Villanova's victory in last night's NCAA men's basketball championship game will "further quiet the voices of doubt that have plagued the Big East since it emerged from the latest conference realignment with a slimmer, basketball-centric focus," according to Marc Tracy of the N.Y. TIMES. This latest iteration of the conference "resulted from the football-prompted breakup of the old Big East at the beginning of this decade." What remained, with the addition of Butler, "were 10 private and mostly Catholic schools that were fiercely committed to basketball." The conference "flew by the seat of its pants." It has "been in its new offices for only a couple of years," and its first two seasons were "punctuated by NCAA tournament failure." Football is the "king, queen, prince and princess of minting money in big-time college sports, and it is silly to think that this money gives no advantage to basketball programs attached to successful football programs." Yet several conference members, including players for Villanova, "suggested that basketball’s place in the center of their universe actually served as a competitive advantage" (N.Y. TIMES, 4/5). SI.com's Brian Hamilton wrote the "reconstructed and somewhat retrofitted Big East mostly needed Villanova to be this good" in order to "validate the plan." That is "certainly the attitude within the league: There was an urgency to prove that basketball could be played at a high level without football resources." Villanova's title is a "rejoinder to the idea that a tiny basketball league wouldn’t matter." The victory over North Carolina, a "national Goliath," drives a "stake through the idea" (SI.com, 4/3).
HERE TO STAY: USA TODAY's Nancy Armour writes Villanova's title is a "reminder that bigger is not always better, and you can do it differently than the SECs and the Big Tens and still have success." The Big East has "carved out a niche for itself in the last three years, thanks to a TV contract with Fox and a conference tournament still played" in MSG (USA TODAY, 4/5). In North Carolina, Stephen Schramm wrote Villanova's championship is a "major milestone for the new incarnation of the Big East." The league following realignment "had gone back to its roots as a hoops hotbed," and with Villanova's national title, it once again is seeing the "kind of national success it was known for" (FAYOBSERVER.com, 4/4).
