The Quad has an awesome Q&A with Mike Tranghese, the commissioner of the Big East for the last nineteen years. Some wonderful tidbits here about how he grew the league, its history, and his favorite moments. Here are my favorite excerpts.

Q: How old were you when you became the first employee.
A: I’m 65 now, so when I started with the Big East when I was 35.

Q: When you tell people that you worked for the Big East…
A: They would say, ‘What’s the Big East?’ And I would have to explain it to them. That’s what the common question was. Dealing with newspapers was difficult. It was difficult getting agate in.

Q: There’s obviously turning points to get where we are today.
A: Patrick Ewing. Plain and simple. Patrick Ewing announced he was going to Georgetown and we jumped on the bangwagon and marketed to death and we took our tournament to New York. I think that was the thing that did it. Patrick turned out to be such a great player. And we had Chris and The Pearl. It just all happened.

Pretty remarkable to think of the day when people would say “What’s the Big East?” Also, if there was a logo for the Big East with a player on it, it would be a silhouette of Patrick Ewing (with kneepads and all).

I think when you get older, you look back at the players. I don’t know that anything will ever match Patrick and Chris and Pearl. It was so magical and so exciting. Have we had better guards that Pearl? Yes. We’ve had Ray Allen and Allen Iverson and great players. But I don’t know that there’s been a more electrifying and dynamic person that’s ever played in Madison Square Garden than Pearl Washington when he was at Syracuse. There’s never been a better shooter in this league than Chris Mullin. And Patrick has been the most influential player to ever play in this league. But those were the days when people stayed for four years. It doesn’t happen now. Someone asked me the other day to pick the five best players, I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

Interesting. I know all about Patrick Ewing, but never got to see Pearl Washington play — I would have loved to, and this brings me to the next quote…

Q: Was the 1985 Georgetown team the best that you’ve seen in the Big East?
A: I thought the Georgetown 1984 and ‘85 teams were good. The Georgetown 1989 team was unbelievable. They won the Big East tournament in 1989, and we were a really good league. You’d have to look up the scores, but they won by an average of about 20-plus points. They destroyed everyone in that tournament. That was with Dikembe and Alonzo and Charles Smith was on that team. They left that year and I was convinced that Georgetown was going to win the national championship. I didn’t think that there was anyone that could beat them, that’s how confident I was. So what happens? They play their first-round game against Princeton and Pete Carril. They take the air out of the ball. Georgetown is lucky to escape and they’re never the same and Duke beats them.

If anybody has that Georgetown-Princeton game on videotape, I would love to see it. Best game I never saw. Glad I saw Kentucky-Duke live in 1992 — one of those games you never forget where you are.

Categories: donald, Nostalgia
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