I’ve said it enough times, that I believe the Big East will split around 2010. The basketball schools and the football schools will finally enact the final split.
Others have been more obtuse in what they expect. Greg Doyel at Sportsline, in his May 16 entry on his blog obviously is thinking as I am.
However, the college sports landscape is in for at least one more seismic shift in the near future — probably to be triggered by the Big East after a few years as a 16-team basketball monolith.
When that shift happens, the tremors will immediately impact the biggest leagues in the Northeast. Basketball schools and football schools will start reaching for life preservers, and Temple might have to decide between the MAC and the A-10 — and the A-10 doesn’t offer Division I football.
That’s speculation, but in a few years something major will happen regarding the Big East. And when it happens, the trickle-down effect will leave Temple with a choice between the MAC, A-10 and perhaps whatever new league emerges from the Big East split.
Call it a hunch, but unless Temple really turns it around the next version of the Big East still won’t come calling.
Then Mike DeCourcy at the Sporting News drops an interesting nugget.
The NCAA prohibits teams invited to the NCAA Tournament from competing in the NIT. The NIT is suing over that restriction, and one coach asked to testify suggests the NCAA has good reason to fight the suit. He believes NCAA leadership is concerned that if the NIT prevails, BCS schools eventually would be free to start their own postseason basketball tournament. They’d never generate the billions the NCAA tourney does, but they’d keep all the money, as they do in football …
Think about it. A NIT Tourney that competes against the NCAA. If they struck a deal with the BCS conferences, corporate sponsors would be falling over themselves to sign-on. It wouldn’t even have to take place during the NCAA. A week, 2 weeks later. It would gut the NCAA Tourney, much the way the NCAA gutted the NIT.
It would also make it more possible for the BCS conferences to eventually sever its restrictions to NCAA rules. Clearing the way for paying players and changing everything. Okay, now I’m really speculating.
Still…
