Something I was unaware of before today was that Holy Cross was once a candidate to join the Big East. And not in an ancient history sense. This wasn’t during the Knute Rockne era of college sports. The Big East wasn’t established until 1979, and at that time, Holy Cross was at the very least under consideration (Syracuse’s longtime Athletic Director Jake Crouthamel wrote in 2000 that Holy Cross wasn’t invited, but it seems the decision was at the very least mutual, judging by the existence of academic literature on the subject characterizing the story as Holy Cross “declining” the Big East). It didn’t happen. Holy Cross is in the Patriot League.
The rationale for Holy Cross not joining the Big East, on Holy Cross’s side, was academic (per afore-linked academic literature, above). College sports were changing, and the Big East was about chasing grandeur in that arena. Decisionmakers at Holy Cross believed joining would force them to sacrifice some of their academic mission.
Would it have?
It’s hard to say. Georgetown, at least by my impression, is still a great school. U.S. News and World Report ranks it as the 23rd-best national university in the country. The story at Notre Dame (a temporary Big East member, though that’s beside this particular point) is that football made the school into what it is today by creating the following that would eventually provide the financial grease necessary to make academic engines turn. Holy Cross, though, now plays in the Patriot League alongside many other top academic schools: Navy, Army, Colgate, Bucknell, and Lafayette all sit in the top 40 of those U.S. News and World Report rankings for liberal arts colleges, with Boston University and Lehigh both in the top 50 on the national university list and American and Loyola-Maryland well-respected academically themselves. It, like its counterparts, is a great school in its own right. It doesn’t seem to have suffered in that sense from not joining the Big East. (Aside: The Patriot League’s creation is its own interesting story—evidently the Ivy League wanted another northeastern league that didn’t have athletic scholarships in football so its schools could play nonconference games without getting crushed, and Holy Cross, Lehigh, Colgate, Bucknell, Lafayette, and Davidson answered the call. Per that academic article cited earlier, Holy Cross was briefly considered as a potential member by the Ivy League during this process, but not extended an invitation, and I will say that joining the Ivy League would have helped Holy Cross, even if the jury’s out on how avoiding the Big East turned out.)
This all gets at something we in college sports media sometimes neglect: Not every school wants to be an athletic juggernaut. Many don’t try to go that route. I’m sure they’d still prefer to be good at sports (if you offered Holy Cross some divine ability to keep their academics but turn into Gonzaga on the men’s basketball court, I’m assuming everyone at Holy Cross would agree to it), but they aren’t the priority the way they are at the colleges that are bigger names to us. As frustration with the NCAA continues to ferment, this is probably worth remembering. Colleges don’t have to play their game.
