The death of the Big East

It started in 2004, when Miami and Virginia Tech made the move to the ACC.

Since then, Boston College, Syracuse, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh and now Louisville have all jumped ship from the Big East to join the ACC. That’s not to mention TCU, West Virginia and Rutgers who left for the Big 12 and Big 10 respectively.

Louisville is the latest team to join the realignment craze, as they will be moving to the ACC.

With all these teams leaving, who will replace them so the Big East doesn’t become the “Little East”? Well I have your answer right here: Tulane, East Carolina, Navy, Boise State, San Diego State, SMU, Memphis, UCF and Houston will all be joining the Big East between the 2013 and 2015 seasons.

A football conference that once was competitive and fun to watch has diminished in the past few years.

In basketball, as a conference that once boasted the nation’s top teams year in and year out will now be on the level of the Pac-12. Sorry Pac-12 basketball fans, but let’s face it: as a whole, the conference is bad.

The thing that I find most peculiar about all of this is that the Big East will have teams from the west coast. Take a second and think about the travel for San Diego State. Football season will see them travel at least 4 times across the country for conference games. Basketball season will see that number probably triple, and some of those trips will have to come during the school week. Seems like demand for online classes will go up at SDSU.

Seems like the Big East should be renamed the “Big All Over The Place”.

The past few years has seen the college sports landscape change in an unprecedented fashion. For the most part however, the conferences have gotten it right. The Pac-10 becoming the Pac-12 was brilliant because now every year each team has one win on their schedule in football against Colorado, and how about that new TV network? The ACC has basically become the NBA D-League. The SEC…well, they’re still the SEC. The Big East? They’ve killed their brand.

The Big East will still retain their automatic qualifier in football, and may produce some tournament teams in March. The damage, however, is in tradition lost. This conference is basically starting anew. Time to build new rivalries, new traditions and new pride.

It’s sad to see the Big East implode like this. I honestly can’t buy that Navy, Tulane, East Carolina and others can replace Pitt, Syracuse and Louisville.

One thing I would put money on: this conference realignment trend isn’t over yet.