It’s only Monday but it looks like this is going to be a great week! Word out of Providence is that John Marinatto has resigned as commissioner of the Big East. CBS Sports’ Brett McMurphy is of course all over this story reporting:
"John Marinatto, only the third Big East commissioner in the league’s history, resigned Monday as the Big East’s commissioner, industry sources told CBSSports.com."
Love it. I’ve been especially critical of Marinatto during his time as head of the Big East for setting the tone of reactionary moves in the conference that Cincinnati calls home as opposed to getting ahead of the storm. Conference realignment is never an easy thing to predict and the Big East, because of their small media deal, was always at the mercy of the other five AQ leagues. But Marinatto never did the conference any favors by keeping the Big East at 8 schools just begging to be pillaged. One could argue that he got blindsided by West Virginia, Pitt, and Syracuse (and somewhat by TCU). However if the conference had invited such teams as Central Florida, Houston, East Carolina, as well as TCU back in 2005 to bring membership on the football side to 12, the Big East would be able to sustain such raids. Furthermore, those four teams would have had the benefit of growing in an AQ conference much the same way it benefited the Bearcats, making the Big East all the more stronger when/if WVU, Pitt, Cuse, and TCU did leave.
It’s that lack of foresight that set the conference up for near-disaster in 2011. Sure adding Boise State, San Diego State, Temple, Memphis, Houston, SMU, Central Florida, and Navy was the right move but why couldn’t some of those schools been brought over 7 years ago? Adding them now makes the Big East look like Conference-USA version 2.0. And don’t even get me started on Villanova. While the Big Ten was adding Nebraska and the Pac-12 added Colorado and Utah, the Big East was seriously considering bumping up the Wildcats’ from the FCS to the Big East. The idea flopped but those precious months could have allowed the conference to think about contingency plans.
Now it seems like Marinatto’s reign of idiocy is finally over. What’s even juicier is that McMurphy is reporting that the Big East presidents are essentially kicking him to the curb, meatball sandwich in hand:
"Marinatto was asked to resign by the league’s presidents Sunday, sources said."
In truth the onus partially lies on the shoulders of these presidents for not taking a stand sooner. “Better late than never” is the slogan of the Big East so I guess I’m not too surprised they made this statement two years too late. McMurphy does note that the timing of this is interesting. Firstly, the conference is just months away from opening up media relations with ESPN/NBC/Fox to sign a new TV contract. The ensuing money is projected to greatly close the gap between the Big East and the other AQ leagues. However, in two years there will be no differentiation between an AQ and a non-AQ league so the conference needed a stronger leader to keep the Big East eating at the big-boy table. Either way, a man with a basketball-centric mindset in a football-driven college sports world wouldn’t have been the guy. So even though the conference is without a commissioner for the time being, I’d rather have nobody than John Marinatto.
Honestly, when push comes to shove would you rather have an oaf like him in your corner or an empty chair? For me, the empty chair wins hands down.