Pitt Panthers Football: Commissioner Marinatto's Leadership Grade? D

What will have to happen before John Marinatto, current Big East Commissioner, wakes up or is thrown out?

You can tell by looking at the guy he loves to talk. But what has he actually accomplished?

Criticisms of his leadership abound and are too plentiful to be listed in this slide show.

Start with the lack of conference expansion in football and end with the Big East football schools' TV payout.

Include bowl alignments along the way and a distinct prejudice for the basketball schools.

He appears to be a very self-contented individual, unfettered by the dismal start his small conference has made this season.

But it could get worse.

Marinatto's Big East Offices In Providence Far From Epicenter Of FBS Football

From the Friars den the comish rules

The Big East spans from Rhode Island to Florida with South Central stops in Louisville and Cincinnati. The league offices, however, have remained in tiny Rhode Island.

Once upon a time, having the offices hugging the Northern Atlantic coast was a fortuitous arrangement with neophyte ESPN close by in Bristol, Conn.

ESPN now has a global view.

Is it too much to ask Commissioner Marinatto to move away from Providence and set up shop in New York City?

How about league offices over-looking Times Square with logo blazing bright for the many web cams that scan the area and the millions of visitors its hosts per year? 

Hey, how about at least discussing a possible move to raise the profile?

Larry Scott & PAC 10 Upstage Big East In Times Square Extravaganza

I wonder what these guys are thinking...

Maybe it was a stroke of PR genius. Maybe not.

You've got to give Larry Scott an A+ for trying to do anything and everything to make his somnolent conference relevant in the Eastern Time Zone.

Even if just a few New Yorkers enjoy a few more espressos to make it through the second half of PAC 10 football on ESPN, Scott will have been successful in his eye-opening and expensive trip east if papers like the New York Times, Washington Post, and Boston Herald expand PAC 10 football coverage in their standard college reporting.

It sounds like a long shot.

Scott's best PR source may be his coaches. New York City pleasure-pops serotonin right through the skull. The coaches will talk about the experience to their fans and new East Coast friends.

Big East Football Is No Magic Eight Ball In 2010

Bearcats fall to 1-2 in 2010

Cincinnati's loss to North Carolina State was painful in more ways than one.

Like Kragthorpe's first season after Louisville's Orange Bowl victory, Butch Jones and his team are heading in the wrong direction.

An unlikely and unheralded choice to lead the ACC, North Carolina State is now 2-0.

Factor in last season's NCS victory over eventual 10-3 Pitt. Despite posting a losing record in 2009, the Wolfpack were able to beat the Big East's second-best team.

The defending Big East champs looked downright awful against an ACC also ran.

West Virginia struggled last week against Marshall. However, they are leading the league since Rutgers' offense has been too sluggish for the Scarlet Knights to command top position.

It Pitt should fall to Miami, the Panthers will sink to 1-2 with Notre Dame on the horizon.

At least James Madison doesn't appear on the schedule.

Marinatto's Failure To Renegotiate Gator & Sun Bowls Displeased Fans

West Virginia was last Big East Team in Gator Bowl

A vociferous group of Rutgers fans through their website onthebanks.com have expressed displeasure with Marinatto's inability to get a deal done to extend contracts with the Big East's flagship bowl, the Gator, and a bowl generally viewed as a good third-place choice, the Sun.

He wasted too much time and was not aggressive (imagine that) with either the Gator or Sun Bowls to renegotiate Big East tie-ins.

Rutgers fans were not happy being sent to the Papa John's Bowl (Birmingham Bowl) in 2008.

Nunesmagician.com and pittblather.com chronicled the commissioner's lack of timeliness in getting bowl contracts finished.

Marinatto boasted about reducing Notre Dame's eligibility to the league's #2 bowl to once every four years. If and when Notre Dame grabs the Champs Sports Bowl this season,  the Gator Bowl replacement, the criticism will not stop.

However, Marinatto's swapping the International Bowl for the Pin Stripe Bowl and convincing the Birmingham Bowl to invite an SEC team (eighth?) are solid moves.

Marinatto Denies He Has a Notre Dame Problem

Powerful allay or parasite?

When is the commissioner going to seek help for his Notre Dame addiction?

Yes, he did reduce the Irish's bowl eligibility for the league's second-best team, but many fans wonder what went on behind the scenes to make that deal.

If Marinatto learned only one thing from this summer's expansion madness, it's how much the Irish depend on Big East basketball.

Why then has Marinatto allowed the Irish to dictate the most selfish schedule arrangements with Rutgers and UConn?

Playing games regularly in neutral locations won't help the Scarlet Knights pay for their stadium addition nor will it win good will in New Jersey.

Connecticut is having second thoughts on agreeing to off campus Irish-Huskie games.

Notre Dame wants to tout its Catholic heritage, but pure greed reeks of hypocrisy.

Marinatto's comments: "I don't have any control over Notre Dame scheduling."

Can you hear Jim Delany saying the same thing?

Marinatto's Babble Belies His Lack Of Action In Expansion Debate

Central Florida's stadium is as good as any in the Big East

Big East football fans are a smart group.

Unlike the Tea Partiers who are funded by the same big corporations they claim to detest, or Florida fans who believe loyalty means having a lobotomy to remove the objectivity factor, Big East fans can discern BS from the real deal.

