Rick Pitino suggests 20-team college basketball ‘super league’ to ‘combat’ football

NEW YORK — Rick Pitino wasn’t afraid to voice his opinion on the current landscape of college basketball and college athletics on Wednesday at Big East basketball media day.

The former Kentucky and Louisville basketball coach, now in his second year at St. John’s, talked at length in his appearance at Madison Square Garden regarding conference realignment — and how a basketball-centric conference like the Big East could withstand it. His proposal: an 18-to-20-team “super league.”

“I don’t have a say in that at all. If I was to, I’d want something to combat football,” Pitino told media on Wednesday. “Whether it’s 18 teams, 20 teams super league, something needs to combat football because it’s just taken over our whole landscape.”

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The Big East was founded in 1979 by former Providence basketball and athletic director Dave Gavitt as a basketball-centric conference. Along with the Friars, St. John’s is one of the conference’s seven original members.

In today’s climate of college athletics — one in which college football is the driving force in both revenue and realignment — the Big East is at a disadvantage. But it’s a conference that has stayed true to its basketball roots following the conference’s most recent realignment in 2013.

It’s something Big East commissioner Val Ackerman pointed to in her opening remarks to media on Wednesday.

“We unfortunately don’t have a crystal ball to tell us where college sports will be in one year, three years or a decade from now. Would we benefit from a set of national rules that preempt the current state law, patchwork and reconcile the application of the antitrust and labor laws and Title IX to college sports programs? We believe the answer is yes,” Ackerman said. “In the meantime, we think the Big East is primed to remain a college basketball powerhouse, even as the terrain beneath us keeps shifting.”

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/rick-pitino-suggests-20-team-154724291.html

Author : The Courier Journal

Publish date : 2024-10-24 15:47:00

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