Drexel becomes full Big 5 member as men’s tournament replaces round-robin

A women's Big 5 tournament is likely to start in 2024-25.

In a Big 5 tradition, La Salle students threw streamers onto the court after their team's first basket of the game at the Palestra in 2016.Read morePhotographer: CHARLES FOX

Published April 11, 2023, 2:22 p.m. ET

A Big 5 men’s basketball tournament, to be known as the Big 5 Classic, will include Drexel and start this coming season, as the format was unveiled Tuesday morning at the Wells Fargo Center, which will host next season’s final-round tripleheader on Dec. 2.

The new Big 5 will begin with a men’s tournament and is expected to include a women’s tournament starting in 2024-25.

The bigger news … Drexel is a full Big 5 partner now, for men and women, with Dragons players to be included among All-Big 5 teams, and the school becoming an equal partner in revenue sharing.

“I think the time has sort of come now,” La Salle men’s coach Fran Dunphy said of bringing in Drexel as a full partner.

The name stays the same because there was wide belief that the historical Big 5 brand still has value, that the City 6, for instance, is an artificial construct.

“I heard so many iterations of what this could be and what it could look like and they weren’t all totally evenly balanced, whether it be profit-sharing or player recognition,” said Drexel coach Zach Spiker. “To get to the point where we are a full member of the Big 5 in every [respect], I think, is just so huge for our program.”

Spiker said he talked to his predecessor, Bruiser Flint, Tuesday morning and also reached out to Flint’s predecessor, Bill Herrion, just to express how their efforts in raising the stature of the program got Drexel to this point.

“It probably doesn’t happen if you didn’t move the program from where you took it over,” Spiker said he told Flint.

Another part of this: So many of the Big 5 men’s programs have been struggling lately, they couldn’t claim much present-day Big 5 value that Drexel didn’t deserve to share going forward.

The tournament format itself is a huge break with tradition, doing away with the Big 5 round-robin.

The setup now will have two pods. One will have Temple, La Salle, and Drexel. The other will be Penn, St. Joseph’s, and Villanova.

Each school will host one game and play a road game in group play. A wrinkle still being worked out is how to break group-play ties, since there are likely to be occasions when three schools all split with 1-1 records.

While all six schools will share any revenue equally, there is a seventh equal partner, the Wells Fargo Center itself.

Old-time purists will ask, why not play the final at the Palestra? There was a general consensus that splitting even a capacity tripleheader gate of 8,722 wouldn’t offer much revenue to the schools.

“We all understand the historical relevance of the Palestra,” said Villanova athletic director Mark Jackson. “We all love playing there. It will continue to be a piece, but when we looked at what this Wells Fargo can do from an event perspective, and the infrastructure associated with it — when you think about this giant sales and marketing staff, tickets, the branding, to try to get people in the arena — they’re just built for it.”

The games will not automatically be part of season-ticket packages. The hope is to provide some juice to what has been a flagging Big 5 product in recent years. Valerie Camillo, president of Spectacor Sports and Entertainment, talked about including Big 5 traditions such as streamers.

“We promise to make it an environment equal to any NCAA Tournament game,” Camillo said.

Comcast Spectacor CEO Dan Hilferty, himself a St. Joe’s graduate, talked of “the recreation of the Big 5, the recreation of college basketball in Philadelphia. … I hope this is the first step, that men’s and women’s basketball will be part of this tradition.”

While Big 5 women’s coaches had varying opinions on whether the round-robin should be scrapped for a tournament, once the decision was made to accept Drexel as a full member, a tournament set-up apparently became an easier sell, since five games would be required for a full round-robin.

As for the site for a women’s tournament, that’s to be determined. The final could be at the Palestra, or rotating home sites.

“We’ve got to make sure whatever decision we make, that it’s in the best interest of women’s basketball,” said Drexel athletic director Maisha Kelly. “I’m a big believer, there doesn’t have to be apples to apples. I think that’s one of the things we’re seeing on the national NCAA landscape, too. Trying to follow suit doesn’t always resonate. We’ll make it work for women’s basketball. We’ve got strong women’s basketball in this city.”

An interesting day for city basketball. A huge day for Drexel.

“The Philadelphia Big 5 is synonymous with basketball history in the city,” Kelly said, “and it is exciting to have our brand now be associated with such a storied organization.”