Starting next season, the ACC will move to a 15-team, 18-game basketball schedule with the additions of Notre Dame, Pittsburgh and Syracuse. In order to accommodate the extra games on the conference schedule, the ACC will once again be taking from the Big East.
#ACC commish John Swofford just told me the league will take over Big East's 7 p.m. time slot next season on ESPN's Big Monday.
— David Teel (@DavidTeelatDP) March 16, 2013
Swofford said #ACC will keep Sunday night game on ESPNU, giving league a basketball presence every day except Friday.
— David Teel (@DavidTeelatDP) March 16, 2013
With Monday night games in the fold, the conference will have games on six of seven days a week. Hopefully this means less midweek 9 PM tips which can be brutal for home attendance.
Speaking of the new Big East, the conference will be a 10 program league in 2013-14. The 10 members will be the Catholic 7 schools that left the Big East -- DePaul, Georgetown, Marquette, Providence, Seton Hall, St. John's and Villanova -- plus Butler and Xavier of the Atlantic 10 and Creighton of the Missouri Valley. The new league is expected to sign a media rights agreement with the new Fox Sports 1.
The old Big East will be a 10-team all-sports league of Cincinnati, Connecticut, Houston, Louisville, Memphis, Rutgers, SMU, South Florida, Temple and UCF next season. In 2014, Louisville and Rutgers will head to the ACC and Big Ten, respectively, replaced by Tulane (all sports) and East Carolina (football only). The to-be-named conference's media rights will remain with ESPN.
With a lineup like that, you can understand why the WWL is dumping the old Big East for the ACC for its Big Monday 7 PM programming slot. Big Monday today, Madison Square Garden tomorrow?