If you want to claim a theme from the Big East Media Day, I think it would be considered, “Hey, we’re still here and doing okay.”

At media day at the historic Hotel Viking, Marinatto hoped all the talk of pillaging and plundering would be put on pause as he rattled off the league’s accomplishments. (The past four years, the Big East has won 72.2% of its non-league games, trailing only the Southeastern Conference. League teams have also won 73% of their bowl games.)

This could be one of the more competitive seasons in league play. “The conference is truly up for grabs,” says Pittsburgh coach Dave Wannstedt, whose Panthers were picked to win the league in the preseason media poll. He says five of the Big East’s eight teams could contend for the league title, given all the inexperience at quarterback. Only three starting QBs are back.

Expectations are modest. Parity is being stressed. As is the fact that there are 3 new head coaches and only 3 teams returning a starting QB.

Still, as the money becomes the issue in college athletics and is completely driving all expansion talk, TV deals are the benchmark and the Big East is, well, pathetic looking at the moment.

For Marinatto, the Big East’s television contract is the overriding issue. “That,” he said, “has become our primary focus.”

The current contract with ESPN pays each Big East football school about $3.67 million per year. By comparison, when the dust settled from the Big Ten/Pac-10/Big 12 re-alignments in June, the other five BCS conferences were looking at between $13 million to $20 million per school.

Now for the other conferences, the money isn’t divided between football and basketball. Big East football schools also get money from basketball. That money, though, comes from a pool of 16 teams so that barely brings the take to maybe $5 million per football school. A huge disparity looming for the next several years.

Big East Commish John Marinatto wants to make it clear that despite being locked into a TV contract that has them behind the curve, they really are planning ahead.

“Now, everybody else who has negotiated [with networks] since then, it has caused them to negotiate a little bit differently. And when we look at ourselves — and I am talking about our footprint as a conference — we represent more than 25 percent of the population of the United States and seven of our schools are in the top 13 markets. So from an asset standpoint, we have much more potential than anybody because we represent more of the population than anyone else.”

Marinatto stressed that while the idea of a Big East network is being discussed and steps are being taken to study how plausible and realistic it would be, the creation of a network would not happen at least for the next three years while the league still has contracts for basketball and football with ESPN, ABC and CBS (for some limited basketball games).

I am not so rosy on those population numbers when the markets include small, private schools that have limited appeal and alumni bases. Villanova is strong in Philly, and Georgetown has its appeal. Both, though, seem more of bandwagon situations. Especially Philly with Temple and St. Joe’s as competition. It isn’t too hard to go from those positions to ignored also-rans like St. John’s and Seton Hall (and Providence).

Plus, the fact is those markets are basketball only. Football is what gets the money and the ratings.

Witness the new agreement by SNY and UConn. That’s good for UConn, but embarrassing for St. John’s and the NJ schools that SNY sees more overall attractiveness outside the NY/NJ area. Yes UConn has the better basketball program and a top woman’s program as well, but they also offer  — at least — decent football. In other words, a better balanced package. Rutgers and Syracuse can’t claim that. Maybe it is about SNY trying to expand itself further into Connecticut, but it is still a slap at the schools already in the SNY markets.

In other news, the Big East quietly let leak how it had planned to work if Texas and its lackeys had fled to the Pac-16. The Big East would have gone after Kansas, K-State, Missouri and Iowa State. It would have been a 12-team football and 20-team basketball conference. Troy Nunes, makes the case that it could have worked — at least as far as division splits. Ah, well.

Finally, it’s been making the rounds on message boards and other blogs, but if you haven’t seen it, enjoy this representation of Big East programs as chicks.