Big East Invests Heavily with New Commissioner, Eyes NCAA Tournament Era Growth

NEW YORK — There's a lot of change afoot in the Big East, and the first immediately noticeable thing this week, with the arrival of college basketball's preseason, was the time and location of the league's media day.

The only basketball-first of the five power conferences in college sports beat the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten and SEC to the punch by holding its festivities on Oct. 1 — a week before the Big Ten and ACC do the same. (The Big 12 and SEC will have their media days later in October.) It was a savvy move by Big East leadership to get its coaches out in front and initiate the hype cycle in advance of an important 2026-27 season — while also freeing up the coaches and for the rest of October to tend to practices, exhibitions, recruiting, etc.

Then there was the setting: Thursday in Midtown Manhattan . For the first time in a generation, the Big East did not hold its media day at Madison Square Garden. ( Harry Styles and his 30-show residency at MSG  also complicated matters.) The New York Marriott Marquis in Times Square was a nice change of pace — and given the time constraints of holding media day at MSG (which is often quite busy with so many bookings in October), the Big East was able to give more airtime to its men's and women's programs on Thursday.

It did so with intention, as the league is approaching a consequential season amid more reorg in 2026 than any of the other high-major conferences. The Big East is under new management; Val Ackerman's summer retirement segued into the appointment of Tim Brosnan as the league's new commissioner . Brosnan is a Georgetown grad, lifelong New Yorker and someone who previously spent a lot of time as one of the key executives at Major League Baseball. (The league also has a new chief basketball officer in Paul Brazeau , a big coup, as he was lured away from the ACC. Brazeau previously worked with the Big East.)

As for Brosnan, the 68-year-old was hired in no small part for his business acumen and ability to make league-altering money. At a time when the high-major football leagues are making billions in their television contracts, the Big East needs to be as ambitious and aggressive as possible while staying true to the league's DNA that has kept it among the most successful and relevant programs across the past 45 years of college basketball. The timing is apropos, then, because the Big East's 11 programs' collective spending capacity skyrocketed this offseason. In talking to sources at every school in recent days, CBS Sports learned that the Big East is poised to spend more than $135 million across its 11 men's rosters this season, which averages out to more than $12 million per school. (Last year, that number probably would've been in the vicinity of $7 million on average.)

While NIL spending boosted across the high-major landscape, the Big East's coaches, athletic directors and presidents were especially motivated coming off arguably the league's worst regular season in its 47-year history. Though UConn (again) salvaged so much of the league's reputation by making an NCAA title game run as a No. 2 seed, the conference sent just three teams to the Big Dance ( St. John's and Villanova joined the Huskies). Three bids marked the fewest in Big East history. The league also ranked fifth out of the Power Five conferences in advanced metrics due to Butler , Creighton , Marquette and Providence all falling well short of expectations.

As a result, three of those four schools underwent coaching changes. Former South Florida coach Bryan Hodgson is now the guy at Providence , Alan Huss bumped up as the coach-in-waiting at Creighton, and Butler alumnus Ronald Nored was hired  to try and get the Bulldogs back into the thick of the league race with regularity.

In  talking with Brosnan and the coaches on Thursday , the standard has undeniably and unapologetically gone up — and it's not just because of last year's letdown. Remember, college basketball is about to embark on the 76-team NCAA Tournament era. The days of four or fewer bids are no longer allowed.

Brosnan told me five NCAA bids is the bare-minimum standard in this 11-team league, starting now, and in fact the expectation will be more than that every year moving forward.

That means Marquette's baffling 12-20 season has to be a one-off. Georgetown, which has sputtered three straight seasons after Ed Cooley defected in-league and left Providence, can't keep occupying the bottom three spots on the league ledger. Butler went from the Horizon League to the Big East thanks to Brad Stevens, but at some point soon it needs to turn a significant corner and prove it's a program worthy of being in the high-major ranks. The Big East cannot sustain itself only on the maniacal success of Dan Hurley and UConn, the powerful prestige of Rick Pitino's late-career surge at St. John's and the encouraging bounce-back of the Villanova brand under Kevin Willard.

Those three schools were the only ones inside the KenPom top-50 last season.

A huge influx in spending should equate to more wins in the nonconference, which is, of course, how the league is measured against the rest of the sport.

"The bottom and middle-third of the league has really flipped, has become more invested in success, because of that, the Big East is going to take a giant step forward," Huss told CBS Sports. "I think the people in this room know it. I think the people across this country are going to see it shortly."

UConn will almost definitely still be UConn. Hurley has a preseason top-five team. St. John's is waiting on three critical eligibility cases, so its outlook is still somewhat hazy, but it's probably safe to assume the Johnnies will be No. 2 in the league hierarchy going in. And Villanova has a roster good enough to validate preseason Top 25 consideration.

Can't be the same old story, though. This league needs a couple of teams to flip assumptions and alter the perception of the Big East being the most top-heavy league in college hoops.

"I think, top-to-bottom is going to be the best it's been," DePaul coach Christ Holtmann told CBS Sports. "I think you're going to have all 11 teams in the top 100 of the metrics. I think you're going to have a legit six or seven or eight teams vying (for the NCAA Tournament). ... It's going to be a really fascinating, fascinating league."

Holtmann —  who revealed to CBS Sports that he gave up some of his salary to pay his players more — has done well for his part, inheriting the worst Power Five program and going from 304th at KenPom to 122 to, last season, finishing 99th. The Blue Demons are expected to be even better this season.

As for some others, Marquette seems keen to get back to its winning ways; Shaka Smart has never had two down seasons in a row. Creighton, which was picked seventh by the league's coaches, might have too many proven pieces to be that low. Xavier spent $14 million on its roster; can the Musketeers make the big jump? And up at Providence, Hodgson was given a big NIL budget after going 70-37 in his first three seasons running mid-major programs.

The Big East is neither burdened nor buttressed by the money-gobbler that is football. Because of that, its 11 schools have an identity advantage that should theoretically boost the conference. If last season was an outlier, it's on the coaches to prove it this season by getting more than half the league into an NCAA Tournament that, by definition, will be the easiest one to qualify for in history.

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_Originally reported by [CBS Sports](https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/big-east-conference-spending-new-commissioner/)._