SI Conference catch-up: Big East

[EPJr]

SI Conference catch-up: Big East
By Andy Glockner

The name and postseason tournament venue are the same, and so are some of the members, but everything else about the Big East enters a whole new world starting this season. Gone are the football-playing members of the conference in its previous behemoth form, and in their place, basketball schools Xavier, Butler and Creighton join the breakaway Catholic Seven. The league also has a new TV home, inking a deal with new ESPN challenger Fox Sports 1, which even was able to nab ESPN Big Monday mainstay Bill Raftery to help call the revised league’s games. After years of an uneasy alliance, the basketball schools indeed showed the required Onions!! to start anew.

http://college-basketball.si.com/2013/0 ... -big-east/

[marq]

After reading this I sort of wondered if the non-ESPN/Disney/ABC news outlets hope to see FS1 succeed.

Why should we be interested in the success of the new Big East?
Well, besides the TV network issue discussed above (and more competition is always good for business), the new Big East is an interesting test case for whether schools can thrive with basketball-only revenue sport models in college athletics today. Xavier, Butler and Creighton have all annually sunk a heavy percentage of their athletics budgets into men’s basketball and have earned their way to the table. Whether this league succeeds now will probably have a significant impact on how many other schools attempt to mimic that model. VCU is a school that’s moving in that direction, but overall success for this league and the programs that pushed their way in would be good for college basketball overall as it continues to try to maintain a foothold in a football-intense world