Zemek: The Big East Commissioner Change

What the resignation of John Marinatto means for the future of the Big East.

Just a few days after the Big 12 Conference helped itself immensely by landing Bob Bowlsby as its new commissioner, the Big East Conference finds itself at a crossroads.

The resignation of John Marinatto as Big East Commissioner – requested by the presidents of Big East schools – is certainly not surprising on a larger level. Along with Dan Beebe, the former Big 12 boss whose permanent long-term replacement was finally selected last week, Marinatto was out of his depth as a conference commissioner.

It is very much worth saying that the Big East didn't have – and wasn't going to have – the same leverage as the other BCS conferences, but even within that context, Marinatto plainly failed to bring the league's football and basketball schools together. Marinatto wasn't skilled or agile enough to forge an early consensus between football and basketball factions, which is what the league needed in order to secure long-term television deals at a time when this latest realignment cycle began in June of 2010.

ACC Commissioner John Swofford deserves the most blame for continuously raiding the Big East, but it has to be acknowledged that much as Beebe stood around helplessly while the Big Ten snatched Nebraska two years ago, Marinatto was similarly stuck in mental quicksand when the ACC plucked Pittsburgh and Syracuse last year.
Marinatto wasn't the man the Big East needed at the helm for the long haul, and the league's presidents finally acted on that realization, albeit a few years too late.

The search for a new commissioner thrusts the Big East into a threshold, a space between peril and opportunity. The league has just added a bunch of new schools to replace its "exodus club," but as we've seen in this most recent round of realignment – especially and instructively in the case of TCU – signing a deal to join a conference is no guarantee of participation in said conference… not even for one year of on-field competition.

The search for a new Big East commish will occur alongside two equally important tasks: 1) The pursuit of more favorable television arrangements for the conference; 2) the urgent quest to reassure Boise State, San Diego State, and other 2013 newcomers that the Big East will deliver a substantial return on investment.

Marinatto was not the savvy backroom player the Big East needed in the post-Mike Tranghese era. Now, a new round of multi-level phone calling will ensue. The results of these phone calls – the new commissioner, the likely ramifications for television deals, and the way incoming schools respond – will determine just how much leverage the Big East carries into the new and yet-to-be-finalized college football landscape of 2014 and beyond.