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Where has the Big East gone wrong in its quest to be a viable football conference?

Ask 100 people, and get a 100 answers. But one man in particular shared his thoughts on the topic with New York Times columnist William C. Rhoden, thoughts that simply cannot be ignored.

Former commissioner Mike Tranghese believes the point of no return happened before the Big East was a viable football conference, back in 1989. At the time, Tranghese was working under Dave Gavitt, and the two men believed it was imperative to bring Penn State into the league. Membership voted no. St. John's, Villanova and Georgetown led the dissenters.

From the Times story:

At the end of the meeting, Gavitt asked Tranghese what he thought about the decision. “I said, ‘We will all rue the day about this decision,’ ” Tranghese said. “I understood how big football was. I didn’t understand how big it was going to become.

“At that point, the Big East had so much success in the ’80s, everybody sort of forgot about it. But I felt looking back on the history of the Big East, that was probably the biggest mistake we made.”

When Tranghese became commissioner in 1990, the league had no choice but to really go after football. At the time, conference presidents commissioned a study to look at the benefits of staying together or going their separate ways. Even Tranghese had misgivings about programs with different interests remaining as one league.

“I thought at that point, our league should have given very serious consideration to separating,” Tranghese told The Times. “From where I was sitting, the difficulty of keeping everything together — some people playing football, some people not playing football — was a challenge.”

So here we are today, 20 years later, and the same questions continue to vex the Big East:

• How can a commissioner truly lead when he does not have the full backing of his membership?
• How does this league function when there are such obvious factions between basketball and football?

The first question is one I have addressed several times on this blog in regard to current commissioner John Marinatto. To me, Tranghese's comments speak to the obtuseness of some presidents in the league, and their failure to think about the future, and the shifting landscape of college athletics. The same story line persisted then as it does today.

Tranghese seemed to understand the future ramifications of adding Penn State, and so did Gavitt -- a man who was a driving force in leading Big East basketball to the top. Neither one wanted to destroy basketball for the sake of football. There should be a way for them to coexist, but that clearly has not happened.

Now, Tranghese was in charge when the Big East was raided the first time in 2003. His role in what happened when Miami, Boston College and Virginia Tech left is not addressed in the article. But when Tranghese retired, he knew more expansion was coming and, he said, "I just refused to sit there and go through it again."

There are those who might think that Tranghese is passing the buck. What exactly did he do to foster a cohesive Big East, or to prevent defections? He may have understood football had become a driving force, but even he was powerless to unify everybody. He clearly understood that if he knew the Big East would eventually get raided again.

But overall, I think Tranghese underscored once again why the Big East continues to be so dysfunctional. There is no uniform voice, and no uniform vision.

There are still basketball interests, and football interests that never seem to be one in the same.

Good Monday to ya.

• Cincinnati coach Butch Jones gives his early impressions of practice.
• The University of Connecticut Board of Trustees has voted to demolish Memorial Stadium, home to the football team until 2003.
• Here are a few Big East transfers to watch.
• Louisville has offered a scholarship to a tight end from Lake Mary, Fla.
• Three-star cornerback Anthony Standifer chose Ole Miss over Pitt and Vanderbilt.
• Syracuse will be without several players for spring practice.
• William Rhoden of The New York Times writes about the downfall of the Big East, with some powerful comments from former commissioner Mike Tranghese.
• Could there be a Big East vote on Temple on Wednesday?

Late last week, West Virginia coach Bill Stewart gave his opinion that Big East football could disband. On Monday afternoon, no less of an authority than Mike Tranghese was sounding similar alarm bells.

Tranghese, the man who started Big East football before retiring as league commissioner a year ago, told a Pittsburgh radio station on Monday that the conference he once oversaw could be at the mercy of Big Ten expansion plans.

"It’s a question of what the Big Ten does,’’ he said. "If the Big Ten takes multiple teams, the Big East is in trouble.’’

