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[QUOTE="Scooch, post: 201633, member: 628"]
The challenges the Big East has faced all go back to the idiotic decision to let schools like Seton Hall and Providence keep Penn State out of the conference.
 
Now there is no guarantee that Penn State wouldn't have left for the Big Ten anyway.  But that decision would have been MUCH more difficult, both to do and to sell to their fans, had PSU already been in the BE.  
 
As soon as that Supreme Court ruling in the early 80s paved the way for schools and conferences to bypass the NCAA and negotiate TV deals on their own people knew that football was going to rise in influence.  SU, BC and Pitt had been squawking to the BE for several years in the 80s that they may need to leave the BE to join a football conference.  There is ample evidence of a proposal for a new all-sports league being created with those 3, other independents and members of the Metro Conference.
 
None of this was a surprise to the BE brass.  But hoops was going gangbusters and they weren't proactive.  Only when PSU joined the B10, and SU, BC and Pitt threatened to leave, did the BE finally captitulate to forming a football conference.  But without PSU, and with the hybrid membership that gave outsized influence to non-football playing schools (in relation to revenue generating capabilities), the league was always doomed to break apart.
 
So yeah, the BE could have done much more, and they did not.
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