College Basketball: The Big East Conference's Digital Presence

It's time to move to another legendary conference, the Big East.

As with my breakdowns of the ACC (link here), Pac-10 (link here), Big Ten (link here), and Big 12 (link here), we'll start with the Big East at a conference level and close with my pre-season (or pre-looking at it) predictions. Of course, we'll continue this coverage by going through this journey program-by-program.

Let's start with a quick overview:

What's Good about the Big East Experience? A powerful introduction to each of the 5 Big East Twitter accounts. They have fan voting, though it is tough to find.

What Could Be Better? Big East TV has a cool name, but I couldn't figure out the channel lineup. Really limited information on what the Big East Conference (or playing in it) stands for.

Let's dive in...

Hitting the Big East home page, here, and you get hit smack dab in the middle with a Facebook and Twitter 1-2 punch to follow the conference.



The Facebook page (link here) is home to around 3500 fans, and they seem to use this as a place to shoot out scores for every game across lots of sports. It's good that they leverage Facebook for updates, I'd just say it looks much more like a one-way conversation.



Clicking on the Twitter icon takes you to a much larger punch (here). As you can see from the image below, the Big East does a nice job of pumping all 5 Big East Twitter feeds right here, into the site. I'm a big fan, as you can see all the updates inside the Big East site and you get quite a feel for the style of each Twitter feed without having to go individually visit them.



But I want to visit anyway.

The Big East's Men's Basketball Twitter site (here) has around 1200 followers and is pretty solid. I am a fan that they pull in articles and insights from the world related to Big East basketball and share them. Oh and they of course share with you here when new stuff gets added to the Big East site (which seems to be pretty often!)



Meanwhile, the athletics Twitter site (here) has around 1600 followers and covers all sports (though they do have the same basketball background image). Updates were pretty field hockey heavy as of now, and while they are active, there isn't a lot of predictability in their posting.



OK, now let's dive into Big East TV - which is right on the main menu and also accessible from the Multimedia menu. I was pretty anxious to get in, and to be honest, I'm not quite sure what is here. It's a little all over the place... a mix of free, featured, and premium clips across all sports, all mixed together. I'm just not sure what to do here so I'm going to back out.



Seeking solace, it's time to dive into the basketball home page, here, and you'll notice a bizarre House of Cats ad on the right. I'm not going in there. But it is weird and worth noting. If you allow your site to get taken over by ads, make sure they reinforce your message. I'm not sure here.


Inside the basketball section, the Big East gives you access to listen to their weekly coaches teleconference. Cool, though I'd like to see that set up as a Podcast I can subscribe to -- don't make me come to the site and sit at my computer to listen, please. (here's the link)

You'll also note the 2009-10 Media Guide available in the bottom left. Clicking in takes you here, to a tiny black and white thumbnail, which looks like it might be a Sports Information report?


By clicking, you can make this image bigger, and you can thumb through it (see below). Unfortunately, the guide stays in black and white. I love that they give us access, but just wish the energy was maximized!



Finally, if you scroll down super deep on the site, you'll find that the Big East offers fan polling. I think this is nice, as we all like to participate and it can be a way to see how your peers' opinions stack up to yours. This makes total sense on a conference site, plus it's fun... I just wish it wasn't buried in the site.



And, speaking of polling, it's time for me to release my Pre-Season Marketing rankings. Which is how I'll close this Big East overview. Before we start looking at each program (coming next Monday), I'll list my Pre-Looking at Anything Prediction (or PLAP):

1. Louisville
2. U Conn
3. Villanova
   
4. Georgetown
   
5. Cincinnati
6. Notre Dame
7. Providence
   
8. Syracuse
9. Marquette
10. West Virginia
    
11. Pitt
    
12. St John's
    
13. Seton Hall
    
14. Rutgers
15. South Florida
    
16. DePaul

This is a loaded conference!

Thanks for reading. We'll start our Big East journey on Monday.

Andy