At this time 10 years ago, the Big East Conference had a name, a history and a clear vision of what it wanted to be—and no longer wanted to be. What it didn’t have was anything else.
There was no commissioner. No office. No bank account. No website. No work email. No staff benefit plan. If someone in the spring and summer of 2013 asked where the Big East headquarters were located, the generally correct answer would have been, “New York City.” But there was no actual address, no shingle to hang outside, no there there.
What it lacked in physical presence, the conference made up for in direction—away from the gravitational pull of football, toward the basketball-centric ethos that made the Big East what it was to begin with. Instead of trying to keep up with the gridiron Joneses via a loose confederacy of drifter schools that had little in common, the “Catholic 7” core of the league broke away and went back to the future.
