Providence College Athletics

Those Who Started It Are Honored

Those Who Started It Are Honored

The seven men who formed the BIG EAST recognized.

March 5, 1999

By JIM O'CONNELL
AP Basketball Writer

NEW YORK (AP) - The seven men who formed the Big East 20 years ago and changed the landscape of college basketball forever were honored Friday by the conference they created.

The athletic directors from Providence, Georgetown, Syracuse, St. John's, Seton Hall, Boston College and Connecticut announced on May 31, 1979, that they would form a Division I conference. League play began that November, starting one of the most amazing two-decade runs in sports history.

The only coach of that original group is Dave Gavitt, who had led Providence to the 1974 Final Four and had been selected to lead the 1980 U.S. Olympic team. He was chosen as the Big East's first commissioner, and held that post for the league's first decade as it became one of the power players in college basketball.

"We were so fortunate in so many ways at the outset," said Gavitt, now the chairman of the board of the Basketball Hall of Fame. "We put together a solid foundation with a good plan, but we were fortunate to have four coaches who were going to be at their schools for a long time in John Thompson, Looie Carnesecca, Jimmy Boeheim and Rollie Massimino, and having them stay in place was very significant."

Those coaches were very visible as the league grew, but the men honored Friday night - Gavitt, Jack Kaiser of St. John's, Jake Crouthamel of Syracuse, the late Bill Flynn of Boston College, John Toner of Connecticut, Frank Rienzo of Georgetown and Richie Regan of Seton Hall - made things work behind the scenes. Crouthamel is the only one in the same position he was then.

The new league readily adopted a new entity as a partner of sorts.

"That ESPN came along as we did was very fortunate for us, and how we worked together benefited both tremendously," Gavitt said.

Villanova joined the league in 1980 and Pittsburgh came along in 1982.

The league's high mark was 1985, when Georgetown and St. John's spent most of the season as the nation's No. 1 and 2 teams and they were joined in the Final Four by eventual national champion Villanova in the Final Four. That's still the only time one league has had three teams in the national semifinals.

As football became an integral part of things, Miami was added in 1992 and membership reached 13 schools when Notre Dame, Rutgers and West Virginia joined in 1996.

"I don't envy anybody in a conference when you have gone to more than 10 because you've made it very difficult for yourself because you've become less of a conference and more of an association," Gavitt said. "There are teams in this league with major college football commitments and you can't ignore that.

"Thirteen is a very awkward number, and whether 14 is better or 16 is better I don't know. I do think that what it is now isn't what it should be."

Gavitt was asked what one thing since that original meeting he has found most remarkable.

"The thing that's always amazed me more than anything else is that when we formed the league one of the goals we thought we could accomplish was to stop the drain of Eastern players going elsewhere," he said. "We stopped that pretty quickly but I never imagined, and it's the power of television, that our schools would start attracting kids from the West Coast or New Orleans.

"I don't think any of us ever foresaw that our schools would become truly national in their recruiting."