Big East's ascendancy was not inevitable

When Villanova upset Georgetown to win the 1985 national title, the Big East was still in its youth - that was its sixth season - but the conference also was on top, winning an NCAA title for the second straight year, sending three of its members to the Final Four, still the only time in history for any conference.

That supremacy was mostly based on people, on Big East coaches and players - Patrick Ewing and John Thompson, Pearl Washington and Chris Mullin, Rollie Massimino and Lou Carnesecca.

Today, the Big East still has its marquee players and coaches, but its regional supremacy is now institutional. Its schools spend more money and make more money than local rivals. Remember how it used to be around here, when every Big Five school had its day, a spinning wheel of local basketball history?

One sign of the changing landscape: Imagine Villanova now hiring a Penn assistant to be its head coach - as it did with Massimino in 1973.

These days, the rest of the Big Five schools still have their highs and lows, but Villanova's highs are

now higher, and its current basement isn't much lower than the others' ceilings.

It's easy to forget how much has changed in that quarter century.

"Back when the Big East was formed, nobody was on [national] TV - it was hard to get on TV," said Mike Tranghese, the longtime Big East commissioner who retired last year. "One of the first things we ever did, we went to ESPN and struck up a little deal. We basically grew up together."

It could have been different in Philly. The Big East's first overture was to Temple, but unofficial talks ended when the Owls decided to throw their lot in with Joe Paterno and Penn State, looking to get a dominant East Coast league up and running around football.

Temple wasn't the only school to pass. Holy Cross, then a regular on regional Eastern College Athletic Conference telecasts, declined Big East overtures, then watched Boston College become the local power.

St. Joseph's athletic director Don DiJulia said he knew the Big East was "going to be the biggest thing since sliced bread." He let it be known that the Hawks would be happy to be Philadelphia's representative.

"I think we pushed them," said Jim Lynam, the Hawks' coach at the time, talking about Villanova's decision to leave the Eastern Eight for the Big East "The fact that we might go if they don't go - in my mind, there was no doubt that pushed them."

That idea for an Eastern league basically died after Pittsburgh chose to join the Big East for its fourth season in 1982. Then the Big East made another fateful decision, voting against taking in Penn State. Imagine how the whole college sports scene would be different if Penn State and Temple were the Big East teams, if Villanova were in the Atlantic Ten.

Leave wins and losses aside - just look at basketball expenses and revenues. For fiscal year 2009, according to data released by the U.S. Department of Education, Villanova reported expenses for men's basketball of $5,959,931 and revenue of $7,155,812.

The rest of the local Division I schools were basically break-even operations based on their Department of Education data. In fact, Villanova's revenue wasn't far behind that of the other Big Five schools combined - St. Joseph's ($2,914,438), Temple ($2,738,917), La Salle ($2,008,570), and Penn ($928,509).

The reported expenses for St. Joseph's and Temple were exactly the same as revenues, to the dollar. Penn, which doesn't have athletic scholarships, reported expenses of $914,602. La Salle reported $2,020,877 in expenses.

The biggest difference, of course, is television. The Big East is in the middle of a deal that runs from 2007 to 2013, reportedly worth $250 million. That includes money from both ESPN and CBS for basketball, as well as the league's football contract.

"Clearly, that separated them in many ways," Temple athletic director Bill Bradshaw said of Villanova's Big East status. Bradshaw was athletic director at La Salle from 1977 to 1986 before going to DePaul, now a Big East member.

"If they were recruiting against a Big Five team, they could use the Big East, and if they were recruiting against Georgetown and St. John's, they could bring them to the Palestra and show them a Big Five game," said Bradshaw, at Temple since 2002. "I thought they had the best of both worlds."

Figuring out its role in both relationships took time. Villanova cut down its Big Five schedule from a full four-game round-robin to just two games a year in 1991, creating a lot of local ill will. Villanova athletic director Vince Nicastro wasn't there at the time, but pointed out that that was the same year the Big East schedule was increased from 16 to 18 games.

It wasn't until 1999 that Villanova recommitted to the full round-robin. That was the year the Big East dropped back from 18 to 16 games.

"I understood how important the Big Five was, and I understood we were interfering with it," Tranghese said. "The Villanova-Georgetown game became more important [to Villanova and its fans] than the Villanova-St. Joe's game. You were treading on very sacred ground."

Villanova already had restored the full round-robin under Steve Lappas when Jay Wright took over in 2001. Tranghese remembers saying to Wright about the Big Five: "You can fight this thing or you can embrace it. You can't fight the whole concept - plus you want to recruit local kids. You don't want it used against you."

In other words, lessons were learned from the early years. Too late in a lot of people's minds around Philly, but Villanova's status has changed in recent years. It's not quite so easy to paint the Wildcats as the villains. When the Big East returned to an 18-game schedule in 2007, Nicastro said, there was no talk of cutting down the Big Five round-robin.

"It's just part of our scheduling formula now,'' Nicastro said.

Nobody denies that the hiring of Wright was the key to Villanova's success. Rutgers and St. John's both tried to get him, failed, and have floundered since. Big East status alone isn't enough.

The other Big Five schools have had recent success. St. Joe's and Temple both reached the Elite Eight in the last decade. But that success should be marveled at, given the obstacles. Villanova almost always now gets the local players it wants. It also has the only practice facility built for basketball.

In college sports, the deck chairs never stop shuffling. Ever since the Big East expanded in 2005, there have been questions about whether the 16-school mega-league would hold together after its original five-year commitment. The biggest question has been whether the schools that play I-A football will look to go off on their own.

Now, there are more questions, since there is serious talk about the Big Ten expanding, for instance. Pittsburgh could be in the center of things again. There is a lot of talk about Pitt joining the Big Ten. Notre Dame recently let it be known it might be time to join a league for football, and the Big Ten is the more likely choice, although the Irish are in the Big East for the rest of their sports.

"I've never seen so many people call [me] and say, 'What's going to happen?' Savvy guys,'' Bradshaw said.

Rumors are rampant. Syracuse spurned overtures from the Atlantic Coast Conference when Boston College, Miami, and Virginia Tech left for that league in 2005. Might the Orange be more interested this time? Another rumor has it that Tobacco Road basketball coaches wanted no part of Connecticut during the last expansion, but might not have the pull this time, so the ACC could go after UConn.

Atlantic Ten officials are up-front that their last expansion, taking in Charlotte and St. Louis, was preemptive, in case the Big East splits and its basketball schools go after A-10 members such as Xavier and Dayton.

Bradshaw said that he has believed since the early '90s that there could eventually be a league that has basketball-only schools in the Midwest and East, with an easy split to keep travel expenses down.

It's possible that these recent years at 'Nova will be looked at as another golden age on the Main Line, when the school was able to get another Final Four and bring in increasingly large crowds at the Wachovia Center. If Wright ever leaves, maybe his successor won't be able to maintain the momentum. Or maybe Villanova won't be in such a lofty league forever.

But the past does affect the future. From his vantage point at St. Joe's, DiJulia isn't so sure the Big East's schools that don't play I-A football will be orphaned.

"My instinct is that whatever's left of the Big East, that they still might have greater leverage, football and basketball together,'' DiJulia said.

His point is that the Big East basketball brand is so well established now. The fact that none of the league's non-I-A football schools are left in this year's NCAA tournament, that won't change the brand.

"If the football guys separate themselves from Georgetown and Villanova, the [football schools] might lose,'' DiJulia said.