Rick Pitino may have provided a solution for easing the way to what many analysts consider an inevitable breakup of the Big East Conference, in which the football schools would separate from the non-footballers to create separate entities.

In his latest blog post, the University of Louisville coach suggests dividing basketball into two divisions. One would include Louisville, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, West Virginia, Cincinnati, TCU, Rutgers, UConn and South Florida. The other division would consist of Villanova, Georgetown, St. John’s, DePaul, Marquette, Seton Hall, Providence and Notre Dame.

The division suggestion would eliminate the abitrary nature of the current scheduling process. Someone in Providence deciding which teams will play each other twice during the season, based on some undefined criteria.

The scheduling process has never been balanced, whether a team has a good outlook or a bad one. I’ve always wondered why the conference would be making that judgement anyway.

Equally important, Pitino’s proposed new scheduling lineup acknowledges that there are major differences between the schools in their overall goals and aspirations. The existing conference will never realize its potential as long as football, the No. 1 sport in college athletics, takes a back seat to basketball.

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By Charlie Springer

Charlie Springer is a former Louisville editor and sportswriter, a public affairs consultant, a UofL grad and longtime fan.

6 thoughts on “Pitino’s alignment would be good for Big East”
  1. So, ND agrees to vote Louisville into the club (which Louisville knew was a hybrid club and one in which ND football was not included), and you want to kick ND out (which is not permitted under BE by laws and for which you don’t have the votes)???

    Some gratitude.

  2. Notre Dame should be made to join in football or get the hell out. I regard their membership as being a little bit pregnant.

  3. So after 8 years in the conferencem, Rick Pitino wants to decide which 30 year old B.E. basketball rivalries will come to an end??? I see where he’s coming from but….

    1. Yes, Alex. Kind of like the conference decided that the rivalry between Louisville and Cincinnati, 94 basketball games since 1921, wasn’t important and didn’t exist. What goes around comes around.

  4. I agree with Pitino on this one. Splitting up the Big East into divisions will give some consistency to the schedule each year. There’s always going to ebb and flow to the talent so some seasons one division may be down. But with the Big East, the top teams are always going to be contenders.

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