Bad blood brewing in the Big 5 between Temple, Villanova

The Big 5 has always been about intense local rivalries. But a growing quarrel off the court may be putting cracks in the foundation of Philadelphia's classic conference.

Yesterday, the Big East invited six teams to join its conference among ongoing realignment. Not invited: Temple, which has tried mightily to put itself in a position to move its football team out of the Mid-Atlantic Conference. According to Dick Weiss of the New York Daily news:

Temple officials feel Villanova did not want another Philadelphia team in the league and used the the support of the other Big East Catholic schools to keep their school out when it came to a vote on which six teams to invite.

Inquirer's Mike Jensen

Let's start with the long view: The Big Five is in jeopardy.
If it splinters again, if all the schools stop playing each other, Villanova will be the culprit, again.

Temple is smart enough not to comment on all this right now. We doubt too much of it would be printable

If Temple is relgated to the MAC in football and the Atlantic 10 in basketball, its annual basketball civil war against Villanova at the Liacoras Center this season promises to turn ugly and could eventually lead to the disolution to the long time round round City Series game that has become the corner stone of the hallowed Philadelphia Big 5.

And there are other issues the conference must deal with. This year St. Joe's announced it would no longer play all of its Big 5 games in the Palestra, as the Hawks want to build their fanbase back up at home. St. Joe's coach Phil Martelli is one of the biggest backers of the Big 5, but even he realized the dire situation his program was in.

Amidst a year of drastic conference realignment in college sports, the Ivy League appears unblemished. But Penn's other affiliation, the Big 5, may not be long for this town.