I get asked all the time why the Big East doesn't take preventive measures to avoid such a fate. My normal answer is that the Big East doesn't really have any cards to play. Tranghese agrees.

"I don’t think there’s anything the Big East can do to prevent it," he told the radio station. "Everyone is on pins and needles waiting to see what the Big Ten will do. It’s a pretty dicey time.’’

Tranghese confirmed that the Big East had instituted a $5 million penalty fee after the ACC raid in 2005, but that hardly serves as a deterrent when schools are looking at windfalls in the $20 million range from a possible Big Ten move.

And what about the idea of adding teams as a preventive move? Tranghese said the types of schools that would make the Big East more viable aren't available.

"Just adding teams will not make the Big East stronger,’’ he said.

These are some pretty dire warnings that should have every Big East athletic director and president on edge. Still, as Tranghese mentioned, it's really all about what the Big Ten does at this point. If it merely adds one team, even a Big East school, then the future of the conference shouldn't be dramatically altered.

Posted by ESPN.com's Brian Bennett

Former Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese talks to the Memphis Commercial Appeal about his new role as a consultant for Memphis.

"My job is not to get people into other conferences, because if that was what I was hired for, I would not have accepted it. What I said I could do is evaluate and tell you where your program is relative to other programs in the BCS."

• The Big East is likely to stay with the Papajohns.com Bowl in Birmingham, Jon Solomon writes in the Birmingham News.
• Bobby Petrino deserves blame for Louisville's decline, Rick Bozich writes in The Courier-Journal.
• Rutgers running back Jourdan Brooks, who was invisible in the opener, had a big game against Howard and is feeling more comfortable this year, Tom Luicci writes in The Star-Ledger.
• Cincinnati's first priority on Saturday will be stopping Jacquizz Rodgers, Bill Koch writes in the Cincinnati Enquirer.
• Delone Carter will try to fix Syracuse's running woes, Donnie Webb writes in the Syracuse Post-Standard.
• Scooter Berry really wants to play against Auburn, but the West Virginia defensive lineman doesn't know if his shoulder will let him, Bob Hertzel writes in the Times West Virginian.
• UConn coach Randy Edsall is looking for a deep threat to emerge at receiver, Desmond Conner writes in the Hartford Courant.
• Delbert Alvarado might be relieved of his kickoff duties for South Florida but will remain the field goal kicker and punter, Brett McMurphy says in the Tampa Tribune.

Posted by ESPN.com's Brian Bennett

Memphis' hiring of former Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese opens up all kinds of speculation about the conference.

It's no secret that the Tigers have been trying their best to work their way into a BCS conference. They've felt left behind ever since the Big East took Louisville, Cincinnati and South Florida for football and DePaul and Marquette for basketball out of Conference USA in 2005. Memphis was left to wonder, what about us?

Hiring Tranghese, who retired in July, is a stroke of genius, Geoff Calkins writes in the Memphis Commercial Appeal. And he's right. If your goal is entry to the Big East, what better person to have on your payroll than the guy who oversaw the founding of the Big East, who was the league's first paid employee and who is best friends with current commissioner John Marinatto?

Before we connect those dots, however, we must remember a few things.

First, the Big East isn't currently looking to expand, especially not if it adds to the basketball membership. Secondly, Memphis has a ways to go before its facilities and its competitiveness match the rest of the Big East. Right now, adding Memphis for football doesn't really help the Big East in terms of prestige.

You could make a strong case that the league ought to boot out DePaul and add Memphis to keep the basketball format at 16 and make the football alignment nine deep. But there may be resistance on the basketball side to adding yet another top program to what is already the toughest and deepest league in the country.

Tranghese had said he wanted to do some consulting work when he retired, so this makes sense for him. No other BCS league except the Big East really makes sense for Memphis. The SEC is a better geographic fit, but it's not going to go past 12 teams anytime soon. Nor would Memphis have any chance of competing in that league in football.

