Q&A: Big East commissioner Mike Aresco

[Harry]

Mike Aresco's five months on the job as Big East commissioner has been
anything but routine. The former CBS Sports executive vice president of
programming has seen Notre Dame, Rutgers, Louisville, Boise State and
San Diego State make plans to leave his conference since he took the
job. He has seen the "Catholic 7" basketball schools break off in an
effort to form their own conference, while he has added Tulane and East
Carolina, the latter currently set to enter as a football-only member.
There is also the matter of negotiating a new television deal.

With moving days taking part across the blogs this week, we caught
up with Aresco to talk about incoming 2013 members Central Florida,
Houston, Memphis and SMU, as well as several other topics facing the Big
East.

Obviously there's a lot out there right now about the TV
deal. Where do you guys stand with that, and do you need a 12th school
immediately to move forward with any further TV negotiations or deal?

Mike Aresco: I think we are getting closer. The TV
doesn't really depend on whether we add another team or teams. I think
our position has been that we're not interested in numbers just for
numbers' sake. We don't need to be 14 or 16 teams or any of that. We
just want to make sure we have the right teams and the right mix
athletically, academically. And right now, as you know, we're at 10 with
Navy going to join in '15. And Louisville/Rutgers -- if they leave
after next year, we're not sure yet -- but if they leave after next year
we would replace them and have 10 and we would also have Navy coming in
obviously a year later. At this point we would definitely look at a
12th, because you'd want even divisions if you ultimately go to a
championship game, which I think is our goal. We don't absolutely have
to do that, but we think that that's what we would want to do. You can
play unbalanced divisions, but it's not a great idea. It just isn't. So I
think in that sense we would look at perhaps adding another team -- you
know the usual suspects, you've heard those. And I don't know when we
would make that decision. We've got some meetings coming up, we call it
our group of 11 schools, and we could make a preliminary decision as to
whether we want to expand, in probably the next several weeks, and then
determine just what we want to do. And then if we did expand, that team.
But in terms of our football, I think everybody's fine playing as a
10-team league until we get Navy in. If we feel the need to expand,
great.

But you mention some of the teams, I think our conference is really built
on some programs that have had success and that really have a lot of
potential. We look at SMU, and June Jones has done well there, but I
think their best years are still ahead of them. Houston a couple years
ago, obviously a tremendous season with Kevin Sumlin. Again, they need
to sustain that. Same thing, USF has had years when they've been highly
ranked and had good seasons. And UCF, you've seen what UCF has done,
very strong program with good facilities. I think what we're looking to
do is with our group from the North, Cincinnati, [Tommy] Tuberville
there now. UConn. Temple, Al Golden left a program that was definitely
rebuilt, and they have to sustain that. And eventually Navy, East
Carolina with a great fanbase. It's a good group of schools that frankly
need to probably develop a storyline, now that we're going to be
together. The schools haven't played together before. But I think
they're all spending money, they're all trying to improve. Many of them
are in big markets. I didn't mention Memphis -- they're spending a lot
on their programs, and I didn't mention Tulane, they'll stay until 2014.
Houston, building a new stadium.

So I think it's a story of growth. That's what we're looking for,
we're trying to grow. We think we can compete. Our goal is to be
competing with the five conferences that are perceived as the five power
conferences. As you know, we were one of the six, we're still one of
the six BCS conferences, but we know that we have to fight and try to
be, again, a challenger, to challenge those other five. And that's why I
think TV and exposure and marketing and promotion are really important.
I think we've got some good brands, some good schools, but there's a
lot of untapped potential there.

Read more: http://espn.go.com/blog/bigeast/post/_/id/42365/qa-with-big-east-commissioner-mike-aresco