The Big East Needs To Use Basketball To Start Its Own Network

In the talk about conference realignment, the Big East has been the bastard child of discussions. The Pac-10 had its dreams of a superconference, but settled at 12, a title game and a new philosophy for scheduling. The Big Ten has already cashed in on a title game thanks to a new deal with Fox. The Big XII lost teams that actually made it more valuable since splitting money 10 ways is better than splitting money 12 ways. The Big East added TCU and the collective reaction was a yawn compared to other realignment moves.

However, the entire discussion has been focused on football because football drives the college athletic bus at the moment. Seeing Fox fork over $140 million for six Big Ten championship games – yes, just that one game a year – is pretty obvious evidence of that. But the Big East is different. It has the best college basketball league in the country and the most popular league in the country – the ACC is really just Duke and North Carolina.

Why am I talking about college basketball on a blog devoted to college football? Because for the Big East to survive as a college football conference, it needs to thrive as a college basketball conference. “But the Big East is thriving in basketball,” you say. And you’d be right. They just need to do more.

They need to create the Big East Network and blow the Big Ten Network out of the water. And they can do that with basketball.

Look at this list of the top 100 television markets. Four of the top 10 markets – I’m giving Chicago to Notre Dame – has college basketball teams that a lot of people in those cities care about. I’m not talking “TCU is in Dallas but no one cares,” I’m talking “Villanova in Philly and those fans needs to see their team play.”

Keep going down the list and it’s incredible how many huge markets the Big East has significant footholds in. The #13 market in Tampa. The #23 market in Pittsburgh. The #30 market in Hartford. The #34 market in Cincinnati. The #35 market in Milwaukee. The #50 market in Louisville. All told, that’s an astonishing ten of the top 50 markets that legitimiately care about Big East basketball. How many millions of people is that? A lot of millions.

So far, the Big East has been completely unable to successfully turn these millions of eyeballs into revenue. The league has been so obsessed with maintaining its BCS spot, and rightfully so, that it has completely lost sight of its golden goose. The Big East was built on basketball. It survived on basketball. It needs to use basketball to get back into the discussion of the country’s best athletic conference.

To me, it seems like a pretty easy sell. The Big East now has 17 basketball games and that means an insane inventory of games, enough to satisfy CBS, ESPN and its own network. Right now, the leftover Big East games are divvied up by the conference to local rights holder in the various territories. In Connecticut, that means UConn games end up on SNY. And that’s where I got the idea that a Big East network would be very, very successful.

I’m a huge Mets fans and the entry into Connecticut for the station had been non-existent for the network’s first few years. In fact, it wasn’t until I moved into the city of Hartford proper that I had the opportunity to get the channel. My father, another Mets fan, lives 20 minutes away in the suburbs and couldn’t even pay for SNY. In my group of friends, I was the only one who got SNY. It was baffling but, hey, the Mets aren’t a draw.

Then in August, SNY announced that it had acquired the local Big East rights, meaning it would air all the leftover UConn basketball and football games. Within a week, SNY was now in every home in the country’s 30th television market and, in most cases, on basic cable. It enlightened me.

When the Big Ten Network was formed, the outrage from Big Ten football fans was palpable. The notion of missing out on a Michigan/Minnesota basketball game didn’t seem to register with most. But in Big East country, almost the complete opposite would be true. For many in Connecticut this year, missing UConn/Vanderbilt in football would not have been the end of the world. But missing UConn play any Little Sister of the Poor in basketball would likely cause rioting and uproar.

I’m using Connecticut as an example because I live here but for many Big East schools, basketball is the sport. Think about the Pitt fans, the Georgetown fans, the Syracuse fans, the Notre Dame fans, the Marquette fans, etc. etc. and how they would react to missing their team’s Big East conference basketball games. I can tell you this – they wouldn’t be happy.

So here in Connecticut, the Big East and UConn used its leverage to get SNY carried in the state. That’s awesome for SNY. What does it do for the Big East?

The Big East, as long as it doesn’t play hardball like the NFL did with its network, could easily gain coverage in more than 25 percent of the top 100 television markets. Based on these numbers they would be in 30 million homes immediately and that doesn’t include the possible markets of Boston and Dallas. And that doesn’t include the rest of the country, which the Big East can give the channel on a sports tier like the Big Ten does with theirs.

The reason a Big East Network would work so well for basketball, besides the tremendous amount of available games, is that ESPN and CBS can’t cherry pick the best games. We know that the Big Ten Network will never air a football game between two ranked teams, at least not in its current form. College basketball television schedules, however, are compiled well in advance of the season.

Look at the current #6 team in the country, UConn, and its schedule. SNY is set to air UConn games against Notre Dame, Marquette, Louisville and Georgetown, to name a few. That last one, according to this week’s AP Poll, would match #6 UConn against #9 Georgetown. Do you think that game would some appeal?

What does any of this have to do with football? There is no question that Big East football suffers from an image problem and part of that, ironically since the product has been so poor this year, is because so few of their games are seen. The only national games are weeknight affairs or the rare nooner on ESPN2.

The Big East Network alleviates that immediately. Having USF/Syracuse available nationwide might draw derision from sportswriters – “Who wants to see that?” – but it would mean the world in recruiting. How often have you heard a Big Ten football coach talk about how important it is to go in any home in the country and say, “You can watch your son play football.”

To recap: a Big East Network would have plenty of programming, an incredible foothold in many of America’s largest markets, almost certainly increase the paltry revenues its current members are receiving, especially the football playing schools, and give the conference a recruiting tool that not even the SEC could compete with it.

And this hasn’t happened yet because….?

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