When the EAST is in the house...

In case you forgot or missed it, six years ago, three NCAA Division-1A conferences realigned, changing all three drastically from what we knew them to be.

Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College moved from the Big East to the ACC

Louisville, Marquette, Depaul, Cincinnati, and South Florida moved from Conference-USA to the Big East.

Rice, Tulsa, Southern Methodist, Central Florida and Marshall moved from the WAC, and MAC to Conference-USA.


At the time, the sports world thought that the moves would shift the balance of power in college football to the ACC (the rulings were made while Mike Vick was in college at Virginia Tech), by placing three more competitive football schools with a team like Florida State, a regular national championship contender. Six years later though, the ACC had the most football bowl appearances, and the conference's basketball schools kept the conference relevant in both sports.

But the change altered college basketball forever. If people felt that the realignment made football unfair for those schools losing teams to the ACC, then the current power of the Big East in basketball shows that they are the only true super conference in any sport (even the Pac-10 in women's softball).

Louisville, Pittsburgh, and Connecticut are all number-one seeds in this year's NCAA tournament. In addition, Syracuse and Villanova also made the round of sixteen. In addition to those teams, Marquette, Georgetown and Notre Dame were all ranked in the top-ten at some point this year.

Before you wonder how this happened, think back to the old Big East. Think back to Virginia Tech never being able to get past Miami in football, think about the wars between the basketball schools, the conference tournament with all daytime games. think back to Donyell Marshall. This was done purposely. I live in New York City, a place that was once an intense college basketball town. A market that had dried up in the era of dome tournament games and Duke propaganda. Markets like New York, Philadelphia and Washington nearly forgot about the Big East. Teams with large on-campus fan bases like Connecticut were fine, winning within the reinforced bubble of Stores, Connecticut and Syracuse, New York, delivering players from recruit to professional.

The other teams though, well they disappeared. Georgetown went away and rebuilt twice. Providence went into hibernation. New York City no longer cared about college basketball. So they realigned and brought better football to the ACC and better basketball to the Big East. The Big East tournament became important again, and in the scope of college basketball, so did New York.