The Big East Is Among Multiple Leagues Considering Bubbles For Basketball Season: IMG, Omaha In Mix

With the success so far achieved in the NBA bubble, could college basketball bubbles be far behind?

The Big East Conference — which does not have football and on Wednesday postponed all fall sports — is one of several leagues considering setting up bubbles for its men’s and women’s basketball seasons, multiple sources said.

“We’re considering it along with several scheduling alternatives,” one Big East source said.

Possible locations include the CHI Health Center Arena in Omaha, Neb. — Creighton’s home site — and IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla. where the WNBA is currently playing in a bubble amid some complaints about living conditions. Additional locations are also being considered, the source said. It remains unclear if men’s and women’s basketball in the Big East would be in the same or different bubbles.

It’s also unclear when conference games would be played in the bubbles and how they would work in relation to school calendars. The college basketball season is set to begin Nov. 10. Last year the 90-day Big East conference schedule began Dec. 30. The league’s main TV partner, Fox, would also have to be consulted but a Fox source said there have been no discussions as of yet.

The Big East isn’t the only league to reach out to officials at IMG, either.

“Multiple leagues have reached out due to the fact that we’ve been able to handle the WNBA bubble,” an IMG source said Wednesday by phone, declining to mention which other leagues had reached out.

“We had to build a bubble, a dome, where we had to put three temporary courts in,” the source added. “And we had company put them in. And the day they were here, they had like four conferences call them about getting six floors and trying to create bubble atmospheres. And the Big East was one of the conferences that called then, and I know that Omaha is one of the sites that they talked about for a possible bubble.”

The Big East was the last league to cancel play due to the pandemic — suspending the St. John’s/Creighton Big East Tournament quarterfinal game at halftime on March 12 — and received a great deal of backlash at the time. The league figures to be thoughtful and cautious in making its next move for the 2020-21 season.

“It is very conceptual and simply an exercise of assessing practicalities for further consideration,” one Big East athletic director said of the bubble idea.

The NBA bubble has so far proven to be the best mechanism for playing basketball, and the Big East has clearly taken notice.

Of the 342 players tested for COVID-19 on the NBA campus since test results were last announced on Aug. 5, zero have returned confirmed positive tests. 

Seton Hall coach Kevin Willard is among those who has advocated a 26-game league schedule in a bubble-type environment.

“Every school has said after Thanksgiving there will be no one on campus, so why would we not take advantage of having no one on campus?” Willard told the New York Post last month in suggesting individual bubbles on campus. “It’s almost like being in a bubble and being able to have almost no interaction with any of the students. It’s probably the safest time to play.

“Sitting back and waiting for flu season and waiting for kids to come back on campus is idiotic.”

After initially announcing it would play conference-only games in the fall, the Big East announced the postponement of fall sports on Wednesday, which would seem to put the non-conference basketball season in major jeopardy. The league’s official position is that “plans for men’s and women’s basketball and other sports are unaffected at this time,” Commissioner Val Ackerman said in a statement.

“The decision to not hold fall sports competition was not made lightly,” said Chair of the Big East Board of Directors and Villanova University President the Reverend Peter M. Donohue, OSA, PhD. “Athletics play an integral role in the student, alumni and fan experience at each of our institutions, and we were all hoping to allow the fall seasons to move forward. However, given the guidance of the Big East COVID-19 Task Force, this decision, while disappointing, was made with the health and safety of our student-athletes and staff in mind. The well-being of our community members are, and will continue to be, our priority and focus.”