On the Banks, a Rutgers Scarlet Knights community

Is this the end game? Depends on whether ESPN wants to crush the Big East once and for all. The way to do that of course would be to stop Tim Pernetti, the one man who has kept the Big East afloat over the past year as Providence worked to destroy the conference. Rutgers is a clear choice in football obviously, and with Jim Calhoun near retirement, let's hope that if the ACC makes a basketball decision, it's a little more muddled. I actually like the fact that Notre Dame is leaving the Big East from a basketball perspective, as anything that hurts the league's basketball programs relatively is a good. However, this will hurt the football teams' bowl access.

Click the link, it has the transcript of a very interesting interview on this subject. Update: out of San Diego, some early projections have the new Big East contract paying all-sports teams $11 million per year. Take that, Brett McMurphy.

Brett McMurphy from CBS Sports has a track record of being consistently wrong about pretty much everything Big East - whether it's parroting the talking points of disgraced commissioner John Marinatto, or repeating ludicrous lies that Boise State was poised to stay in the Mountain West. McMurphy's latest disaster of an article speculates that the Big East next media deal will be flat. Even though it was already below market value in 2005 once the Big East proved that it wasn't total crap after the first ACC raid. Yes, the Big East lost a ton in basketball - it doesn't matter at all for television revenue, considering the conference is a lot better in football. This article might as well be a press release from ESPN. No, one can never predict who will leave the conference. If the lineup stays the same though, McMurphy will once again to be proven an unquestioning mouthpiece with no willingness at all to vet his biased sources.

The above story from Brett McMurphy is just pathetic in the way that the quoted sources are blatantly lying. The Big East would have been fine if everyone would have just gone along with Marinatto's below-market value ESPN deal? That's like saying everything would have been fine if everyone just kept kissing Providence's ass, which is exactly what history's greatest monster, Mike Tranghese, thinks we all should have kept doing. It's 100% true that John Marinatto, inept and bumbling as he was, was merely intended to be a tool for the likes of Providence. How does that make him in anyway a sympathetic figure? He got exactly what he deserved, and so did the Big East for that matter! The guy was given a first and goal and was tackled for a safety. The question becomes though, why did the basketball schools finally dismiss their puppet who so faithfully did their bidding? Maybe because the writing is on the wall, and they knew that a loser like Marinatto wasn't capable of negotiating with the likes of ESPN and NBC Sports. Still, just because they realized the error of that mistake three years too late doesn't mean that they will suddenly go for a man of vision like Tim Pernetti as the next commissioner. The problem with the Big East is the dead weight, and the likes of Providence won't like hearing that they are the problem holding the Big East back. They are not going to go from the single-least qualified person for the job in Marinatto to the single-most qualified candidate in Tim Pernetti. That's not their style, and the only reason that the possibility is even being contemplated today was because jettisoning the feeble Marinatto was so out of character to begin with. No, the same idiots who got us in to this mess will never accept Pernetti as commissioner. With any luck though, he will be in charge of negotiating the next conference television deal, if not finding the next league commissioner. Of course, if they had only listened to him a year ago in expanding aggressively, dumping Marinatto, telling Villanova football to get lost, and taking a hard line with ESPN, then the Big East would be in a position of strength today rather than fighting for its life.

That is the tone of this linked Sports Business Journal article. Now that the Big XII is locked up, the Big East is the only other conference with rights coming to market soon. Either ESPN can pay a hefty penalty to keep the Big East from going to market, NBC can bid up the rights, or ESPN can pull their strings to destroy the Big East by plucking away teams like Rutgers and Louisville. Either way, there should be some resolution as the clock keeps ticking.

The Big East's schedule hole following West Virginia's departure is definitely the driver of this, so it's possible that Temple football could join before basketball. That's of little comfort to Villanova, which never had a realistic chance to join the Big East for football, but now must watch its struggling basketball program share Philadelphia with the Owls. Temple is definitely a better football program than C-USA also-rans like Memphis, not that there was any way for the Big East to replace West Virginia this fall absent Boise. Having another regional team certainly will have some effect on Rutgers, even if indirectly, such as if they lock up RU's plan B recruits early like Syracuse and UConn have been doing as of late. That will matter somewhat, but it will also hurt other regional programs as well. That could be a good thing though. Rutgers should take that factor, as well as the Big East having let TCU out of the conference without a hitch (which cost RU its seventh home game), and demand the following: 1. Temple should only play three conference home games in 2012, instead of four by merely sliding into WVU's schedule. Yes, Temple is accommodating the Big East on short notice, but it's not like they haven't wanted to desperately return for a decade. 2. For that last home game, Rutgers should make a case that it deserves the game over Syracuse, USF, and Cincinnati (the other Big East teams scheduled to have only three conference home games assuming Temple joins.) Syracuse is leaving, and Cincinnati has no fan support, so they don't gain much more revenue with another home game. USF doesn't need the revenue as much because they just lease Raymond James. Clearly, the extra home game means the most to Rutgers. Plus, adding Temple does throw a bit of a wrench into the future games scheduled with them.

The Providence media (who else) started leaking these rumors recently, and now Brett McMurphy from CBS, who is close with John Marinatto, is now taking the rumors public? My response? Wait for Tom Luicci to confirm. As we saw with the Villanova rumors, what Providence wants does not always come to pass, because the Big East football teams can choose who they want to play against. Memphis would need 75% of the Big East football teams to agree before they join for football. Memphis, of course, is horrible at football, and has not been anywhere close to respectable over the past few years. The only way this remotely makes sense is if FedEx doubled their initial offer. For now, fans of competitive Big East football just need to hope that the dolts in Providence are trying to force their will on everyone else through the media again, and that the smart athletic directors like Tim Pernetti are trying to hold their ground. Pretty much, let's see what the Rutgers leaks are over the next few days. If Luicci are Sargeant say this is a done deal, THEN we're screwed. until then, there is still a flicker of hope. Update: and McMurphy says it's done.