Big East’s Jackson addresses Hurley’s complaints

Associate commish responsible for drafting league schedule

Stu Jackson has one of the more impossible jobs in college sports: Trying to make every Big East coach happy with their respective schedules.

In fact, Jackson, the Big East’s executive associate commissioner of men’s basketball who, along with assistant commissioner of men’s basketball Mike Coyne is responsible for drafting the league schedule, has all but realized it’s an impossible task.

“At the end of the scheduling process, if all 11 schools complain about something, we’ve probably done a good job,” Jackson quipped.

Now enter into the mix a global pandemic that has rocked the college basketball world over the past two seasons, and Jackson’s job is even harder. Still, even after 11 cancellations/postponements over the past few weeks have changed the shape of the league’s season schedule moving forward, it could be worse.

It could be as bad as 2020-21. “Last year, we had more teams going on pause, which made it a little bit more onerous,” Jackson recalled. “Plus, it started earlier in the season, which was also a factor. And, because last year the athletic directors did not have ‘scheduling parameters,’ it made it a free-for-all.”

Indeed, the lack of parameters led to “gamesmanship” among the league’s programs and coaches, according to Jackson.

“Some of the gamesmanship was because the health and safety and welfare of the student-athletes was at play,” Jackson noted. “But there was also gamesmanship with respect to selecting certain games over others, because we didn’t have any parameters.”

That’s changed this season, as the league’s athletic directors have left re-scheduling in the hands of the conference office. And there are now parameters at play. No school will have to play

Mitchell Layton / Getty Images Associate commissioner for the Big East Stu Jackson addresses the media last March in New York.