2 games in New York just to stay off the bubble. These teams tend to be terribly overrated and get bounced early either in NY or the next week in primetime. If there ever was a poster child for this team it was Syracuse (or Pitt) last year. Syracuse went from bubble to a freaking 5 seed and an exit agains the Aggies. Pitt was the 6 seed at the Big East Tourney, lost to the Cuse and ended up getting a 5 seed and then getting flogged in the 2nd round by Bradley.

At least last year the Big East had some quality teams- mostly in the form of UConn, Villanova, and West Virginia. This year does any team other than Pitt scare anyone? And even that Pitt team got destroyed at Wisconsin and lost at Okie State.

The Big East of 2006-2007 is the basketball equivalent of the football ACC of 2006.

I hope to break down the 16 teams, the pretenders, the contenders, and Cincinatti with my next post which hopefully will be tomorrow. Stay Tuned.