Seth Greenberg, Paul Finebaum debate basketball alignment between ACC, Big East

In college basketball, two of the historic conferences within the sport are the ACC and the Big East. In this day and age, though, the two might need to considering combining to best position themselves for their respective futures.

‘Get Up’ brought on Seth Greenberg and Paul Finebaum this morning to discuss a point made by St. John’s Rick Pitino on Monday about a possible alignment between the Atlantic Coast Conference and Big East. Greenberg, being more so about basketball, couldn’t have agreed more with the sense it would make to him, especially because of the matchups it would create between some blue-blood programs.

“I’ve been saying for years that the ACC and the Big East should, should merge, without a doubt. And, obviously, the Big East schools would get only a small portion of the revenue share. But it just makes sense,” said Greenberg. “The ACC cut their teeth on basketball. That is the tradition of the ACC. The ACC right now is not even in the conversation. You talk about four teams in the NCAA Tournament. Imagine if the ACC and Big East merge? Can you imagine the matchups that you’d have? You’d have crossover games. And, if not the whole Big East? There’s no reason that you take Cal and Stanford – I don’t care about football – and not take UConn. Are you kidding me? Can you imagine Duke and UConn, North Carolina and UConn, UConn and Syracuse. Think about all of the traditional games we’ve lost because of realignment.

“I do think you’ve got to find a way of merging the ACC and the Big East. Have a commissioner of basketball on one side, maybe that’s Val Ackerman, and have a commissioner of the league combined. But I absolutely agree with that. I’ve been saying it for two years. We’ve said it on GameDay.”

Paul Finebaum, more so on the football side of things, disagreed, though, if for no other reason than waiting for the current television contracts to end would be better. The ACC already realigned for this athletic year with the additions of three new schools. Any other changes, in his mind, wouldn’t come for a few more years once those deals end and there can truly be a separation between college football and other collegiate sports.

“I think the football card is going to make it impossible because the ACC still prides itself as one of the big boys, even though, as Seth has accurately said, in basketball, they have fallen off,” Finebaum said. “Football drives the engine – and I know this is not the right time of the month or the year to say that in the middle of March Madness – but it’s why the contracts are, are made and, and I think it would be very difficult for the ACC, which just spent two years in court with Clemson and Florida State trying to get out of the league, now to say, okay, we’re starting all over again.

“In about six or seven years, this whole thing is going to blow up anyway and I think that will be the moment but I don’t think it can happen until then…The point being that the television, the television contracts will unwind in a couple years. That’s when. That’s the moment and I don’t need to tell you guys because you’re high-falutin employees at ESPN and I’m stuck out here in the hinterlands. The point is, when these contracts all come up, and they’re all going to come up in about 2032, that’s the moment that everything will change. I don’t think it can possibly happen until then, long after Rick Pitino retires at the age of 80.”

In response, Greenberg continued to push the need for it sooner than later when it comes to the ACC and Big East. It would improve the product enough for each conference to justify doing it much closer to the present than in that future.

“Why not be forward-thinking? Right now, you’ve got to think out of the box. If you’re the ACC, you’ve got to think out of the box. If you’re the Big East, you’ve got to think outside the box,” said Greenberg. “The landscape of college athletics is changing so rapidly…We need to regionalize the sports outside of football, plain and simple, and, the sooner it’s done, the better the total enterprise is going to be. These administrators have to all get on the same page. What is best long-term for the enterprise and figure out an answer because, right now, it’s not working…That’s just the way it is. It’s not working.”

Realignment for the focus on college football has taken a toll on other college athletics, including college basketball. Because of that, Greenberg and Finebaum, while disagreeing on when it could happen, see where Pitino is coming from as far as a separation in how these two conferences could look on the court rather than the field.