What Memphis has done is grab a connection to the power brokers in the Big East. It will be up to the school to sell itself, and it will be up to the league to figure out whether the Tigers bring enough to the table to warrant inclusion in the future.

Posted by ESPN.com's Tim Griffin

As my Big East blogging colleague Brian Bennett recharges for a few days, here are some stories that people were talking about across the conference.

• Bill Reynolds of the Providence Journal reflects on the legacy of departing Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese.
• Mike Casazza of the Charleston Daily Mail writes about the work of Niles Eggleston, who as director has overcome some early challenges to help the Mountaineer Athletic Club generate a record $15.4 million in funds for West Virginia's athletic department.
• Syracuse's Delone Carter, South Florida's Mike Ford, Pittsburgh's Dion Lewis and Jordan Todman and Andre Dixon of Connecticut are among the Big East's sleeper running backs detailed by Athlonsports.com's Steven Lassen.
• USA Today's Eric H. Lewis previews the Big East race.
• Mammoth 310-pound offensive lineman Matt Rotheram from North Olmstead, Ohio, has committed to Pittsburgh, Paul Zeise of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. Rotheram, the Panthers' 12th commitment in the 2010 recruiting class, chose Pitt over Purdue and Indiana among his finalists.
• The Sporting News' Matt Hayes ranks the difficulty of the Big East's collective nonconference schedule as fifth among the six major football conferences.
• Paul Sykes of UofLCardgames.com breaks down the contenders in Louisville's quarterback battle to replace Hunter Cantwell.
• Jim Butta of the Parkersburg News and Sentinel analyzes Colorado heading into West Virginia's Oct. 1 game with the Buffaloes.

Posted by ESPN.com's Brian Bennett

The Charleston Daily Mail's Mike Casazza has more on West Virginia quarterback Eugene Smith's injury.

"There are a lot of variables involved," offensive coordinator Jeff Mullen said. "The one big one is how Geno responds. What kind of a kid is he handling pain, playing through injury, getting treatment? All those things are important because we haven't seen him and we're not allowed to deal with him from a coaching standpoint."

• Outgoing Marshall athletic director Bob Marcum says getting a 1-for-1 deal with West Virginia is crucial, the Daily Mail's Jack Bogaczyk writes.

• Syracuse got a commitment from a running back/defensive back from Pittsburgh, Donnie Webb reports in the Syracuse Post-Standard.

• With the Big East commissioner's job changing hands, hear from Mike Tranghese and John Marinatto in their own words in The Sporting News.

• South Florida coach Jim Leavitt is planning a visit to Washington to consult with the Huskies' new staff, Greg Auman notes in the St. Petersburg Times.

Posted by ESPN.com's Brian Bennett

Today is the final official day of work for Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese. In keeping with Tranghese's low-key style, it will be mostly a regular day at the office for the league staff in Providence, R.I.

"It's not like we're going to have streamers and banners hanging up," league football spokesman Chuck Sullivan said. "It will seem very much like a normal business day."

The main marker for the occasion was a dinner at a steakhouse on Friday night for Tranghese that about 50 people attended, Sullivan said. Tomorrow, John Marinatto will officially take over as commissioner, and it should be about as seamless a transition as possible. Marinatto has been the league's senior associate commissioner since 2002, serving as Tranghese's right-hand man on several key issues.

Tranghese has been the commissioner since 1990 and oversaw the formation of Big East football a year later. He also saw the league get raided by the Atlantic Coast Conference earlier this decade, when Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College bolted the Big East.

Was he caught off guard by that raid? That's a fair accusation. Ultimately, though, I'm not sure what he could have done to prevent it as those schools decided to chase more money. One could argue that none of the three teams that left have significantly improved their football fortunes, performance-wise, in the ACC.

