Director of the ESPN film “Requiem for the Big East” Ezra Edelman opened Wednesday’s screening with a message for the younger members of his audience.

“For those of you who are freshmen, there used to be a little thing called the Big East,” he said.

The statement was met with brief laughter from the crowd of students and professors.

Edelman and producer Andy Billman shared their documentary on the Big East Conference of college basketball in the Joyce Hergenan Auditorium on Wednesday night. The presentation was a part of the S.I Newhouse School of Public Communication’s Sports Media Center, and included a question-and-answer session after the screening moderated by Newhouse Sports Media Director John Nicholson.

The documentary opened by telling the story of Dave Gavitt, the coach of the Providence College Friars in the early 1970s. Gavitt recognized the talent of sports teams in the northeastern United States that did not receive attention because they were not united by powerhouse basketball conferences such as what are now the ACC, PAC-12, or Big-10, and as a result, created a new one — the Big East.

“He was not Italian enough to call him a godfather…but he was a godfather,” said Frank Rienzo, athletic director emeritus of Georgetown University, in the documentary.

Gavitt worked toward allowing the teams of colleges in the Northeast to have TV contracts under a new sports broadcasting company known as ESPN.

Edelman’s documentary told the story of the Big East’s golden age and its decline. The documentary went into detail about the creation of new stadiums on Big East campuses, including the Carrier Dome, and the movement of the Big East tournament to Madison Square Garden.

The Big East’s grand stages ushered in a more physical style of college basketball based on rivalries such as Syracuse-Georgetown, and coaches that became fiery personalities.

“It was show business,” said former Georgetown University basketball coach John Thompson in the documentary. “And that was part of what we did.”

The culmination of having five TV contracts at once in 1986, and the presence of advertising contracts for coaches led to the story of the Big East’s decline in recent years.

“We never thought about making money…and that was all changed because of the Big East,” said Syracuse head men’s basketball coach Jim Boeheim in the documentary.

The documentary shows the decline of the conference, beginning with Gavitt’s departure, and the expansion of the league to include more teams on the football side, leading to profit taking control over the conference.

The documentary presents this obsession with profit as the force that led to the conference’s decline. In 2001, Boston College left the Big East for the ACC, followed by Virginia Tech and the University of Miami.

In 2011, Syracuse followed suit to join the ACC, but Edelman still presented the story of the last Syracuse-Georgetown game.

“To win that last game to me was much more important than winning the Big East tournament,” Boeheim said in the documentary.

During the question and answer portion, which lasted about 20 minutes, Edelman, the director, said interviewing the coaches from the conference was like meeting characters from his childhood.

“Having grown up and watched these guys, they were so familiar to me already,” he said. “They are exactly the sort of same that I imagined them to be.”

Published on March 6, 2014 at 2:20 am

Contact Rob: rromano@syr.edu