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| Add Navy and you are looking at the new Big East Conference. |
Another conference change was announced today by the University of Notre Dame who will leave the Big East Conference join the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) in 2014 the earliest. This is just another shift based on exposure and quality of competition. The difference in Notre Dame's case is that their move isn't for football like every other school. In fact, the Fighting Irish will be joining the ACC for all sports except football, where they are known for being an Independent with no conference ties, and also hockey, which isn't offered by the ACC.
The Big East, a once prominent athletic conference, will be gutted once again and lose another solid basketball program. The Big East is arguably the top basketball conference in the entire country as of now, but over the next two years, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, and Syracuse will all be headed to the ACC. On top of this, West Virginia left this season for the Big 12, and Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College also left in 2004 for the ACC.
The depletion of competitive teams in the Big East has been the result of tension between schools that are full members of the conference and schools that are only members for certain sports, specifically the "football only" schools and the "basketball only" schools. The ACC on the other hand doesn't allow "partial members," giving the schools some stability which is very appealing to an athletic program. So if a school is considering making the move, the ACC usually has the upper hand.
In order to deal with all of the departures, the Big East has constantly added more and more colleges to their conference. From 2004-2015, Cincinnati, Louisville, South Florida, Houston, Southern Methodist, Central Florida, Temple, and Memphis have been added as full members. On top of this DePaul and Marquette were added in that time as basketball only schools and Boise State, Sand Diego State and Navy will be added as football only schools.
As a huge sports fan, and student of a school that is still stuck in this train-wreck of a conference, I am very upset. It makes absolutely no sense that the Big East is bringing in schools from all across the country, when the conference name is the Big EAST. Currently, the schools that are members of the Big East span all 4 time zones! The majority of the schools are in the Eastern Time Zone, but DePaul, Marquette, and Houston are in the Central Time Zone, Boise State is in the Mountain Time Zone and San Diego State is all the way in California, the Pacific Time Zone. This means a lot of long traveling and time differences which puts the away team at a huge disadvantage, especially in college sports.
Another problem with this situation is the rivalries that are being broken up. For example, with Syracuse moving to the ACC, the Syracuse and Connecticut rivalry will most likely come to an end. This is because they won't play 2-3 times a year, competing for the Big East title. All of the alumni and current students at UConn, my school, have been taught to hate Syracuse more than any other team and everyone looks forward to those games. Now it loses its significance and everything changes. Imagine if all of the sudden the Red Sox were suddenly put in the American League Central. They would no longer play in the American League East, where they play the Yankees 18 times a year. The rivalry would die and all of the history with it.
One Last Thing: Maybe I'm just bitter because this directly affects my school, but it isn't just happening in the Big East. Schools are jumping conferences all over America to try and get into the "BCS Conferences." This is because these teams receive more recognition in the flawed college football BCS System. These teams get to play in the bigger bowl games and have a better shot at getting invited to the National Championship. In turn, I blame this whole thing on the BCS. If they would just have a regular playoff system like every other sport, schools would be content staying local and remain faithful to their conferences. Their half-ass attempt of a playoff system that they agreed upon for next season with only 4 teams, will also not solve this problem. Until then, we all better get used to the changes because in a few years the Big East may not even exist.
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