Who doesn't want to hurl when Marinatto talks about Central Florida and Memphis not being good fits?

There are two key points:

1) The Big East is going to lose the opportunity to invite Central Florida in the next flurry of realignment.

2) If Memphis is not a good fit, why was Marinatto's buddy Mike Tranghese in Memphis for several months working as a "BCS Advisor" to the Tigers?

Eliminating Memphis from consideration isn't difficult to justify. The Tigers have a dismal football program and they have not reached out to any Big East teams for scheduling purposes.

Tiger basketball has been wracked by scandal.

With a conference that will be 33 percent smaller than every other BCS conference except the Big XII when Big Ten and PAC 12 expansions are complete, the Big East's top teams are under extreme pressure to perform.

This season, for example, if Miami beats Pitt and West Virginia falters, cries of 2004 will be heard once again.

Just about every time the Big East and BCS bowls are discussed, Pitt's embarrassing 2004 loss to Utah is brought up.

Expanding to 12 football teams might give the Big East greater and necessary margin for error.

Marinatto Makes Little Effort To Hear Fans Or Address Them

A Texas connection would do a lot for Big East football

Frankthetank.wordpress.com has written extensively about major college football expansion.

This past spring when the Big Ten expansion wheels kicked into high gear, Frank wrote that the Big East needed to take far flung measures to survive.

Teams in five other conferences want what the Big East has: A path to a BCS bowl without having to go undefeated.

Frank mentions several Texas schools who would be a good fit for the Big East. These include the University of Houston, every bit the equal to South Florida, TCU, and possibly SMU.

These three former members of the SWC might only be interested in associate Big East memberships.

Choose one of the Dallas area schools, invite Houston, throw in Central Florida, and nurture Villanova's move up to the FBS. The result is a solid 12-team football conference.

Don't think Houston or TCU would turn down the Big East. These two programs want to be a regular part of the BCS.

TCU and now UH play in their own stadiums before sold-out audiences.

UH's Robertson Stadium, pictured above, is one of the best venues for college football in the country with unbridled sight lines, loud crowds, and ample tailgating space around the stadium.

Adding Florida and Texas teams would widen the conference's sphere of influence and improve recruiting.

Is Marinatto even aware of Frank's suggestion? Probably not.

John Swofford, ACC Commissioner, Outsmarted Tranghese and Marinatto

Swofford not a clown when it comes to $$

Very few Big East football fans have anything good to say about ACC Commissioner John Swofford. He is the thief who broke into the house in the middle of the night and stole the crown jewels.

That attitude should be fading. Miami and Virginia Tech haven't won a national championship since they joined the ACC. Both programs have been pretty mediocre even when they're winning.

The passing of time has changed critics' recollection of the events that took place in 2003-04 resulting in Miami, Virginia Tech, and Boston College leaving the "unstable" Big East for the stable and financially rewarding ACC.

The facts? The Big East is unstable and the ACC is more financially secure.

If Tranghese trained Marinatto as thoroughly as some reports suggest, he passed his tone-deafness and failure to follow the business side of college football like a torch to Marinatto.

Shouldn't Tranghese have known something was up when Miami continued to express displeasure with the Big East's financial arrangement?

And why did Tranghese add Marquette and DePaul without publicly acknowledging the pitfalls of a dead-locked split vote?

Now fans know there is no program clearly more unsuited for the Big East than DePaul.

John Marinatto, by failing to stay in front of the expansion issue, is essentially Mike Tranghese pre-ACC raid.

John Marinatto can make no pronouncements that his league will stick together and like Tranghese did with the split football/basketball vote, continues to operate from a position of haplessness.

Whereas Marinatto refuses to go back to his partners at ESPN and re-negotiate the league's television contract, Swofford has been able to garner big bucks for the ACC teams. Critics of the ACC raid should quietly tuck ill feelings away.

As it turns out, the ACC is more stable than the Big East...and more lucrative. ACC teams will be receiving $15 million-$17 million in television revenue under terms of the new contract. Big East football teams will pull in a measly $7 million each.

Whatever terms Marinatto is presenting to ABC/CBS/ESPN no one knows what they are.

Marinatto Conveys Weak Image For Big East Football

Would you send this man roses?

Big bad Jimmy Delany kicked up some sand, but none of it hit the face of Johnny Marinatto.

Johnny whimpered a little bit then looked around him.

Seeing a few grains of sand on his towel but none on his body, he sighed.

Then he went right to his florist and purchased a dozen yellow roses.

On the card he simply wrote, "To Jimmy, Love Johnny."

What Marinatto actually said was something to the effect that Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany would let Marinatto know if the Big Ten was going to do a "warm interface" with any of the Big East teams.

"He hasn't called me about that yet," Marinatto said when Texas' decision to stay put leveled off Big Ten expansion for the time being.

Reactionary, scared, self-effacing describe Marinatto's demeanor through an expansion process that could possibly destroy his league.

Add dictatorial to the list but only in-house. Marinatto did a great CYA when he informed his eight football coaches they were under his gag order. There would be no talk of expansion or crumbling.

It was a fitting command from a man who's made his life's philosophy "Out of Sight; Out of Mind."

After all, when the bomb warmly interfaces with its target, the result will be an explosion.