Finally, after months of speculation, the Big East has revealed its strategy to keep itself from extinction. Its message to the Big Ten: You really want

our

stinky teams?

Hey, as ideas go, at least this was unique. Paul Tagliabue introduced himself as the new consultant for the league by wondering aloud what the Big Ten would gain from coming east.

“Is Minnesota and Rutgers going to get a big rating on Long Island?” the former NFL commissioner asked The New York Times. “Give me a break. Every game isn’t Michigan and Michigan State.”

He added that South Florida is a commuter school, people in Louisville talk funny and nobody wants to go to Syracuse in the winter.

Okay, we made the last part up. Tagliabue, asked to clarify his comments in a follow-up interview last week, said he was trying to make the point that the Big Ten is overstretching its reach if it thinks it can attract an audience on the East Coast — an audience the Big East already has.

He might be right. But the issue isn’t why the Big Ten should stay away from Rutgers. It is what Rutgers has to gain from staying out of the Big Ten, should it come calling, and that answer is still the same.

Nothing.

The Big East, with Tagliabue joining the effort last week, is trying to convince people it can reposition itself and remain a major player in college athletics. It plans to “think outside the box,” as commissioner John Marinatto suggested last week, and “look at different ways of doing things.”

“You are in a situation where the fundamentals are changing very dramatically,” Tagliabue said of the Big East. “You shouldn’t just sit back and try to anticipate a future created by someone else. You are in a position to shape the future. Let’s figure out how to do it.”

It all sounds good, but it begs the question: Why hasn’t the league done that already?

It’s too late now. The Big East can hire all the consultants it wants, but if the Big Ten decides to grab a few of its teams in the coming months or years and decimate it from a football standpoint, it will.

This is no longer about what is right or wrong for Rutgers or preserving its long-standing relationships. This is about survival. The landscape in college athletics is about to change dramatically, maybe in ways that nobody can predict now. But it will certainly change.

Rutgers has no choice but to change with it.

“Universities act in their self interest,” Donna Shalala said in an e-mail last week. Shalala is the Miami president who was vilified for pulling her school out of the Big East seven years ago.

Virginia Tech and Boston College followed, leaving the conference in the precarious place it finds itself now. Mike Tranghese, the Big East commissioner at the time, called Shalala’s decision “the most disastrous blow to intercollegiate athletics in my lifetime.”

Shalala looks less like a traitor today and more like a visionary. The Big Ten will add anywhere from one to five schools, and they’ll be jockeying for position as soon as it decides how many.

Big Ten teams each make $22 million in television revenue, four times what their Big East counterparts bring in each year. Tagliabue never had to worry about such a disparity in the NFL, which thrives because Green Bay and Kansas City get the same slice of the revenue pie as Dallas and New York.

The bowl tie-ins are much better in the Big Ten. The exposure is much higher, too. Tagliabue might not “rush home from a tennis game” to see it, but far more people will watch Rutgers play Michigan than ever watched Rutgers-Pittsburgh or Rutgers-West Virginia.

The question is no longer should Rutgers go to the Big Ten, it’s how quickly can it get there.

Not that Tagliabue sees that. The man who helped create the NFL Network said he “doesn’t think the revenue will be that much higher” if the Big East takes advantage of its position in the major TV markets.

“The very reason the Big Ten is looking at expansion,” he said, “is to get into markets that are much more natural Big East markets.”

But, when asked for a timetable, the former NFL commissioner said, “It’s not something we’re getting ready to negotiate. It’s something we're studying for our long-range planning.”

That’s the problem. Promises and planning alone can’t keep the Big East intact, not with the Big Ten ready to make its landscape-changing move, maybe next spring or sooner.

When it does, the Big East as we know it is doomed. People on Long Island better get ready for Rutgers-Minnesota.



Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@starledger.com, or follow him at Twitter.com/NJ_StevePoliti