FanShot

Are the Big East basketball schools dumb enough to leave?

5

Reportedly so, as Mark Blaudschun has reported that Mike Tranghese is hanging around, and that's never good news. His wise counsel helped destroy the Big East in the first place. Watching the Big East both destroyed and to see these seven programs leave is a clearly suicidal, insane, deluded move that will have a net result that will be fantastic for Rutgers sports on many levels. Any resulting television package will be near-valueless, and they risk letting Rutgers and Louisville leave the Big East a year early, surrendering millions in NCAA payments, exit payments, and not mention the inevitable myriad lawsuits. It's just baffling to believe that this level of self-delusion could exist. The idea that they, the faction who have been calling the shots in the Big East with dictatorial powers for years, could feel slighted at the slightest notion of power sharing and are willing to reduce themselves to a mid-major merely because their pride has been wounded. What doesn't make sense is why Georgetown, St. John's, and Villanova would go along with this hair brained scheme coming out of Providence and South Orange. You never know, it might still just be another media leak designed to racket up pressure on Mike Aresco to save their precious RPI with a new division setup, or perhaps other parties are leaking this news to lower the value of the TV rights deal? It's still baffling to believe that they could be THIS insane.