RE: How come Val Ackerman is much better commissioner than Judy MacLeod??
Personally, I reject the premise of the question.
The "Catholic 7" ADs/Presidents decided to break off from the Old Big East (December 2012), they picked whom else to include and settled on three (March 2013). I can make great arguments for doing something different than settling at 10, but whatever.
They negotiated the exit, getting the Big East name AND the MSG tourney site (Also March 2013).
They got the Fox deal, which incidentally was actually offered to the Atlantic 10 (at a lower price) FIRST, and the A-10 balked at it because of risk. They were on the ESPN family, ESPN+ streaming, NBCSN, CBSSN and tourney final on CBS; The FS1 deal was exclusively FS1/FS2 which no one had yet because they hadn't started the networks, which went on air the first time in August 2013.
The FS1 offer was a high-risk move that paid off, because Fox invested in it, got other programming like US Soccer/World Cup to get enough carriage deals. Big East signed that deal in late March of 2013.
And the Big East hired Val Ackerman at the end of June, 2013.
I personally think Val's opinions on many things in college athletics are the opposite of my own. For example, her "White Paper" for the NCAA about the state of WBB ("shrink the tournament because they're no upsets and only the top 20 teams in the BCS can really compete" vs my "stop inviting the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th teams from P5 and fill seeds 9 thru 11 predominantly with all "mid-majors" who don't win their conference tournaments, and see if there's more upsets!")
Adding UConn? Happened under her watch, but did she lure them back?
I'd say no. The new AAC TV rights deal eliminated second-tier rights. UConn had second-tier TV deals for football and Women's Basketball with SNY, so they LOST MONEY on the new deal.
And if you're trying to maximize "how many of us get NCAA MBB bids" the Big East has members so ridiculously similar that the double-round robin of 10 or now 11 teams hurts their chances, not helps it.
So I think Ackerman is running a BASKETBALL LEAGUE that is better than C-USA. But I don't think you can say Val Ackerman made the Big East better than C-USA. It was before she got there, it still is.
I can't really speak about what MacLeod has/hasn't done; but what she's charged with is a lot harder. MacLeod walked into a C-USA that had two previous versions of it, with two new waves of schools that just joined.
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