Rick Pitino adamant Big East will ‘miss the boat’ without an expansion

STORRS, Conn. — Rick Pitino is again calling on the Big East to make changes and expand to a super basketball conference.

In an interview on SiriusXM with legendary former Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, Pitino reiterated his stance that the league needs to act.

A month ago, Coach K suggested that the ACC and Big East merge to form one big league, as conferences like the Big 12, SEC and Big Ten have bulked up.

Pitino agreed with Krzyzewski, and the two brought it up again on Friday.

“I’ve been trying to get [the Big East on board], and obviously I jumped on your bandwagon with the suggestion that you had about combining with the ACC, because I’ve been trying to get them to start a super league basketball league,” Pitino said. “And get up to 18 teams, 16 teams. Eleven is just not enough. And right now, a little bit like the ACC, we are not typical of the Big East of the past that was getting eight or nine, 10 teams in the NCAA tournament. So I think we are missing the boat if we don’t expand.”

It should be noted that the current iteration of the Big East inked a new six-year media rights deal with FOX, NBC, and TNT Sports last summer that will average nearly $80 million per year.

It is an improvement on the current deal with FOX and CBS that expires at the end of this season.

That was a 12-year contract that averaged $41.67 million per year.

It, however, is not comparable to other power conferences.

The SEC, for instance, has a deal with Disney and ESPN that pays it $300 million annually.

The Big Ten’s media rights contract totals $7 billion over seven years.

Pitino has also suggested adding schools like Dayton and Saint Louis of the Atlantic 10 and Memphis of the AAC.

Now, that would lessen the amount of money each school pulls in from the current television deal.

“Now the presidents, most of the presidents and probably including mine, who’s a very knowledgeable basketball fan, they think about money, they think about the bottom line,” Pitino said. “And it’s like a company like Uber starting out and they’re losing, you know, $500 million a year, but they understand 10 years down the road they’re gonna be making a billion dollars. We just can’t see that. We can’t see that there’s a lot of money to be made down the road if we form a super league.”

“The coaches I think are in favor of a super league,” he added, “and I just think the presidents are against it.”

As for a potential ACC-Big East merger, there are complications.

The Big East currently sits at 11 teams and the ACC has 18. A 29-team conference isn’t feasible.

But a conference fronted by Duke, North Carolina, Connecticut, Marquette and Villanova would obviously have a lot of appeal.

The leagues combined to send just eight teams to the NCAA Tournament a year ago and may not top that figure this March.

Such an alliance would also give UConn’s football team a home.

The Huskies have flirted with joining the Big 12 multiple times in recent years, but the conference’s presidents have declined to add them.