Tranghese (and Marinatto) deserve credit for picking up the pieces after the raid and reforming the league by bringing in South Florida, Louisville and Cincinnati on the football side. Those might not have seemed like sexy picks at the time, and there were many who wondered how the Big East could possibly keep its automatic BCS bid. But Louisville and Cincinnati have both gone to Orange Bowls since, and South Florida has crept into the Top 10 of the polls each of the last two years.

He also did a masterful job balancing the wildly different needs of the members of the Big East, which has seven non-football playing schools and Notre Dame, which competes as an independent in football. And Tranghese has always been very accessible and open with the media while serving as one of college sports' true power brokers.

The ending of the Tranghese era will probably hit most people in early August, when the league holds its football media day in Newport, R.I. He's not a guy who would like a lot of fuss to be made over his departure. But as the only Big East commissioner the league's football teams have ever known, he deserves recognition on his final day in office.   

Posted by ESPN.com's Brian Bennett

The Big East's main focus this week is on New York City, where the men's basketball tournament is being played at Madison Square Garden.

But there's a little bit of football talk going on in the Big Apple, too.

Outgoing league commissioner Mike Tranghese met with media members on Wednesday night and spoke about some of the issues the conference faces. The biggest priority on the football side remains improving the Big East bowl tie-ins, Desmond Connor reports in the Hartford Courant. The league had a meeting of all 16 presidents on Wednesday afternoon, and Tranghese said 40 minutes of that meeting were devoted to talking about bowls.

"Close to getting it done," he said. "I don't know what I want to tell you because, you know, I haven't even told our people much. I just said, 'trust me, you know, we're working at it.' We're in the middle of this basketball tournament but we're talking to a lot of people. In fact, we've got some of our bowl partners here as guests. Football teams do come to Madison Square Garden."

Tranghese also told the St. Petersburg Times' Greg Auman that the Big East may adopt new scheduling policies after Florida International dropped South Florida to play Rutgers earlier this year.

"It's over with now, and I've talked to both schools about it, expressed my feelings about it," Tranghese said. "We're going to talk about it as a league this summer and adopt some specific rules. ... We're going to talk about cutoff dates, where School A from our league can't pick up something from School B, that kind of thing."

One change Tranghese said he would like to see is larger buyouts in 2-for-1 scheduling deals. FIU bought out of its deal with the Bulls for just $200,000.

Posted by ESPN.com's Brian Bennett

The New York Times' Pete Thamel has a long and interesting Q&A with outgoing Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese as Tranghese presides over his final men's basketball league tournament. Lots of good stuff in there to read, but football fans will find the following passages particularly worth parsing:

Pete Thamel: I remember from reading Kevin McNamara's book on the Big East that there have been some near misses with difference schools over the years. Things have obviously worked out. But do you ever look back and wonder what would have happened if Penn State had come aboard?

Mike Tranghese: I look back on the 30 years, and I think we made one major mistake. We had a chance to take Penn State in 1982 and we didn't. You look back on it and the whole face of college athletics would be changed now. If we had taken Penn State in 1982, we may still have football independents. The idea wasn't to take Penn State and start a football league. It was to give Penn State a place. And then they would have been aligned with Syracuse and Boston College. We probably would have brought Pitt in, too, and the four of them probably would have agreed to play and continue as independents. I think the whole face of college football would have changed. I don't think Florida State would have moved and Miami would have moved. All of it came about when Penn State made the decision to go to the Big Ten. I thought that in 1982, I was just a young staffer at this meeting. Dave [Gavitt] wanted to go to Penn State and extend the invitation. But he couldn't if we didn't have the votes. And we had eight teams and needed six votes and it was a 5-3 vote. It was probably the only time that Dave couldn't drive a final decision in the years that he was the commissioner. I was just a staffer. I could say whatever I wanted to Dave. At the end of our meeting, Dave asked what I thought. In fact, it's in our minutes. I said, 'We will rue the day over this decision.' And it's been pretty prophetic.

