That day serves as a point of demarcation where nothing would ever be the same for the Big East or its league members. But there is a reason, 10 years later, that Luck remembers that moment so clearly. Luck raced to find medical personnel, who helped Marinatto regain consciousness. "I remember saying to myself, 'Oh my god, the conference is falling apart, the commissioner just in front of me and I don't know what to do,'" Luck said in a phone interview, adding that the call concerned Dave Gavitt, the Big East founder, who died just as his beloved league was breaking up. Luck watched as Marinatto turned ashen and pale, then fell to the ground. Marinatto got a phone call five minutes into their meeting. Even if they wanted to, they never had the chance. Neither said what appears obvious, in hindsight. The elephant in the room, of course, was that Pitt and Syracuse had delivered a double gut punch that sent shock waves across the league, signaling to every remaining football-playing member that the time had come to forget about conference loyalties and look out for itself. Marinatto sat in a high-backed chair at the bar as the two briefly discussed how exactly the Big East would survive as a football-playing conference. The two met alone in a suite inside Maryland's football stadium. 17, 2011, and made a plan to get to league commissioner John Marinatto as quickly as possible. He was headed east from Morgantown to the West Virginia-Maryland football game on Sept. Realignment revisited - The beginning of the end for Big East footballĬollege Football, West Virginia Mountaineers, Syracuse Orange, Pittsburgh Panthers, TCU Horned Frogs, Boise State Broncos, San Diego State Aztecs, Cincinnati Bearcats, South Florida Bulls, Louisville Cardinals, UConn Huskies, Rutgers Scarlet Knights, Miami Hurricanes, Virginia Tech Hokies, Boston College Eaglesįormer West Virginia athletic director Oliver Luck still remembers, with vivid clarity, the day Pittsburgh and Syracuse officially announced they were bailing on the Big East to move to the ACC.
#Big east conference upgrade
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