It's Time for a New Big East

It's time Big East.  I know the big money is in college football but the Big East wasn't built on football.  It's a basketball conference and it's time to stop playing this conference realignment game and get back to basics.  Look at the basketball only schools that will be left after all the chips fall (because you know UConn and Cincinnati are leaving eventually):

Georgetown
Marquette
Seton Hall
St. John's
DePaul
Providence
Villanova

Historically three of those seven are perennial tournament teams (Marquette, Nova and Georgetown) and the Hall, St. John's and Providence have occasionally made cameos over the years in the big dance.  And as of now those three finally seem to have coaches that have them heading in the right direction.  And DePaul...well at least they bring the Chicago television market.

To make this work and because a stable conference again they'd unfortunately have to jettison Temple and Memphis with them having football but the rest of the incoming teams like Houston, SMU, Central Florida and Tulane they let go as well and get out of the football business altogether.  Let them go start another conference with Boise State, San Diego State and Navy.  I'll name it for you.  The Coast to Coast Conference (C2C for short).  Boom!  Basketball built the Big East and should keep the name.

Ideally you'd like to think that the Big East could just poach the Atlantic 10 but as of now, they actually have what the Big East should want, a basketball driven conference.  But if you were able to add Xavier, Dayton, St. Joseph's, Butler, St. Louis, VCU and maybe a Duquesne to the above 7 basketball only Big East schools, they are probably looking at a 5 or 6 big league.  But of course that would probably be easier said than done.  If you look into smaller conferences you can try to pick up some solid mid-major teams like a Drexel or Davidson too.

The Big East as we know it is dead.  They can't quick fix replace any of the teams that have left.  The conference also can't sit around and wait for the remaining schools with a football team to try to leave just  to replace them on the fly with lousy football programs and lousier basketball programs.  It needs to be rebuilt with quality basketball only schools and patience.