30 for 30

[Gato78]

A great piece. Greed kills the BIG EAST was the theme. Very fair and well done. Didn't criticize ESPN directly but JT and Louie and the Georgetown president didn't hold back. BC took a lot of criticism.

[CaribouJim]

Whoops - was too wordy in my post to see that you started a thread. I concur. I watched the 30 extra minute thing on ESPNU too.

Jim Boeheim is still a curmudgeon though.

Was big time pumped to be part of the Big East watching the show - hope the league can recapture some of that early glory of the original BE.

[unclejohn]

I did not see it, because I do not have cable. I will have to wait until it shows up on YouTube. But I have mixed emotions about the Big East. I understand that it was a good idea to keep the name for identification reasons, but I kind of wish we had not. It creates the comparison to the Big East of recent years, and this conference is just not that. But oddly enough, it is closer to what the original was than the Big East has been in recent years. A smaller number of schools where basketball is the priority. I do not know if the current Big East, or any other conference for that matter, is going to match the early years of the original, when all but one of their teams made the Final Four in the first decade, and made the Final Four in one year. (Actually, they were the entire Final Four, since Memphis had to give theirs back.) And we will see if the ACC or the Big Ten or anybody else puts eleven teams in the tournament in a given year, or has three of the four #1 seeds. But I do think the conference is going to have an upswing. It will not be the original Big East, or what it was before the split, but it will be interesting to watch.

[mufan2003]

Much better than I expected. Once I found out the writer and director was a Georgetown alumnus, I thought it had a chance to be fair, it was. Theme was that Greed and Football killed the old Big East. I liked that the majority of the 2 hours focused on the coaches, players and evolution of a strong basketball conference.

I like at the end of the documentary, the dark screen with 2 paragraphs....explaining how in 2013, 7 catholic schools plus 3 others turned down $70 million owed to them to retain the Big East name, Madison Square Garden and be an all-basketball league.

[mufan2003]

Another interesting aspect of the documentary was Patrick Ewing (5-star national recruit from New York). How Ewing choosing Georgetown was a significant moment for the "meteoric" rise of the conference.

The way Ewing took Georgetown to the next level with 3 national championship appearances in Ewing's 4 years and 1 championship....reminded me how much I want Diamond Stone at Marquette.

[sailwi]

Didn't Ewing got to HS in Boston, Ridge and Latin in Cambridge IIRC.

[CaribouJim]

Didn't Ewing got to HS in Boston, Ridge and Latin in Cambridge IIRC.

Yes and born in Jamaica. Forgot about the racial attacks he endured back then - really ugly stuff.

I remember so clearly that UNC championship game where he started the game with 5 or so goal tends. At the time I attributed it to freshman nerves, but JT told him to block everything that came his way, regardless if it was goal tending to get into UNC's head. It almost worked. John Thompson was pretty impressive in the show last night.

[MUBasketball]

I love Big John Thompson the more and more I hear about him. That guy's awesome.