Big East, you may have a problem.
With Pittsburgh and Syracuse out the door... and UConn reportedly aggressively looking to do the same... and with West Virginia training their eyeballs southward, the basketball conference that dabbles in football is now standing at the precipice, staring straight down at gridiron oblivion.
And now this.
Tom Luicci of the Newark Star-Ledger is reporting that Rutgers has been involved in talks with the ACC over the past two days about potential membership in that suddenly proactive conference. Additionally, Luicci writes that Rutgers’ “lines of communications with the Big Ten have remained opened and ‘are active’.”
How open are those lines of communication with the Big Ten? So open that Rutgers is comfortable in showing Jim Delany some very public leg.
“The bottom line as it relates to Rutgers, this is not the kind of thing that causes us to get to work,” RU athletic director Tim Pernetti said earlier today about the upheaval in his current conference. “We continue to and have since I started on the job been very active in this space.
“And I think given our assets and our location, the New York TV market, our AAU status and strong academic standing, and most of all — given all the nonsense that’s gone on out there — running a clean program (with) integrity. We have great assets and we will continue to be a player nationally during this time as the landscape continues to shift.”
Bravo, Mr. Pernetti. You worked that like you owned the prestigious academic television market.
Regardless of whether it’s the Big Ten or ACC that’s the main object of flirtation, it’s clear Rutgers is “aggressively pursuing” a conference they feel could save it from the instability in its current conference. And would love nothing more than for a Midwestern savior to come a callin’.