Simplifying the Big East Basketball Schedule: Create Two Divisions

Nearly 150 basketball games will be played within the Big East Conference between December 26th and early March 2010. Not surprising that it takes three people working year-round to synchronize the 16 teams, arena availability, and television spots. 

All 144 games on the Big East schedule will be on TV one way or another, mostly on the ESPN family of networks.

That is great to promote and showcase what some call the greatest basketball conference ever, and being a Cincinnati fan, I am thrilled the Bearcats will play Pitt on the first Big Monday broadcast of the year.

What has gotten lost since the conference expanded in 2005, however, are the regional rivalries that should be built in to the schedule. Some of these go back more than a quarter-century. Cincinnati has been playing Louisville, for instance, since 1975 when both were members of the Metro conference.

Pittsburgh and West Virginia call their football game "The Backyard Brawl," and are nurturing their love-hate relationship on the basketball court.

DePaul and Marquette have played each other 105 times.

The conference schedule needs to assure all these guys play each other twice a year in a home-and-home.

The best way to accomplish this is to split the mega-conference into two divisions. For lack of better names, we'll have East and West. If the Big Ten can have eleven teams, the Big East can have a Western division. The arrangement would look like this:

EAST

Connecticut

Georgetown

Providence

Rutgers

Seton Hall

St. John's

Syracuse

Villanova

WEST

Cincinnati

DePaul

Louisville

Marquette

Notre Dame

Pittsburgh

South Florida

West Virginia

Each team would play a home-and-home with the other seven teams in their division. They would also play four of the eight from the opposite division, for a total of 18 conference games.

Which opposite four to play could be determined any number of ways, and could switch or alternate every two years.

I am not too concerned with how those four games are chosen here, because the spirit of this plan is to reinvigorate a league that has not lived up to the hype since the expansion in 2005.

The 2006 NCAA Tournament was the first for the new-look Big East. They received eight bids, two more than the SEC and Big XII. Just six of the 16 danced in '07, followed by eight in 2008.

The 2008-2009 season was the league's most successful. Three of the seven teams were No. 1 seeds, and Villanova and UConn made the Final Four. They were just the third and fourth Final Four teams from the Big East since 2005. And even with that success, the Big East has never had a conference RPI rank higher than two.

Ensuring these rivals play each other twice every year will give a shot in the arm of the Big East. Splitting the conference into two divisions can breathe new life into the rivalries that have simmered down with the current scheduling format.

And guess what? The games will still be on TV, and more butts will be in the seats.

You're welcome, Mr. Marinatto.