No Big East football team finished among the top 30 in last season’s final Associated Press poll. The league has lost three consecutive Bowl Championship Series games, each by an increasing margin. The league lacks star power on the field and along the sidelines. Greg Schiano, whose has logged 10 years at Rutgers, has twice the tenure as the league’s seven other coaches have combined with their current teams.

With the conference facing another season of mediocrity and low relevancy, Big East officials could not have been more optimistic Tuesday about the future of the league, pointing to their guest list to justify their sunny outlook.

One reason for optimism is the arrival of the defending Rose Bowl champion Texas Christian in 2012, which will give the league’s football profile a needed boost. But the real star guests at the league’s annual Newport news media soiree were the A-list television executives from ESPN, Fox and NBC.

Although the Big East’s immediate on-field football prospects look foggy, its television and financial future has never been brighter. In the wake of the announcement of the Pacific-12’s TV deal last week, the Big East is poised to cash in.

The league’s annual $37.5 million television haul could easily increase to more than $200 million annually. The market has never been hotter for live sports programming, which Big East Commissioner John Marinatto called “DVR proof.” The Big East recently turned down a deal similar to the $155 million that the Atlantic Coast Conference signed last year, a move that looks shrewd in the wake of the Pac-12 deal that could average as much as $250 million a year. The Pac-12 struck a deal with ESPN and Fox for the most desirable games and still had enough remaining — inventory in TV parlance — to create seven networks.

“I think it reset the marketplace,” Marinatto said. “It established a whole new yardstick to measure value. It certainly blew away the old concept we used to follow that exclusivity drives value.”

And that was why Marinatto couldn’t stop smiling. Jon Miller, the president of programming for NBC Sports and Versus, attended the event along with Fox Sports’ chief operating officer, Larry Jones. Nine executives from ESPN were on the guest list, including the senior vice president for college sports, Burke Magnus.

The scene was reminiscent of a junior high school dance, with Big East and TV executives flirting but keeping their distance. ESPN has the first chance to negotiate a contract with the Big East next September. The Big East may still have braces and thick glasses, but it is being courted like a prom queen.

“You can’t dance, but you can be there and talk,” Marinatto said. “Just by coming, people have underscored that there’s value and people view our product in a positive way.”

Marinatto recalled the first meeting between the Big East and ESPN in 1979, the first year for both the conference and the cable network. Marinatto drove Dave Gavitt and Mike Tranghese there in his 1973 Cadillac convertible. The meeting took place in a trailer as Marinatto waited outside.

Magnus was pleased that Marinatto mentioned in his address to reporters the league’s more-than-30-year relationship with ESPN. Magnus said the market for college sports is vibrant for a simple reason.

“A year ago, it was a very different marketplace,” he said. “Comcast and NBC were not a part of the equation. I don’t think it’s any more complicated than that, to be honest with you.”

The Big East’s television fate is a bit more complicated than most leagues. It generates more revenue from basketball than football, the only major conference do so. Now a 16-team basketball power, the Big East offers an attractive inventory for basketball, a sport that doesn’t move the needle nearly as much as football. Now that football is more stable and the market is hot, the Big East is improbably poised to move past the A.C.C. financially.

“We’re excited,” said Nick Carparelli Jr., the Big East’s associate commissioner for football. “It feels like the tide is turning in our favor.”

Some Big East members favor the addition of Central Florida, although others are adamant about not expanding for the sake of expansion. The counterargument is that leagues need to continue to grow as the landscape creeps toward 16-team superconferences. The recent fissures in the Big 12 over the Longhorn Network show just how unstable that league is, and the Big East was poised to poach Big 12 programs like Kansas, Kansas State and Missouri last year if the conference had broken up.

“You have to make sure that if you’re dividing more pieces of the pie, everyone’s share gets bigger,” said Tom Odjakjian, the associate commissioner of the Big East.

The importance of a more lucrative TV deal is not lost on the Big East coaches. South Florida Coach Skip Holtz acknowledged that the Big East had to improve its image. Schiano said the Big East needed money to compete with its B.C.S. peers.

“It’s critical,” he said. “It’s what will give our league a chance to propel itself forward, which is what we need to do.”

For one more season, the Big East will keep its braces and thick glasses. But come next fall, if the TV market holds, it will have plenty of TV partners to dance with.