You really do not understand "big picture" at all. Nice follower mentality. But a real leader would not have accepted those things as "given". They were not, and every one of those on your list could have been changed.
The Big East as we knew it was dead. The same market forces that built it turned around and killed it. No dynamic leader was going to reverse those market forces.
Pitt and Syracuse held it together as long as possible but the Providence Mafia refused to make the moves necessary to save it when the push to super-conferences started. The hybrid conference model was never destined for long duration because its members simply had different goals. The old BE never wanted an all-sports conference because most of those Catholic schools didn't really play football. The football playing schools, Pitt, Cuse, WVU, the Ville, couldn't rush out the door fast enough when the P-5 conferences threw out some lifelines. The schools were just too different.
The moves that were proposed or made, inviting TCU and about half of CUSA, came too late. Probably the only thing that might have saved it was forcing Notre Dame into the BE as a full member and leveraging them into a better TV deal. The answer from Providence to invite Villanova to become D-1 in football was ludicrous.
The ultimate success of Pitt's move to the ACC will be determined by the success of the football program. If football can return to national relevance -and stay there while becoming financially successful, then the move was correct. But, those things in combination are going to be very difficult. Getting there may be possible. Staying there is much harder. Getting and keeping butts in seats and serious increases in donations is nearly impossible in this town, all considered.
If the football falls short of national prominance or does not become capable of carrying the finances of the Athletic Department, then quite possibly going to the AAC with Cincinnati woud have been the better decision.
The P-5 schools seem to have launched a determined campaign to spend everyone else into oblivion. Even with the ACC TV money, our finances are near the bottom of the P-5. We can't really afford the neighborhood we have moved into. Based on population and demographics, I don't see that changing significanty, so I suspect we will have exchanged being a big fish in the BE pond for a bottom half position in arguably the poorest P-5 conference.
I'm rarely optimistic anyway but I don't see this ending well. 5 years from now, I expect we will be most commonly grouped with BC, Georgia Tech and Va Tech as schools with good academics and mediocre athletic programs.,
