BIG EAST Celebrates 40th Anniversary in Providence
League Was Born on May 29, 1979
By Dick Weiss, Special to BIGEAST.com
PROVIDENCE, R.I. - The BIG EAST went back to its roots on May 29 to celebrate the 40th birthday of a conference that changed the dynamics of men's college basketball and best epitomized the changing culture in an urban sport.
It’s a shame the late Dave Gavitt couldn’t have been at this reception that was held at the Graduate Hotel, near the league’s original office in Providence. But his widow Julie, his son Danny, who is the director of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament; and his daughter-in-law Susan were there to represent the family and witness the standing ovation in his honor from the league’s presidents, athletic administrators, former coaches and players and other dignitaries from FOX Sports and Madison Square Garden.
Gavitt, the former Providence College coach and AD and a member of the Naismith Hall of Fame, who was the first Commissioner of a made-for-TV league that gave the East a real voice in the NCAA Tournament. He was the Betsy Ross of college basketball, a visionary who weaved together a tapestry of singularly impressive independent programs to create a seven-team super league in 1979 that initially consisted of Boston College, Connecticut, Georgetown, Providence, St. John’s, Seton Hall and Syracuse and added Villanova the following year and became the country’s first power conference.
Today, the conference is thriving in its 10-school configuration that began in 2013-14 when Butler, Creighton and Xavier joined.
“He was a unifier,’’ said Bill Raftery, the award winning BIG EAST analyst from FOX Sports TV, of Gavitt. “He had strong relationships with every influential coach in the East and he was always willing to offer advice. He watched me coach for two years at Seton Hall before suggesting I try broadcasting! Once Patrick Ewing signed with Georgetown in 1981, I knew I had made the right move.’’
Raftery laughed. He had seen how quickly this new league transformed itself into the Beast of the East.
Before the birth of the BIG EAST, the last team from the Northeast corridor to win a national championship was La Salle in 1954. The East occasionally produced nationally competitive teams in the late 50’s, 60’s and 70’s like the 1971 Villanova team with Howard Porter and the Marvin Barnes-Ernie DiGregorio Providence team in 1973 that distinguished themselves by advancing out of the NCAA East Regionals to the Final Four and had a legitimate shot to win a national championship.
But for the most part, teams in the Northeast were a loosely configured group of regional powers who were buried in the background while UCLA, the ACC, Big Ten and Kentucky hogged most of the glory, constantly losing franchise prospects from New York City, New Jersey and Washington like Elgin Baylor, Billy Cunningham, Lew Alcindor, Tom McMillen and Adrian Dantley to brand name programs like UCLA, Notre Dame, North Carolina, NC State, Duke and Maryland.
Gavitt, who was born in a small town in New Hampshire, understood Eastern basketball, having played at Dartmouth and was an assistant and a head coach at Providence, which was the soul of New England college basketball in the 60’s and 70’s. And he realized what a new super league with teams located in four of the top eight media markets could accomplish if it operated on an equal playing field, especially if the games were played in the 35,000 seat Carrier Dome and large off-campus arenas and were regular programming on TV.
Gavitt may have been the only man who could have pulled this off. He had coached the Friars to eight straight 20-win seasons and seven postseason appearances and had the respect of coaching icons like John Wooden, Dean Smith and Bob Knight. He was rumored to be Wooden’s successor at UCLA, was asked to apply for coaching vacancies at Virginia and Duke and had already been selected as the 1980 Olympic men’s basketball coach.
“I was talking with (Georgetown Hall of Fame coach) John Thompson,’’ Dan Gavitt said. “And he told me when he was a freshman at Providence and my dad was Joe Mullaney’s assistant, he was really homesick and might have left school if it hadn’t been for his friendship with my father. He never forgot that.’’
Gavitt began envisioning a new league in the mid-70’s as a way to compete with large land grant universities for kids who could put fans in the stands. There were two problems standing in his way. Most of the big on-campus arenas were in other parts of the country and there was a reluctance among the strong independents in the East—St. John’s, Syracuse, Georgetown and Villanova—to join a conference. In May of 1978, Gavitt arranged a meeting with three ADs-- his old fraternity brother Jake Crouthamel of Syracuse, Jack Kaiser of St. John’s and Frank Rienzo of Georgetown-- to discuss the idea, figuring if those three weren’t on board, the idea was dead on arrival.
Gavitt had one thing going for him. The NCAA was pushing independents to join a conference and play round robin games against teams from that area, which would hurt regional rivalry games between the more established programs that had been built up over the years and diminished all the schools involved. Eventually, he sold the ADs on the idea and once it got out, Connecticut, Boston College and Seton Hall joined. The entrée fee for each team was $25,000. The investment was well worth it.
