Was the Big East ready for the latest raid?

The Big East Confer­ence is one of the most storied con­ferences in the history of college bas­ketball. Aside from the six na­tional champions the conference has produced, the conference pro­duced a record 11 schools in the 2011 NCAA Tournament, break­ing their own record of seven from 2010.

Despite the NCAA records and tough competitiveness of Big East Basketball, consistently be­ing tabbed as the best or tough­est conference by many national media outlets, their always seems to be a level of uncertainty sur­rounding the conference.

Ever since the initial ACC raid of 2003, the conference adminis­tration has done nothing to settle the uneasiness and prevent an­other raid. The Big East may be the easiest conference to get out of, in terms of an exit fee, as they charge $5 million to leave the conference, compared to $20 million to leave the ACC.

Commissioner John Marinatto blames the unusual makeup of the league as the reason for the at­tempted raids.

"We're unusual in the fact that our makeup is not the same as other conferences," Marinatto said. "We have 1-A schools, 1-AA schools, and 1-AAA schools."

During all the talk of trying to add schools to make football bet­ter, there has been no real focus in adding schools that will make the basketball better and replace two basketball powerhouses in Syra­cuse and Pittsburgh.

They are focusing on adding mid-major football schools to make the conference better, but that's not going to do anything. Historically, the Big East has struggled competing in football on a national level, producing only two national championships in the 23 year history of the Big East (Miami in 1991 and 2001).

Marinatto admitted to the conference basketball roots that have put the league in national spotlight but schools like Central Florida, Houston and Southern Methodist aren't going to cut it.

What's even more disturbing is the fact that Marinatto didn't know that adding schools and fo­cusing on realignment was part of his job description.

"This isn't exactly what I signed up for originally," Mari­natto said. "It was never contem­plated as being the thing that you would have to focus all your time on, the last 18 months really since November or December 2010 have been about conference re­alignment."

What did Marinatto think he was going to have to do when he accepted the position in 2009? The commissioner's job is to es­sentially make the conference bet­ter and make the student-athlete's experience better, but doesn't that include making the conference more competitive?

The bottom line is that had Marinatto and his staff been on their toes and at the forefront of realignment by having stricter exit fees and on the prowl to add competitive schools from the start, Pittsburgh and Syracuse leaving wouldn't be the center of everyone's focus, and instead would be what Marinatto wants to do, and that is "make the climate better for our student-athletes."

Tim LeCras can be reached at timothy.lecras@student.shu.edu.

Follow Tim on Twitter @TimLeCras.