INSIDE COLLEGE FOOTBALL

Conference Call

The loss of Syracuse would hurt an already staggering Big East

by Ivan Maisel

Issue date: November 3, 1997

You would think the news couldn't get any worse for the Big East. Temple, the laughingstock of college football for the last five years, has been replaced in that role—by fellow conference member Rutgers. Former national champion Miami aspires to mediocrity. A battered Notre Dame has pummeled Big East teams Pittsburgh 45-21 and, last Saturday, Boston College 52-20. Virginia Tech, the league leader, has lost two of its last three games. The best team in the Big East may be Syracuse, which started the season 1-3 and lost to Virginia Tech by four touchdowns. "We have to be competitive at a high level and be a factor in the national championship race," Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese says. "This year, we're not."

Yet the problems on the field are the least of Tranghese's worries. In the three months since Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany acknowledged that his conference would like to add a 12th team, speculation has centered on a few candidates—one of them Syracuse. That, in turn, has sparked officials of the nine-team ACC to wonder aloud if the Orangemen wouldn't be a better fit in their league.

Syracuse chancellor Kenneth Shaw said last Friday that a move by the Orange from the Big East isn't afoot. "Not only have we not been contacted to dance," he said, "but often there is an intermediary who says, 'Would you consider dancing?' No one has done that, either. I've heard the rumors, too."

If Shaw and athletic director Jake Crouthamel consider moving to the Big Ten, they will have to think about the fact that Syracuse is a private school with an athletic budget estimated at about $22 million, while the Michigans and Ohio States spend approximately $35 million. There's also a recruiting factor. "Our roots are in the East Coast," Shaw said. "Do a New Jersey kid's ears perk up when a coach tells him, 'You're going to Iowa City?' Or when a coach says Miami and Boston?"

That line of reasoning is reassuring to the Big East, which was born in 1979 as a basketball conference and began competing in football only in '91—a marriage of convenience arranged to convert Miami's dynasty into television and bowl dollars. In addition to the Hurricanes, Rutgers and West Virginia were eventually accepted as members in all sports, and Temple and Virginia Tech were allowed in as football-only members. However, Temple has been unable to compete on the field or at the gate, and the Big East has adopted minimum standards for attendance and stadium size that give it the leverage to show Temple the door, should the conference schools' presidents decide to do so. Now Connecticut, a charter Big East member in basketball and other sports, says it wants to move up to I-A in football, despite a mediocre gridiron record in Division I-AA. That's hardly the cure for what ails the league.

"If we'd had a Top 10 team when Miami went on probation in December '95," Tranghese said, "nobody would be focusing on the other stuff." Virginia Tech dominated the Big East football race the last two seasons, but the Hokies made Sugar and Orange Bowl appearances without leaving any footprints. Syracuse has the name and the tradition (alma mater of Jim Brown, '59 national title, '61 Heisman winner Ernie Davis), but the Orangemen have played poorly when the most was expected of them.

The Big East can't even catch a break on its syndicated telecasts. Last Saturday, WABC-TV in New York left the Pittsburgh-Rutgers game in the fourth quarter to show Ohio State-Northwestern from the opening kickoff. Viewers of the affiliate that serves the Rutgers campus didn't see the 0-7 Scarlet Knights ultimately lose 55-48 in double overtime.

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