The new league had three original employees—Gavitt, Associate Commissioner Mike Tranghese and secretary Diane Woods-- and worked with Duffy and Shanley Inc., a marketing firm in Providence, to find a television syndicator and come up with a name. There were several recommendations—the Northeast Alliance, the Mayflower Compact, the Patriot League, Galactic East and the Empire Conference before finally settling on the BIG EAST.
The BIG EAST came to life at just the right time. College basketball was on the verge of becoming a national sport in the wake of the 1979 national championship game featuring Magic Johnson and Larry Bird and ESPN had become the perfect platform to nationally televise the bulk of the league’s games.
Success was immediate. The first year, the BIG EAST had three teams ranked in the AP Top 20. The second year, the league drew over 25,000 to a postseason tournament game at the Syracuse Carrier Dome. That spring, 6-10 Patrick Ewing announced he was going to play for John Thompson at Georgetown and the league signed 10 of the top 13 players in the league, including Chris Mullin at St. John’s and Ed Pinckney at Villanova.
“I decided on Georgetown because of John Thompson. Here was this giant of a man who spoke eloquently and with conviction who I felt I could emulate,’’ Ewing said during a panel discussion.
Ewing, the best prospect in the country, was considered a Bill Russell clone and led Georgetown to NCAA championship games in 1982 and 1985 and a national title in 1984. His presence alone was enough for Gavitt to move the BIG EAST Tournament to the Garden in 1983, where it has been played for the last 36 years. Even the first round doubleheader was sold out this year.
‘’The BIG EAST has been part of the Garden’s heritage,’’ Garden VP Joel Fisher said. “And the Garden has been part of the BIG EAST heritage. A lot of conferences came after us for that week, but as long as I’m there, we will never let the BIG EAST leave.’’
Both Ewing and Mullin were selected national Players of the Year in 1984 and 1985 when the BIG EAST was playing to sellout crowds after its tournament moved to the Garden in 1983. In 1985, the year Villanova won its first national championship, the BIG EAST held its own block party at the Final Four, with Georgetown and St. John’s—the No. 1 and 2 ranked teams in the country—and the ‘Cats all advanced to the Final Four in Lexington and Pinckney was selected the Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player.
“I remember watching the games with Bill Raftery,’’ Tranghese recalled. ‘’Rupp Arena was packed with BIG EAST fans. Villanova was playing Memphis in the first game of the semifinals and after Villanova took the lead midway through the second half, the crowd began to chant, ‘BIG EAST, BIG EAST.’’ I knew we had arrived.
Coaches Thompson, Lou Carnesecca, Jim Boeheim, Jim Calhoun, Gary Williams, Rick Pitino, Rollie Massimino and P.J. Carlesimo became household names and marquee BIG EAST games, which were played in NBA arenas, were plastered all over the TV dial.
Gavitt and his two assistant commissioners Mike Tranghese and Tom McElroy had created a college basketball monster. The BIG EAST replaced the ACC as the most powerful conference in the country during its first decade before eventually morphing into 16 teams at one point after the league added Notre Dame in basketball and Virginia Tech, Rutgers, Cincinnati, Louisville, West Virginia and Miami in football. The conference weathered by raids by the other conferences before the Presidents of the basketball went back to the future and settled into a basketball-centric 10-team, non-football conference in 2013.
Connecticut won three national championships in 1999, 2004 and 2011 in the BIG EAST before moving to the American Athletic Conference. Villanova won twice in 2016 and 2018. Georgetown won once in 1984 as did Syracuse and Louisville in 2003 and 2013 before they both left for the ACC. Seven of the league’s first eight teams—Georgetown, St. John’s, Villanova, Syracuse Providence, Seton Hall and Connecticut—have advanced to a Final Four. Gavitt, Carnesecca, Boeheim, Calhoun, Williams and Pitino were all inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame. Ewing, Mullin, Connecticut guard Ray Allen and three more Georgetown players-- centers Dikembe Mutombo and Alonzo Mourning and guard Allen Iverson—have led a parade of players from the league to be inducted into the Hall.
Even after all the realignments, the BIG EAST is still relevant today in basketball and non-revenue sports. With coaches like Jay Wright at Villanova—which has won five BIG EAST championships-- the future looks bright for current commissioner Val Ackerman, whose league has become FOX Sports’ cable’s most valuable college asset over the last six years under Executive Vice President Larry Jones.
Dave Gavitt’s vision is still practical today and his legacy looks secure.
“It’s an honor to be part of for the league Dave Gavitt started 40 year ago,’’ Ackerman said. “The March of the BIG EAST continues.’’
She was beaming as she showed a picture of her with Gavitt, Julie and NBA assistant Russ Granik outside the 1992 Olympic Stadium in Barcelona. "He was a visionary of visionaries.''