PT: Paterno has always tagged a lot of that on former Syracuse A.D. Jake Crouthamel, right?

MT: Despite all the negativity that comes out about Jake, he fought like crazy for Penn State to be in the league. Syracuse and Boston College really fought to have Penn State because Jake understood the importance of Penn State. What happened in the previous fall, Penn State had tried to form a football league. Coach Paterno has laid a lot of this at Jake's feet, which I think is wrong. What never got written was that the basketball league was being pretty successful and they couldn't agree on revenue sharing in football. There wasn't going to be any revenue sharing. Jake just wasn't going to do that. The next year Dave brought it up for discussion and Jake was absolutely supportive. We voted five different times and all five times Jake voted for Penn State. And Bill Flynn at Boston College, God rest his soul, voted for Penn State all five times. The reason that they didn't get in was that the league was new, a lot of the directors felt it was a basketball league. Some of the directors felt that the concept of the Big East was big markets. It was a 5-3 vote that changed the face of history.

Think about that. If Penn State joined the Big East for football, the league would have certainly been much different and much stronger. You could argue that the ACC raid never happens, and Cincinnati, Louisville and South Florida never come aboard. Whether that's a good or bad thing depends on your perspective. And one or two votes might have made the difference.

Posted by ESPN.com's Brian Bennett

Lot of news this week and a lot of mail, so we'll handle it today in two parts.

Dan from Mine Hill, N.J., writes: First off, I have to reply to Jason from New Brunswick who claimed that Brian Leonard is much more beloved than Ray Rice. He's wrong -- the level of admiration is roughly the same, based on fan reaction at games when their pictures are on the jumbotron. People love Leonard for jump-starting the program, but every Rutgers fan knows that Rice, the best player in RU history, is the reason the team got good. Secondly, having Mike Tranghese as the first face on the conference mountain is a joke. Tranghese has been a terrible commissioner. From the time the football conference started as a "little brother" to basketball, he made one mistake after another. Bringing Miami in was fine, but promoting them to the exclusion of all other teams in the league was a disaster, especially when Miami was sanctioned by the NCAA and another team needed to be the standard-bearer. The league was ill-prepared for the ACC raid, our bargaining tactics for bowl games have been questionable, and the conference simply hasn't had any real direction or mission under his watch. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it will be any better under his successor. You should replace Tranghese's face on Mount Rushmore with Michael Vick, who, at least while he was in college, was "the most electrifying player in the country" and got the Big East back from the brink after the "Big East" rule was passed.

Brian Bennett: You make some fair criticisms of Tranghese, but the fact is there might not be Big East football without him. I'm not sure what he could have done to have prevented the ACC raid. The league could have very easily fallen apart after it, but he kept it together and kept it a BCS conference. Michael Vick was an electrifying player, but he had a short career. And I don't think any league would want him as its face right now given Vick's image problems.

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Jim from Pittsburgh writes: How did you overlook Scott McKillop on your list of nobodies? He was at BEST a three-start recruit (and for that matter so was Darrelle Revis).

Brian Bennett: You answered your own question, Jim. If McKillop was a three-star recruit, then he certainly wasn't a nobody. He committed early to Pitt but was drawing interest from Virginia, Virginia Tech, Maryland and Penn State. My list was about guys who couldn't get sniffs from major programs; McKillop does not fit that description.

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Erik from Mishawaka writes: Did you forget about Owen Schmitt on the All-Nobodies offensive team? Or was the fullback position just not important enough?

Brian Bennett: I almost put him on there, and he is a great example of what I was talking about. But I felt like a lot of times, fullbacks aren't especially highly rated as recruits. And it's my team, so I decided to go with a three-wide receiver set. We're running the spread, baby.

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Ben from Suwanee, Ga., writes: Brian, if ... and I'm just spiffballing here ... USF was to go undefeated in the regular season and be eligible the BCS national championship game, would their non-conference schedule hurt them? Would they even have a chance to make there in spite of playing Wofford and Charleston Southern?

