"Jack DeGioia has done more for Georgetown University in the last 50 years than anyone since Tim Healy and he is too smart to do something ultimately foolish."

DeGioia's leadership in this delicate divorce of collegiate interests was vital to making this a seamless and, for the most part, an amicable split. The only remnant of the "old Big East" in the football camp was Connecticut, whose days in what some call the "Re-Conferenced USA" will be temporary until they get a better offer elsewhere. Tulane, Central Florida, Houston et al. never had an emotional tie to the name of the tradition of the Big East anymore than Georgetown would draw a line in the sand to call itself a member of the Ohio Valley Conference.

And while Sports Illustrated's Pete Thamel suggests that other schools were put off by Georgetown's place at the table, well, boo-hoo. Someone needed to take a leadership role and assert what it would take to save the Big East legacy, and DeGioia did just that. To this, we owe him a debt of gratitude and of appreciation. Father Healy would have been proud.

It's not that easy to save a legacy. When the Southwest Conference split apart in 1994, the remaining schools got nothing, and 80 years of tradition were buried. When so many schools left the Western Athletic Conference that it has had to bring in the likes of (and I'm not kidding) Grand Canyon University, Texas Pan-American, and Chicago State, the WAC brand became all but worthless. And had UConn and Cincinnati departed and the ongoing backfill of I-A football schools continued to relegate Big East football to the back end of the ESPN programming guide, not only would the league suffer, schools like Georgetown would as well.

Leaving the Big East behind for an amorphous Catholic schools league would have been equally short-sighted. A league with no brand awareness, no television deal, and no post-season identity would look a lot like the Horizon League...can any of you name the members of that league (formerly the Midwestern Collegiate Conference), one which has been in existence since 1979? Or the Summit League (nee "Mid-Continent Conference"), which has had 20 members leave over the past 30 years? Would people still care if Providence was playing Villanova a tournament in Milwaukee? Or, absent presidential leadership, would these schools have merely drifted into regional leagues, with DePaul and Marquette climbing into the Missouri Valley and the remaining five joining a bloated 20 team Atlantic "10"?

It didn't have to end that way, and it didn't.

Wednesday's press conference featured two presidents on the podium: DeGioia of Georgetown and Rev. Brian Shanley, O.P. of Providence. Both schools were there at the beginning, when Dave Gavitt, Frank Rienzo, Jack Kaiser, and Jake Crouthamel set into motion the renaissance of Eastern basketball. (Trivia item: Shanley's father ran the Providence advertising agency, Duffy & Shanley, which gave the Big East its name.)

From Gavitt onward, the Big East was very much a member of the Providence family. They had a lot to lose, too.

"In building upon our firm traditions of spirited competition, intense rivalries and high achievement in intercollegiate sports, the Big East will continue to be a source of tremendous excitement for our students and alumni, as well as millions of fans across the nation," said Rev. Shanley, which could have been similarly echoed by any of the presidents gathered for the announcement.

In December, the schools were at risk of losing its identity, its revenue stream, and its post-season home. So what did they get?

1. The name and logo.
2. A TV contract that pays more than twice what ESPN did, and
3. The assumption of the Madison Square Garden tournament contract that runs through 2026.

1. The need to accommodate expansion for football's sake--GU, Villanova, and Butler excepted, the pigskin has been absent from most of these schools for too long, but none were prepared to elevate it to maintain conference standing.
2. A fractured relationship with ESPN, which grew up alongside the conference, but which ultimately knee-capped the conference to save money on a TV deal, and
3. Rivalries with Connecticut and those schools which will stay around once the game of NCAA musical chairs comes to a close; and to be frank, every last one of them would walk if the right offer came in.

"The Big East tournament is the feeling that players get when they step onto the floor, especially in those electric weekend night sessions, just a block and a half off Broadway, when maybe Bill Clinton or Spike Lee or Denzel Washington arrives courtside.

The Big East tournament is a row of Wall Street guys sneaking away for an afternoon session, dressed in $1,000 suits as they slam drinks and berate some official that dared to make the wrong call on the Hoyas.

The Big East tournament is the throngs of twenty-something alums who have moved to the city, live in the neighborhood, and rush across 31st Street between sessions to the Blarney Stone or the Irish Times or Jimmy's BBQ for drinks and food, taking the opportunity to act up with their college buddies again or maybe to run into that girl they should've asked out back in the day....

The Big East tournament is the vast assortment of former players, playground legends, AAU coaches, agents, runners for agents, NBA executives, sneaker reps, high school coaches, hangers-on and Brooklyn accents that fill the seats. This is the grassroots scene the NCAA would prefer you didn't notice but everyone in the game recognizes as the engine of the sport.

New York likes to believe it is the Mecca for the game and the Big East tournament is its annual convention. Everybody who is everybody is there, swapping gossip, lies and occasional angry glares. They're surrounded by these packs of old guys who simply love the game, who come every year to take in every minute of the action, relive the old days and argue, forever, about some call in a 1958 Bishop Laughlin-Fordham Prep contest.

It is that crowd, even more than the celebs, that helps make this the grandest stage for so many players. These are their people, and to perform accordingly here can make you a legend."

If it means selling packages in September and not in some sort of late February selection process, let's do it. If it means getting each school to commit to buying 1500 tickets regardless, let's do it. (Yes, Steve Alleva, you'll be hearing from me on this.)

If it means subsidized cost tickets for students, let's do this, too. There was a time students regularly filled the baselines at Big East tournament games. In recent years, the only students who could see a game tended to be in the band of cheerleaders. My passion for the Big East dates back to $10 tickets for making the trip in each of my four years. How many students never got an opportunity to see this in person?

And, of course, what is really needed is program commitment. The Big East was ascendant in the 1980's because nearly everyone was good. Really good. Can you imagine a conference today where six different schools make the Final Four in the league's first ten seasons? A sold out garden, top 25 bids, and NCAA tournament success will make the Big East brand more valuable than ever, and within a few years people will forget about all this internecine conflict about as fast as they've forgotten that West Virginia and Miami used to play there, too.

For while Georgetown, Marquette, and Villanova are at the top of their game program-wise, the Big East needs St. John's to reclaim its place on a Friday night in Midtown. St. John's hasn't seen a Big East semifinal appearance in 13 years, and fellow backbenchers Seton Hall (2001) and Providence (1997) haven't fared much better. The New York fans will show up to see the Redmen, and it's time for St. John's to reclaim its heritage.

It's also time for the conference's most visible laggard, DePaul, to step it up as well. Over four days at last week's tournament, I could not spot a single shirt, cap, or sweater of any fan with a DePaul logo, but with the Blue Demons' futility since joining the league, how many fans would subject themselves to a one and done weekend in New York? The Big East needs DePaul to reassert its traditions, too.

And the best news of all? Through the efforts of Georgetown and its peers, these schools all have the opportunity to, as Rev. Shanley put it, "reboot the conference", something that may not have been possible in a warmed over CYO League or a Conference USA redux. It won't be the good old days of Looie and Rollie and Big John, but an opportunity to reposition these schools for what they have chosen to be: basketball-first, urban universities with a commitment to the very best on and off the court. Of all the items that come along with the "new" Big East, these are verities which served the conference since Dave Gavitt opened the doors back in 1979.