Big East League Meetings Begin Tonight

[TheSultan]

One more thing.

We are making the assumption here that the reason there is no commissioner yet is because there is conflict within the conference (The Georgetown camp v. the Marquette camp) that is preventing this from happening. It could simply be that there is no consensus about the candidates brought forward. If they are looking for a "media guy," Gavitt isn't going to fit that. And Zaninovich might be considered too "small time," for what they are looking for.

I think we are falling a little bit into a "chicken little" mode about this. That we get these breathless reports from Ajerseyguy that say "such and such is happening...and this is bad," and we buy into it without questioning whether such and such *is* actually happening...and whether or not it actually is bad.

[IWB]

Correct Sultan, we really don't know what is going on. Also, from what I have heard it isn't exactly the "Georgetown camp vs the Marquette camp". While MU has stepped up, they are not vying with Georgetown to be the dominant force, Georgetown is trying to take over the driver's seat all on their own.

[Goose85]

You are correct...I am making that assumption. But if they can't agree on how to schedule soccer games this fall, then there really isn't much hope for the conference, regardless of who the commissioner is.

Overall, I agree with what you are saying about some of the things needed to be done are not as complex as unwinding the old conference, negotiating tv rights, splitting old Big East money, etc.

There is still a lot more that goes into it than just taking 10 men and 10 women's games and coming up with a schedule for soccer and the other 'official' conference sports or else the conferences would not have the size staffs they have.

With none of the schools playing BCS level football, my guess is each of the athletic departments don't have a few higher level folks to lend to the conference until a commish and staff is hired.


One guy acting as the interim commish may help, but, these other conferences have a staff of close to 30 for a reason, and those are conferences that have been in place for a long time and likely already have policies / procedures / etc in place.

http://www.bigten.org/school-bio/big10-staff.html

http://www.big12sports.com/ViewArtic...ATCLID=1514843

[TheSultan]

That is really good information Goose. I would have thought the staff would have been bigger than that.

Anyway, I just hope that someone, somewhere is working on this kind of stuff. Some of it might be outsourced for the time being, to either the law firm that was originally hired to do this stuff, or to Beebe's group, but yeah this work does need to get done.

[MU88]

Jerseyguy sources are at UConn. There appears to be an agenda for many of his reports. Everyone is in an uproar over the lack of a commish, but has anyone reported on the number of staffers working for the conference. I would guess there are a few people working behind the scenes.

Frankly, I don't think the lack of a commish is all that big of the deal. The bylaws and the TV deal are done. The conference has a head of officials. Things are happening behind the scenes. I think is it is utterly stupid to hire someone who may not be the right person. Take your time and do it right. Gavitt has great name recognition, but is he the best person for the job. Maybe, maybe not. Beebe ran two conferences, including the Big 12 for 4 years. I am sure he is an adequate placeholder till they find the right person for the job.

Finally, I would take everything reported by ESPN with a grain of salt. They have an economic incentive reduce interest in the Big East. By projecting an environment of unhappy coaches and infighting, you create the impression that the BE is second rate conference that can be overlooked. Look at the Mountain West. ESPN didn't cover them and give them much credit till they got a piece of the conferences tv contract. All of sudden, you heard story after story about how great they were this year.

[TheSultan]

This was linked somewhere a couple of days ago. It talks about the big meeting agenda and stuff that needs to be decided.

http://www.omaha.com/article/2013051...705189857/1001

In looking at this, it is obvious they have a lot of work to do. But *someone* put this agenda together and someone has done a lot of spadework ahead of time.