THE BROO VIEW with Ken Broo

Good Monday Morning!

There’s a prejudiced out there about the Big East. Which is funny, because the sports media is always accused of having an East Coast prejudice. Tune into any of the ESPN shows, radio or TV, and you get a lot of Yankees, Red Sox, Giants, Patriots. I’ll give you a good reason why: a lot of the talking heads on ESPN and the over the air networks are from the East Coast, or have lived in New York so long, they’ve developed an New Yorker’s view of America. You even seen one of those maps, a New Yorker’s view of the USA? Seven-eighths of it is consumed by New York, New Jersey and Connecticut….the rest of the country is squeezed into the final one-eighth of the map. Funny, but in a lot of ways true.

Here’s why a lot of the national media isn’t taking the Big East seriously: it has only eight teams that play football. It has a ninth team that plays football, but won’t play a Big East schedule and has its own television network. It’s a conference where it’s biggest stars play basketball and it’s celebrity coaches wear Armani and work winters. Except Huggins and that monstrosity of mustard he likes to dust off every now and again.

Dave Gavitt and Mike Tranghese after him, were magicians. They were the smart guys, the first commissioners. They took a lot of smoke and mirrors and a little bit of carnival barker and created an aura for the Big East. Georgetown’s basketball team and Virginia Tech’s football team didn’t hurt the cause either. Tranghese elbowed his way into the same room as the big boys, the suits who run the Big 10, Big 12 the SEC. He almost single handidly helped the Big East survive the major poaching the ACC did to his conference five or six years ago. It was good work. But it wasn’t enough. The Big East isn’t the Big 12. It’s just a step or two ahead of the Mountain West and Conference USA.

And that’s why today, after winning eight straight, with the most charismatic coach this side of Lou Holtz and skill players Urban Meyer would kill for, the Bearcats struggle for national love. Brian Kelly likes to say his Bearcats need to prove what’s going on right now isn’t a one year deal.

That tradition will take care of a lot of what the “Cats are battling right now. But this is a guy who knows the score.

In a month, there’s a very good chance the UC football team will be standing on the turf of Heinz Field in Pittsburgh with a Big East trophy, a perfect season and a resume with enough glitter to rightfully claim a spot in the BCS Championship game. There’s an even better chance it won’t get within a thousand miles of Pasadena. It’s not the team. It’s the conference.

Cincinnati could be at the epicenter of the BCS implosion. Because, if UC finishes the season as the only, or one of two undefeated teams from a BCS Conference and DOESN’T go to the title game, than what’s the point of belonging to a BCS Conference. You play in a certified BCS conference, you run the table and it still isn’t good enough? The system implodes.

And what does that say about the Big East?

So today, I’ve got a little homework lesson for the new Big East Conference Commissioner.: John Marinotto. It won’t help the Bearcats this season. But it might get his conference mentioned in the same breath as the “big boys”

Here’s the homework lesson: expand. Today, tomorrow, by next April. As soon as possible. And poach. Take teams from another conference and have no conscience about it. This is no game for the timid and your conference’s future as a BCS member is at stake. Don’t wait for the warning shots. Be preemptive.

Here’s two teams I’d look at today, right now. Kentucky. You’re laughing. Stop. As long as LSU, Alabama and Florida are in the SEC, Kentucky has about as much chance of winning an SEC football championship as you have commanding a spaceship to Saturn. Don’t think UK would be interested? Is the SEC a better basketball conference than the Big East? Not anymore. Don’t think John Calipari wouldn’t love coaching in that conference again? He may not say it publicly, wouldn’t be politically correct. But he’d love to.

Does UK have a better shot at winning a football conference championship in the Big East than the SEC? You already know the answer to that question.

Better chance of going to the NCAA Tournament in the Big East than the SEC if it doesn’t win the championship? Would UK be available? Maybe not today. But why not lay the ground work.

My other school to target: Memphis. It got left at the post when Louisville and UC jumped ship from Conference USA. But Memphis, continued to field competitive and sometimes, championship caliber basketball teams. The Memphis football program isn’t championship ready. But remember, recruiting big time talent to a Big East football team is a heckuva lot easier than it is recruiting talent to a Conference USA team. Kentucky and Memphis gets the Big East to ten. Two five team divisions and a playoff game and then, you’re on a more level playing field with the other BCS conferences and, most important, in the eyes of the people who vote for your teams in the polls.

Will it happen? It has to. It’s survival. It may not be UK and Memphis. It may be someone else. But if UC is standing on the turf at Heinz Field on December 5th, unbeaten, Big East championship trophy held high and on December 6th the final BCS poll has a one loss team ahead of them? Ballgame….for the BCS, for the Big East.