Big East Tournament 2012 Schedule: Why Defections Will Kill Prestigious Tourney

It won't be long before the country's best annual conference tournament is without Syracuse, Pittsburgh and West Virginia.

And that just sucks.

It sucks because we'll lose the classic Syracuse versus UConn matchups that have headlined the tournament in recent years, most notably the six-overtime thriller in 2009.

It sucks because we'll be losing three schools that have won five of the past nine Big East tournaments. Hell, Syracuse alone has won the tourney five times since 1980—trailing only UConn and Georgetown, who have won seven apiece in that span—and very well could make it a sixth this season.

It sucks because in the list of top 10 moments of the Big East tournament since it moved to Madison Square Garden compiled by BigEast.org, the three schools appeared in six of the 10 moments.

And it sucks because, quite simply, these schools have been very good basketball programs in recent years.

Change is a part of life, and thus, is most assuredly a part of sports. But what is hard to swallow in this particular instance is that these changes had little to do with basketball.

These were football moves that have stolen some awesome basketball tradition.

It's no different in the Big 12, which loses a classic and fantastic rivalry between Kansas and Missouri. But that's the new landscape in college sports—football money has rendered nothing sacred.

And you guessed it—that sucks too.

So I will lament the end to the Big East Tournament as I have come to know it. It will go on, and the eventual additions of Temple and Memphis will help.

But it ain't Syracuse vs. UConn at the Garden.

And you already know what I think of that.

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