Rick Pitino suggests 20-team college basketball ‘super league’ to ‘combat’ football

NEW YORK — Rick Pitino wasn’t afraid to voice his opinion on the current landscape of college basketball and college athletics on Wednesday at Big East basketball media day.

The former Kentucky and Louisville basketball coach, now in his second year at St. John’s, talked at length in his appearance at Madison Square Garden regarding conference realignment — and how a basketball-centric conference like the Big East could withstand it. His proposal: an 18-to-20-team “super league.”

“I don’t have a say in that at all. If I was to, I’d want something to combat football,” Pitino told media on Wednesday. “Whether it’s 18 teams, 20 teams super league, something needs to combat football because it’s just taken over our whole landscape.”

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The Big East was founded in 1979 by former Providence basketball and athletic director Dave Gavitt as a basketball-centric conference. Along with the Friars, St. John’s is one of the conference’s seven original members.

In today’s climate of college athletics — one in which college football is the driving force in both revenue and realignment — the Big East is at a disadvantage. But it’s a conference that has stayed true to its basketball roots following the conference’s most recent realignment in 2013.

It’s something Big East commissioner Val Ackerman pointed to in her opening remarks to media on Wednesday.

“We unfortunately don’t have a crystal ball to tell us where college sports will be in one year, three years or a decade from now. Would we benefit from a set of national rules that preempt the current state law, patchwork and reconcile the application of the antitrust and labor laws and Title IX to college sports programs? We believe the answer is yes,” Ackerman said. “In the meantime, we think the Big East is primed to remain a college basketball powerhouse, even as the terrain beneath us keeps shifting.”

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Four Big East programs — UConn, Villanova, Butler and Georgetown — have Division I football teams, with the Huskies the only one to compete in FBS. None compete in the Big East, which does not sponsor the sport — meaning the conference doesn’t receive revenue sharing from the sport.

“I think that something has to be done to protect ourselves from football. Are we good enough with just 11 (teams) to protect ourselves? I’m not sure,” Pitino said. “So if you have a super league, I think made up of basketball only as the premier (sport) because football sticks with everything. And the great thing about the Big East, it’s not football, except for UConn.

“I’m not a big believer in worrying about money. I think that most businesses that become super successful don’t (either), whether it’s Uber or Amazon or whoever. Maybe they don’t make money at the beginning, they go through five to six, seven-year periods where you’d lose a lot of money and then they’d become mega companies. So I would not be concerned about sharing revenue rights and things like that. I would just say, ‘Look 10 years down the road where you want to be.'”

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When asked where the starting point would be for this endeavor, Pitino said conferences should be “more regional than anything else.” Should the Big East ever decide to expand, Pitino said one program that would fit this “Big East super league” is Dayton, of the Atlantic 10.

Pitino also scoffed at adding another program who, despite being a basketball power, is not a natural fit to the Big East’s current geographical footprint.

“I would not go to the West Coast,” Pitino said. “I heard about Gonzaga. I thought that was foolish, to be honest with you. I think it’s foolish for UCLA to go to play Penn State. I think it’s too long a trip, but that’s what football will do for you.

“So I think a super league of 18 teams, whoever those teams may be, to define the future of college basketball would be great. But if it’s 12 teams in the Big East, that’s up to them.”

Pitino did acknowledge that conferences would need to be “proactive” in creating a college basketball super league.

“Any successful business has to be proactive because of competition,” Pitino said. “Back when I first started coaching, college basketball and college football were on the same plane. The NFL and NBA were on the same plane. Today we’re dwarfed in every category by football. Except for the world, football has taken over (everything).

“And I think they’re (NFL) even trying to do that in going to Brazil and going to London. So football has taken over the world basically and we have to be proactive and come up with something to combat that to make us relevant. I know the NCAA is not proactive and I’m hoping the Big East is proactive in their thinking and I think they will be.”

Pitino said he believes super leagues will happen at certain levels, such as the Atlantic 10 and the MAC forming into one league. Pitino also mentioned regional-centric schedules as being “economically feasible” in establishing travel partners.

“It is all going to be consolidated,” Pitino said. “There’s not enough forward thinking with all of it in college basketball. I really think there needs to be.”

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Rick Pitino: Super leagues can ‘define future of college basketball’