Brian Bennett: You can absolutely guarantee that the Bulls would get killed for that schedule by critics in the media and from other title contenders. They would have on their side wins over Florida State and Miami in that scenario, but the Big East is probably not going to be strong enough to make up for the two FCS opponents in the computer rankings. It would also depend on who else was undefeated. Of course, this is all just for fun. South Florida should worry about contending for a Big East title before it dreams of going undefeated.

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Brian from New Jersey writes: Rutgers is still looking for a nonconference opponent, and other than Maryland, the slate is rather weak. I noticed that Ole Miss has an opening on September 12. Any chance of scheduling them last minute like we did with Fresno State last year? My guess is that Ole Miss will probably want to play in Oxford, rather than play a tough non-conference road game in Piscataway. Ole Miss also has rather weak non-conference schedule, which is typical of SEC teams, especially Ole Miss, who is a sure bet to be a preseason top 15.

Brian Bennett: It could theoretically happen, especially if a certain TV network (cough, cough) brokered the deal. But it seems highly unlikely to me. SEC teams, for the most part, don't go out of their way to toughen up their nonconference schedules, and Rutgers would prefer a home game. It's probably more likely that we'll see the Scarlet Knights go with a second FCS opponent, too.

Posted by ESPN.com's Brian Bennett

We've listed our Mount Rushmore nominations for every team in the Big East the past few days. How about one for the league as a whole to wrap it all up?

All we need is a suitable mountainside in Providence. Here are my nominations:

• Mike Tranghese: The only commissioner the league has known during its football era, Tranghese was instrumental in both bringing Big East football to life and keeping it together after the ACC raid.

• "The U": Nothing gave the league more instant credibility and attention in the beginning than Miami, which still has the Big East's only national titles. Instead of one player or coach from that program, we'll just carve a big 'U' next to the other three faces.

• Pat White: The West Virginia quarterback may be given too much credit for single handedly "saving the league" by leading the Mountaineers to the 2006 Sugar Bowl victory. But no other player accomplished more in four years.

• Donovan McNabb: A three-time offensive player of the year at Syracuse and the Big East's offensive player of the 1990s, McNabb also is probably the most recognizable league alumnus currently in the NFL.

Thoughts, disagreements or comments about this or any of my other Mount Rushmore picks? Send me an e-mail at the link under my picture and we'll discuss in the mailbag later this week.

Posted by ESPN.com's Brian Bennett

Compiling last week's early schedule analysis for each Big East team made one thing perfectly clear: Very few teams have a clear idea of what their final 2009 schedule will look like.

As of Monday, five the of the league's eight teams -- Cincinnati, Louisville, Rutgers, South Florida and Syracuse -- still officially need one more nonconference opponent. Because of that, the league office can't make the conference schedule yet. Big East associate commissioner for football Nick Carparelli said the league hopes to have the conference slate ready by the first week of March.

You don't see this kind of uncertainty in most other conferences. That's because in other leagues, teams usually play eight conference games (or nine, if you're in the Pac-10). In the Big East, there are only seven league matchups. That means Big East teams have to find five nonconference opponents while most schools need only four. And coming up with nonconference foes is getting harder and harder.

"There seems to be an emphasis nationally by fans or media that BCS conference institutions should play other BCS conference institutions," Carparelli said. "The problem is a lot of coaches -- especially those in conference that are very difficult to navigate -- don't want to schedule very tough nonconference games."

In other words, it's one thing to say that, for example, Rutgers should play Tennessee. But SEC schools, for the most part, aren't interested (Auburn, which has played South Florida and West Virginia the past two seasons and has the Mountaineers at home in '09, is an exception).

Big East schools also want some built-in breathers in their own schedules and need as many home games as possible for their bottom lines, especially in years where they have four conference road games and only three at home.

