was largely spineless and no leader and he was comfortable collecting his paycheck and watching the conference go down the drain. He never challenged the status quo whether it was votes to add football members, uneven revenue distributions grounded on no objective criteria or attempting to more effectively organize the football playing portion of the conference. My only question is whether his inaction was more attributable to laziness or ignorance of the changing landscape of college sports.

I agree his hands were tied by the basketball schools to some extent and they were also tied by the weak leadership/response of the football schools. The Big East had no equivalents to FSU and Clemson who could pound the football drum and the football schools as a group were too disjointed to challenge the united front of the small catholic basketball schools. The reference to Clemson and FSU is the actual dumb luck of Swofford I referred to as they essentially saved him from himself and his Tarheel centric upbringing.