After reading that USF would not be holding a "Midnight Madness" style gathering for fans to celebrate the start of basketball season, I checked around the rest of the Big East, and best I can tell, only six of the league's 16 schools are doing Madness events, with only three actually celebrating the first practice of the season.

Georgetown leads the way, with a traditional Midnight Madness that will be broadcast live on ESPN; Providence's "Late Night Madness" and West Virginia's "Mountaineer Madness" are the only other events scheduled for Oct. 12, the first day teams can practice. (The midnight aspect is outdated, as the NCAA a while back allowed teams to start at 7 p.m. for a more family-friendly start time).

Marquette will wait a day to do "Marquette Madness" on Saturday, Oct. 13, Seton Hall will have "Madness Before Midnight" on Thursday, Oct. 18 and Cincinnati will host a "Bearcat Basketball Fan Jam" on Saturday, Oct. 20.

So unless the other schools are waiting until less than a week out to publicize their events, USF is actually in with the majority of the Big East schools in not making that big a deal of the start of preseason practice.