NYT - Big East still paying for a fumble

[husky8273]

William Rhoden of the NYT uses the BET to discuss a missed opportunity.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/s...ot-embracing-football.html?ref=ncaabasketball

 

[The Funster]

Good article. Tranghese finally gets honest and admits he miscalculated and didn't have the stomach to hang in. For years he was pumped up as being media savvy and on top of everything. He wasn't. He doesn't deserve all of the blame but he does deserve the lion's share. The fact that three non-football playing schools led the resistance to Penn State is no surprise either. It obviously set the tone for years to come.

 

[Palatine]

The problem is the league never evolved from a Providence centric business. They just keep promoting the next Providence guy from the next office down. It is the kind of small-minded provincialism that was doomed to failure.

They should have moved the HQ to New York City two decades ago. Then they should have hired the best people in college sports to run the conference. But the Big East never matured. They remained in the Providence backwater and they are still there.

 

[businesslawyer]

A good, balanced article. So will people stop blaming the Providence office for the basketball schools' failure to truly understand what the future would look like, or the football schools failing to stand up to them a decade ago and saying "we do it this way or we split?" No chance.

 

[Palatine]

You're saying their is no blame for the destruction of the conference?

There is clearly a group at fault and they hail from Providence.

 

[freescooter]

bl,

there is clearly fault to go around. Nobody is saying there wasn't. But the commissioner's job is to identify the direction and sell it to his members. If it isn't you don't need a commissioner, just a file clerk. I think if you read his comments from this and other intervies it is also pretty clear that tranghese doesn't much like the fact that football is the driver which added to his willingness to ignore it.

 

[EROCK CONN]

Some of the articles wording is clearly an attempt to deflect blame from Providence.

The qoute, "The membership voted no, with St. John’s, Villanova and Georgetown leading the resistance.", doesn't say those schools voted against Penn State (I believe Pitt did to), but that they "led the resistance.'' I can guarantee that Providence was not in favor of adding Penn State but realized with the other schools voting to block Penn State that either they didn't need to vote in favor of blocking PSU or they just voted to block PSU and are attempting to reinterpret the past invents to deflect blame.

Also, added criticism should have been given to BC.

Remember Joe Pa desperately wanted to get in to Big East or form an Eastern all sports conference.

I'm young and full of piss and vinegar but I still hold out hope that one day a league can be formed around the Northeast schools

UConn
Cuse
PSU
Pitt
BC (ugh)
Temple ( I know but their in Philly)
Rutgers
Va Tech
West Virginia
Miami
FSU
ND
Louisville
Cincinatti

Add in Nova, and Georgetown,

 

[Pudge]

I find myself agreeing with Palantine. We should have gone to a medica-savvy NYer to really get this conference to a high level. Passing to Tranghese then Marinatto says a lot.

But, I also think we have to remember the ownership structure of a Conference. A Commissioner does NOT have dictatorial power. Particularly when you got to the various agendas we have. THE PAC 10 guy Scott had ... 10 very homogenous Universities (well maybe 9 PLUS Stanford ... cause SC doesn't act like that different) ... and getting consensus seems easier.

I find the Tranghese tour of interviews to be annoying. Anyone else?

 

[freescooter]

Pudge,
I have to agree with you on Tranghese's victory lap. You quit, now go away.
As to the other point, you are correct that he doesn't have dictatorial powers,but he needs to be able to effectively make his case. Tranghese didn't. In fact he suggests that after Penn State was denied he never really tried very hard. He's the commissioner. It's his full time job to make this stuff work. Fact is that for the Prsidents, it is one of about a million issues they need to deal with, from dealing with Boards of Trustees and in the case of public universities, legislatures and governors, to overseeing fundraising to dealing with the faculty to building programs to budgets, well you get the idea. The guy in the commissioner's job needs to a. have his eye on the ball so he gets what is happening in the athletics world; b. be able to formulate plans and programs to best position his conference in that world; c. sell his plans to his directors. Tranghese did none of those things well, by his own admission.

 

[SubbaBub]

It seems so clear today, but what was needed was a Gavitt-like figure hired by a few prominent state universities to put together the eastern version of the Big Ten.

Unfortunately, there were no such Universities at the time other than PSU. Uconn wasn't on the map at that time, nor were RU or WVU really.

If those four were at their current level back then, you could easily see a conference such as, PSU, Uconn, RU, Wvu, Syr(ny), BC(mass), MD, UVa come together rather quickly and later add from VT, FSU, and Miami, PITT, Temple, to get to 10/12. Cincy and Louisville would have had a hard time getting invites.

Oh, what could have been. We now return you to your previously scheduled reality.


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