Athletic programs move into new conferences
By Brian Betz
What started with a few teams shuffling out of the Big East and into the ACC has turned into an inter-conference game of musical chairs.
With football powerhouses Miami and Virginia Tech leaving the Big East Conference for the ACC after this season and Boston College doing the same (although possibly not until 2006), some holes were left to fill in the depleted Big East.
The solution for Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese will be the addition of five former Conference USA programs: Cincinnati, DePaul, Louisville, Marquette and South Florida.
The change will take effect in the Big East at the start of the 2005-2006 school year.
At the same time the music seemingly stopped, Conference USA went and raided the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) of Southern Methodist, Rice, and Tulsa and took Marshall and Central Florida from the Mid-American Conference to fill their void. Those schools will make the move in 2005.
This quick turn of events has left an intriguing shakedown for both collegiate basketball and football.
The ACC morphed itself into arguably the toughest football conference in adding Miami and Virginia Tech (currently No. 4 and No. 6 respectively in the Bowl Championship Series poll) to a conference long dominated by Florida State, who's currently third in the BCS poll.
With those three programs squaring off every year, not to mention the presence of up-and-comers Maryland and North Carolina State (6-3 and 7-3, respectively), the ACC now runs much deeper than a couple legitimate contenders.
And although Mike Tranghese said on May 20 that if teams were to leave the Big East for the ACC, it would be the most disastrous blow to intercollegiate sports he's seen in his lifetime, the Big East sure benefited from the basketball perspective.
Excluding Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College, seven of this preseason's top-25 teams are either in the Big East, or will be after the change: No. 1 Connecticut, No. 7 Syracuse, No. 16 Louisville, No. 19 (tie) Notre Dame and Cincinnati, No. 22 Pittsburgh and No. 23 Marquette.
But a big blow may come to the Big East starting the 2005 season if Big East football can't remain a BCS conference after renegotiations next year. It's shaky whether the schools joining the Big East aid the conference in remaining as such. The only real anchors that have held Big East football credibility have been Miami and Virginia Tech. In three of the past four years, one of those teams has competed for the national title.
Conference USA meanwhile seems to have gotten the short end of the stick with losing basketball programs Louisville, Cincinnati and Marquette, along with their coaches Rick Pitino, Bob Huggins and Tom Crean. Though they've filled their vacant spots, the Conference USA postseason basketball tournament won't mean what it used to with the losses they've suffered.
What's left now to see is whether the dominant basketball programs that will comprise the Big East in 2005 remain dominant, and whether the ACC will truly turn out to be the football haven that it's looking to shape up to be. And of course, whether this is even the last of the realignment across all major conferences of the NCAA.
Contact Brian Betz at (408) 554-4852 or at bbetz@scu.edu.