Edition: U.S. / Global

SPORTS OF THE TIMES; Big East, Bigger Business

William C. Rhoden
Published: November 8, 1990

The Big East Conference held its annual media day in New York City yesterday: same format, different players, same coaching alibis. But this year, one major player was not on hand. Dave Gavitt, the founder and commissioner of the Big East, resigned earlier this year to become the general manager of the Boston Celtics.

Gavitt's presence in the Big East was as imposing as that of Walter Byers in the National Collegiate Athletic Association. He organized and nurtured the concept of getting nine loosely organized institutions in the Northeast corridor to form a basketball conference in an instant talent cartel.

The conference has become a multimillion-dollar success and has come to epitomize the very essence of big-time basketball.

So Gavitt is gone and yesterday Mike Tranghese, a clever, cordial man who had been Gavitt's left and right hand, presided over his first media day as the Big East commissioner.

Tranghese has had a fierce baptism. One of the first challenges he faced was the threatened disintegration of the conference. With the recent scramble by college football powers to align themselves with better conferences to attract better television packages, some of the major independents joined leagues. Boston College, Syracuse and Pittsburgh, members of the Big East who who competed as independents in football, made noise about forming new affiliations.

Suddenly, the Big East, which seemed so invincible five seasons ago when three of its nine teams reached the Final Four, was in danger of being raided or deserted, unless the new commissoner made a bold move.

Tranghese resisted expansion at first. But when it became clear that the three football schools were unhappy with the Big East's focus on basketball -- and planned to do something about it -- the commissioner reached out and plucked the University of Miami. Effectively, that kept B.C., Pitt and Syracuse in the conference.

Yesterday, though, Tranghese conceded that the move troubled him and continues to trouble him because it violated the geographic integrity that had been a cornerstone of the Big East.

"The one hangup I had as we talked with Miami was this geographic incompatibility. But when I looked at it, I said if I don't take Miami and I lose Syracuse and Pitt, where am I going to get replacements?"

As schools and conferences make moves based primarily on economics, players are beginning to look more closely at sums of money passing over, around, behind and underneath them.

Nearly every coach at a major Division I program has a shoe and or clothing contract in which he is paid in exchange for the team's wearing a certain brand of shoes or in some cases uniforms.

Oliver Taylor, a junior guard for Seton Hall, said most players hardly question the practice. "All the players know is that these are a pair of sneakers that the team is wearing," he said. "They don't understand that these are shoes that you have to wear, regardless of whether they fit or not, because the coach has a contract with the shoe company."

Taylor recalled that last season some of the players didn't like the uniforms that the Pirates wore in a nationally televised game. Even though he said "it was like a commercial for Nike," Taylor assumed that since there was a contract between the coach and the company, they would simply go along.

"A lot of times, you're just thankful that you got a scholarship and you're saving your parents $18,000 a year," he said. "But I feel we should get more financial aid or benefits."

Many people are troubled by college athletes' asking for more. But at a time when athletic departments and coaches are making grandstand plays for revenue, athletes are developing a savvy business awareness at best, a pronounced mercenary attitude at worst.

What concerns Tranghese about the Big East's curious geographic meandering is a perception by the public that the conference is no longer what it purports to be. He complained throughout the interviews that reporters were so interested in disucssing the league's expansion that he hadn't even got around to discussing basketball.

"That's what I want to talk about, but it's naive," he said. "This is a big business, and that's why I'm being paid what I'm paid. But it's bothersome and it's a concern because people get turned off to it being viewed as just a business."

In fact, big-time college sports is precariously close to being viewed as a business by the Internal Revenue Service, which is already looking at the tax-exempt status of various college football bowl organizations. Soon, the I.R.S. will examine the relationship between the athlete and the university. If it is, in fact, a business, who is the employee who is the employer? And is the scholarship effectively a contract?

What's even more interesting is that the questions are not only being asked by outsiders, but increasingly by the troops.