David R. Gavitt '59: Steering the Big East to the big time

The Boston Globe has called him "the most powerful man in college basketball." He has been considered for coach of the New York Knicks. Some say he would make an excellent commissioner for the NBA.

Yet David R. Gavitt '59 lives and works in provincial Providence, R.I., and avows not to leave no matter what the inducement. "If they told me they wanted to move my office to New York," he says, simply, "I wouldn't move with it."

That is easy for Gavitt to say, however, for without him, his office would probably cease to exist. Not only is Gavitt commissioner of the six-year-old Big East basketball conference, but he is the principal reason the conference came into being. Without his vision, the nine schools that make up the Big East and make it suddenly so successful would never have come together.

In brief, the Big East boasts national champion Villanova, as well as two other teams in 1985's Final Four - Georgetown and St. John's, ranked number one and two at the end of the regular season. For one conference to have three out of the four top teams in the country is unprecedented, even miraculous. In 46 years of NCAA tournaments, the Big Ten has never done it. Nor has the ACC. As Gavitt told The Providence Journal, "We have to make sure we don't walk around with gloating looks on our faces."

Without Gavitt, these schools would never have agreed on their round-robin schedule, on their television strategy, or on anything else about a conference of Eastern college basketball powers.

Although in many ways overshadowed by teams in conferences the Big Ten in the Midwest, the PAC-10 in California the East's major independents such as Georgetown and St. John's were not at all eager to organize. They were successful and happy enough going their private ways and playing each other only when it suited them.

Gavitt, who had been Providence College coach for eight straight 20-win seasons, and at the time was PC's athletic director, masterminded the first serious discussions. "I did the formative work," he says, leaning back in his office armchair, "and in 1978 approached the athletic directors from.St. John's and Georgetown to talk about a new league. Jake Crouthamel '60, athletic director at Syracuse, joined us to round out the 'big four.' Jake and I were fraternity brothers at Beta Theta Pi, and oddly enough, here we were, ready to put this thing together."

In fleshing out the conference, Gavitt and his counterparts wanted the East Coast's major markets with a solid team in each city." Georgetown took care of Washington, D.C., St. John's captured New York, and Syracuse and Providence, with their large arenas and rabid fans, were considered important, too. "These cities I call 'hotbeds, says Gavitt.

Boston College snared that city, and Seton Hall and Connecticut filled the in-between slots. Philadelphia was picked up a year later with Villanova, and the University of Pittsburgh joined in 1982.

Now, the Big East has hit the big time. Its annual tournament is housed in Madison Square Garden. It has landed a television contract providing more TV games than any other conference.

Gavitt stresses, though, that marketing and athletic power were not the sole considerations in forming the league. "We spent many months deciding," he says. "It took a long time because we were looking for both athletic and academic compatability. The Big East schools are diverse big, small, private, Catholic but all have one thing in common: good leadership. What we searched for was a forward-looking athletic director like Syracuse s Crouthamel, and a strong president."

At Dartmouth, Gavitt was a guard and the "sixth man" on the basketball team during the successful years of the late 19505. The team's best player, Rudy LaRusso '59, ended up playing for the Los Angeles Lakers, and coach Doggie Julian wound up in the Basketball Hall of Fame. Although I had no definite plans to coach back then," he says, "I liked to look at basketball as a five-man game. I think I understood the coach's-eye-view."

After graduation, he took a job with AT&T and went into the Army Reserve. "When I came out, that was when I settled on the idea to coach," says Gravitt, "I was living in Washington, D.C., playing pick-up ball, going to games, and watching games on TV." He got a coaching and teaching job at Worcester Academy, and then, in a big break, was hired by Providence College as an assistant coach. From there, he went back to Dartmouth to assist for a year under Julian, then succeeded him as head coach for two years. In 1969, he moved to the head coaching position at Providence College. Ten years later, following a succession of national rankings and top-notch tournament play, Gavitt retired from coaching. He had run up a 199-68 record at Providence, had led the Friars to eight national tournaments, and had been named New England Coach of the Year an unprecedented five times. He retained his position as athletic director at PC, turning his attention to 20 intercollegiate sports and the school's intramural program.

In 1978, he was unanimously selected head coach of the U.S. Olympic basketball team for the 1980 games in Moscow. As it turned out, those were the games that the U.S. boycotted. "I was as suprised as everyone else," he remembers. "As late as six o'clock on the evening that Carter made the announcement, his staff was telling NBC that the Olympics would not be discussed." Looking back, Gavitt is philosophical. "You're a citizen first, and a sportsman second," he states.

Was the selection as Olympic coach Dave Gavitt's greatest honor? "The greatest besides being bestowed with a fine wife and family," he says. Family is what keeps him in Providence. He and his wife, Julie, and sons Dan (Dartmouth '88) and Corey live in Rumford, R.I., and spend most of their summers in their house on Cape Cod. "My family life had a direct bearing on my decision to give up coaching. I loved every minute, but, of course, was spending them with other people's children. I wanted to be at my own sons' soccer and lacrosse games."

Gavitt the family man and Gavitt the Big East commissioner co-exist more easily than one might expect. "Commissioner is not, in the final analysis, an accurate title for me," he explains. "Not in the usual sense of the word. I told everyone that I was not going to run this league over their objections. We would all have to be working together. If they expected me to be some kind of enforcer, I said, 'Forget it.' But if everyone is on the same ship, I'll steer it down the river."

The way the tide is rising under the Big East, people will continue to expect Gavitt to step off the boat and into some major city or professional team. But Gavitt likes the challenge that he has, the one that's moored in Providence. "As Red Auerbach put it," he says, "when you leave coaching, stay close to the game. I've done that."

Peter Mandel is editorial associate and sportswriter for the Brown Alumni Monthly.