{"id":76749,"date":"2025-08-12T08:29:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T08:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/76749\/"},"modified":"2025-08-12T08:29:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T08:29:07","slug":"rick-pitino-joins-coach-k-in-calling-for-acc-big-east-merger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/76749\/","title":{"rendered":"Rick Pitino joins Coach K in calling for ACC-Big East merger"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in January, Mike Krzyzewski made headlines when he pitched the idea of the ACC and the Big East merging<\/a> to form a \u201cmega conference\u201d to keep up with the SEC and Big Ten. Another prominent voice has joined him: Rick Pitino.<\/p>\n

On a podcast with Jon Rothstein<\/a>, Pitino said that the Big East teaming up with the ACC would be \u201can awesome thing\u201d for college basketball, combining the traditional powers of Duke, North Carolina, and Louisville with the Big East brands of UConn, Villanova, St. John\u2019s, etc. Last season, Pitino brought St. John\u2019s back to prominence in year two, leading the Red Storm to a 31-5 record, including an 18-2 mark in conference play, and the Big East championship.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn order for the Big East and the ACC to survive this football mania \u2014 because a bad college football game will surpass an NBA playoff game as far as viewership is concerned,\u201d Pitino said. \u201cSo, if we want to survive basketball-wise with the ACC and the Big East and to preserve the Dukes, the Carolinas, the Louisvilles of the world, and the Big East, combining it into a mega conference would be an awesome thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Awesome, yes, but realistic? Not exactly. Most of the schools in the Big East don\u2019t play football, so it\u2019s hard to see the ACC agreeing to a merger from a financial standpoint. There are also TV rights to consider. Pitino said he would like the Big East to expand to 16-17 teams \u201cyesterday\u201d in order to give each school a natural partner\/rival; however, he said the league\u2019s presidents are against expansion because adding more schools would mean distributing more money.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, outside of Coach K and myself, I don\u2019t think there are a lot of feelings that way,\u201d he said of a potential ACC\/Big East merger. \u201cI don\u2019t think the NCAA is very proactive, I don\u2019t think the ACC and the Big East are very proactive. I don\u2019t think they think outside of the box.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even at age 72, Pitino is still thinking outside of the box. Later in the conversation with Rothstein, he said coaching \u201ckeeps [me] young\u201d and opened up about a recent conversation he had with his son Richard, the head coach at Xavier.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy son and I, Richard, had a huge discussion the other night. He said, \u2018Why would you ever retire?\u2019 And I said, \u2018Well, you get on in age.\u2019 He said, \u2018Yeah, but what would you do? You suck at golf. What else would you do?\u2019 I said, \u2018I\u2019ll go watch you play, Richard, and hopefully see you get to a Final Four. And he said, \u2018No, let\u2019s talk seriously.\u2019 I said, \u2018No, I agree with you. I don\u2019t know what else I would do.\u2019 <\/p>\n

\u201cI think the blessing for me is I was two years out of the game, and boy, did I miss it. I can\u2019t do what Jay Wright does. He\u2019s just such a together person; he really is. He\u2019s just great at so many different things. If I\u2019m without basketball, I think I would age considerably.\u201d<\/p>\n

One thing is for certain: Pitino being back and good makes college basketball a much more entertaining sport.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back in January, Mike Krzyzewski made headlines when he pitched the idea of the ACC and the Big…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,398,400,401,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-76749","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-basketball","11":"tag-ncaabasketball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}