Post by wtm97 on Aug 15, 2013 6:07:35 GMT -5
As the infrastructure and build out of the new Big East moves beyond the I-Phone Office, Ms. Ackerman held some recent interviews leading up to the FOX1 roll out scheduled for 8-17...it has been a scramble yet I say again it is most fortunate the C-7 group broke away this year and started this thing because if they had waited another year (which AAC's Aresco wanted), the opportunity to launch may have been much weaker in light of the latest 'talk' among the re=aligning and scrambling BSC football heavies.
At least now with the FOX emergence, the nascent basketball-only Big East will have a chance to showcase and present even as ESPN ignores...obviously, Ackerman will have to be rolling out much and very soon. Here then is some new stuff...
New commissioner Val Ackerman, Big East set priorities for future
Aug. 13, 2013
Aug. 13, 2013
Big East athletic directors expect Ackerman to focus on the long-term health of their conference, in addition to simply getting it up and running. They point to the importance of maintaining a good relationship with Madison Square Garden...
"I'd call it right now an openness to expansion – I think, because you have to be in this world," Ackerman says. "I have not even had this discussion yet with my presidents … so I would say it's on the back burner, but I would not say it will never happen. But at this point, it's not something anyone is spending a lot of time working on."
More pressing, perhaps, is the possibility of drastic changes to the NCAA governance structure. Talk of a new "super-division" is looming, and NCAA Executive Committee head Nathan Hatch, President of Wake Forest, said last week a new structure will be a focus of the 2014 NCAA Convention, with a plan to be adopted in August of that year.
"It's important to be a leader on the national scene," St. John's athletic director Chris Monasch says. "(Ackerman) needs to be out there, certainly, among the BCS commissioners, and make sure we're aligned with them as much as possible, especially with all the potential changes that are being discussed about the future of the NCAA, of NCAA governance. We need to be the elite basketball conference nationally."
Villanova athletic director Vince Nicastro calls that the "political" side of being a conference commissioner, a role which includes tracking where the league is positioned amongst the prominent football-playing conferences.
"Being able to have those relationships and the political savvy to make sure that a conference like the Big East continues to compete at the very highest level – I think Val possesses that in a big way," Nicastro says. "She's really going to help us as we move forward in this new evolution."
Ackerman is familiar with talk of NCAA reconfiguration; as a member of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, she discussed the topic frequently. There is a great deal of uncertainty, though some changes remain unlikely, such as altering access to the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament.
"I'd be surprised if anyone today can tell you how exactly where this is going to end up," she says.
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