For Val Ackerman And The Big East, A Different Timeline At Work

How different is the current sports landscape right now?

Big East commissioner Val Ackerman, speaking about the bright spots from the Big East Tournament, spoke not of Jay Wright or Myles Powell, but rather: pandemic insurance.

“The good news that we did have insurance for the Big East tournament that covered pandemics, and our league also had the benefit of some reserves that were established, when the league relaunched in 2013,” Ackerman said on a Zoom call with reporters Friday. “And so we were able to access that to a degree to help mitigate some of the damage, but again the loss of March Madness was a very very tough blow for everyone.”

But what has separated the Big East, since the conference divorced from its Division I football brethren, is what Ackerman said Wright never tires of reminding her: “We’re basketball schools, we’re basketball schools.”

Accordingly, while college football faces a summer deadline — some say late spring, some say it can happen as late as July — to determine whether the global pandemic will keep college football from happening, the Big East, largely basketball-driven, has more of a runway for the country to find a way forward before facing the most dire consequences of losing the economic nerve center of its sports calendar.

“Football comes with the possibility of significant significant revenue, but also the possibility of significant expense,” Ackerman said. “So, they cancel each other out in the Big East.”

Noting the amount of revenue generated from attendance at men’s basketball games, along with how much of the league’s television deal with Fox Sports is driven by hoops, even in a conference which sponsors 22 sports, “Big East basketball is just for the life of our communities.”

This doesn’t mean that the Big East is free of financial worry. Ackerman views Labor Day as the date certain to determine whether men’s and women’s basketball can start on time, and that is coming soon, if not quite as soon as the range of football decisions ahead.

And she noted that while athletics budgets are separate from overall school budgets, if colleges and universities have to reduce tuition, that will have potential effects on everything the schools do, athletics included.

“Really, no matter what happens, our campuses are going to be affected,” Ackerman said. “This is going to have significant ripple effects.”

Even so, few think college athletics are going to disappear entirely, no matter what the length of the coronavirus disruption is. And a set of schools that, seven years ago, divorced from football serving as the dominant economic master managed to avoid any number of potential pitfalls inherent in the sport, from rising insurance rates to larger moral questions, given the dangers involved, of sponsoring college football at all.

Now, depending on the shape and scope of our nation’s ability to create a safe plan moving forward, it is easy to see a scenario in which summer remains fraught, college football is cancelled, but by Labor Day, the sport that serves as the Big East’s lifeblood prepares for a semi-normal season.

Nothing is certain in this moment, and Ackerman is the first to say so. But the luxury of time, right now, might be the best gift yet given to the not-so-new Big East.