SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. — Back in the Big East Conference’s formative years, when Georgetown, Syracuse, St. John’s, Villanova and their brethren were just getting to develop enmity toward one another, men’s basketball games were still played in rickety band boxes with warped floors, frothy fans and a regular exchange of sharp elbows.
It was called atmosphere.
In short order, the nascent conference became the center of the college basketball universe in the early 1980s, with Pearl Washington, Patrick Ewing and Chris Mullin becoming household names from Brooklyn to Berkeley thanks to another upstart entity, ESPN.