The best place to look for such opponents are at lower-level FBS conferences such as the Sun Belt. But there are only so many of those teams to go around, and they're in increasingly high demand. Power conference schools want those teams to come play sacrificial lamb at their place, too, and they can pay high six-figure or even seven-figure guarantees to get it done.

"[Lower-level conference teams] are taking advantage of it by commanding a large dollar figure for one-game buys," Carparelli said. "Or they're able to get home-and-homes against teams they never dreamed would agree to that."

The competition for these opponents could be seen last week, when Florida International bought out of a scheduled 2009 game at South Florida so it could sign a lucrative home-and-home deal with Rutgers. Now the Bulls find themselves needing a last-minute replacement, and with Miami and Florida State already on the schedule, they're not going to aim to high.

Easing these schedule concerns is the best reason for the Big East to add another football member. That would make for eight conference games with a balanced home-and-road league slate and eliminate the need for an extra nonconference foe.

But the league isn't going to expand solely to fix that problem, and commissioner Mike Tranghese has said there is no team out there right now that would make the conference better. Big East officials have kicked around in the past the idea of signing up the service academies as permanent nonconference opponents -- a sort of quasi ninth member, if you will. But that notion never got off the drawing board because of various problems.

Instead, league teams seem destined to scramble to put together their schedules every year.

"It's a little more challenging for our schools," Carparelli said. "But when it's all said and done, we'll get it scheduled."

Posted by ESPN.com's Brian Bennett

The Big East has asked Konica Minolta Gator Bowl officials to meet within the next month to renegotiate their contract, Mitch Vingle says in the Charleston Gazette. While the Big East would like to do away with its rotating deal with the Big 12, it won't be easy to convince the Gator of that. And there's this telling quote from bowl president Rick Catlett:

"When we meet with (Big East commissioner) Michael (Tranghese)," Catlett said, "we need to know the rules in regard to Notre Dame. Then we'll see what we feel comfortable with."

• West Virginia junior Greg Isdaner's decision to enter the NFL draft raised a lot of eyebrows. But as Bob Hertzel writes in the Times West Virginian, Isdaner has never been one to take the conventional route.

"I'm doing this with house money," he said. "What's the worst scenario? I'm not good enough to play in the NFL? If I don't make it, I'll go back to graduate school," he said.

• Syracuse may be on the verge of swiping another Big East recruit away and a second player who had been committed to Louisville, Donnie Webb writes in the Syracuse Post-Standard.

• South Florida added a highly-ranked junior college defensive end to its impressive recruiting haul, Greg Auman says in the St. Petersburg Times.

Posted by ESPN.com's Brian Bennett

This is Part II of my conversation with outgoing Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese. To read Part I, click here.

I know you've made improving the Big East bowl lineup a top priority and that those discussions have begun. Anything you can tell us about how that's going so far?

Mike Tranghese: I'm encouraged, but I know my bowl partners would have a stroke if I talked about it. I've been trying to do a lot of work before I leave and (incoming commissioner) John Marinatto is on board with me. I think the bowl people are a lot more excited about us than they were five years ago. We didn't have much to offer then because we didn't even know who was going to be in our league when we were talking the last time. I think the bowl stuff isn't going to break for a while. We're trying to push the envelope as hard and as quick as we can, and we'll find out before I leave, I think, where we stand.

Is there a desire to eliminate the rotation-style bowl agreements like you have with the Gator/Sun bowl?

MT: I don't know that we want a hybrid situation. On the other hand, we have two great partners in both the Gator Bowl and the Sun Bowl, and I think our priority would be to retain both of them. That's what we're trying to do. We've been a partner with the Gator for a long time, and this was our first cycle with the Sun Bowl people and they've been terrific. I think our membership has enjoyed going out there and playing, and enjoy playing the Pac-10. It's a great slot, on December 31st, on CBS, so it's great exposure. I think we'd like to retain both of those. The trick is how do you do it?

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