The much-ballyhooed new Big East Conference is up and running and arguably the No. 1 college basketball league in the country. The conference is thick with elite teams with storied traditions, awash with acclaimed players who have professional careers awaiting them and rich with coaching legends.

The future figures to be a delight. Except it's not.

Massive questions surround the Big East, the greatest of which is this:

How long will it last?

This question is posed for two reasons:

The unusual size of the league, 16 teams, makes living happily ever after a problem.

The lack of commonality among its members is grounds for divorce in most states.

The Big East has taken on Cincinnati, DePaul, Louisville, Marquette and South Florida this year while losing Boston College. A 12-team league had been cumbersome, but a 16-team league is almost unworkable. That's even more so because of television commitments. Instead of spinning off into two eight-team divisions, which would have made the situation far more palatable, the league will play in one division. What's more, there's nothing approaching a balanced schedule. Some opponents will be played twice, others once, some not at all.

It will be pretty much the same next season, which means for two years some of the new teams will remain strangers to existing members and their fans. Rivalries, the heart of any league, cannot be built under such circumstances.

In and of itself, this would not be life threatening. But the lack of common ground among the teams is.

Nine of the 16 teams play Division I-A football. Eight play in the Big East and the ninth, Notre Dame, plays as an independent. The other seven, all private Catholic institutions, play football on a lower level or not at all. Calling these groups the haves and have-nots isn't fair or correct. But it's close on both counts.

A look at the preseason rankings by the league's coaches tells an enlightening story. Of the seven Catholic schools, five are picked to finish 10th through 15th. Only Villanova, picked first, and Georgetown, sixth, are given any hope by the coaches.

These predictions are grounded in reality. In most cases, the football-playing schools have on-campus arenas that seat more than 10,000 and, if not new, are still up-to-date, attractive facilities that are regularly filled to capacity. The private schools mostly play in smaller facilities or off-campus sites.

These facilities and the atmosphere they create give an edge to the larger schools in terms of recruiting. Likewise, the budgets of the football-playing schools enable them to range farther from campus in their hunt for players and also gives them a better chance of holding on to their coaches. The legends of the league, Jim Calhoun at Connecticut, Jim Boeheim at Syracuse and Rick Pitino at Louisville, probably aren't going anywhere. It would be hard to make a similar statement about Jay Wright, whose excellent work at Villanova is bound to attract the attention of programs that can pay more and offer recruiting advantages.

This doesn't mean divorce is imminent. The football schools need some time to build up their image before doing anything radical. Although the Big East is a member of good standing with the lucrative BCS, it doesn't want to do anything to change that, but, at the same time, it needs to strengthen itself.

A ninth member would be ideal for the football league. That would give each team eight league games. Under the current arrangement, the league can provide only seven games, which, in the era of 12-game schedules, is not enough. Finding five non-conference games is a difficult task.

But it's not just the big schools that might want to see change that could result in restructuring. The smaller schools, most of which were founding members of the Big East, could be the first to want some kind of realignment.

One-time powers like St. John's, Providence, DePaul and Seton Hall -- and even a revived Georgetown program -- easily could get frustrated trying to muscle with schools that have more money to spend. Even if the league gets more NCAA tournament bids because of its increased size -- and there's no guarantee it will -- those schools could go a long time between the lucrative and prestigious appearances. They could easily have better chances of success in a smaller league where the teams have more in common.

Either way, the Big East will go through radical change within five years.

It will be change for the better. The nine football-playing members -- Cincinnati, Connecticut, Louisville, Notre Dame, Pitt, Rutgers, South Florida, Syracuse and West Virginia -- would form a powerhouse basketball conference. The remaining members -- DePaul, Georgetown, Marquette, Providence, St. John's, Seton Hall and Villanova -- also would make up a nice league, especially if, say, St. Joseph's and Xavier could be added.

It makes sense all the way around and is just a matter of time.