Insider Claims Memphis, Maybe ucif, To Be Announced As Big East Members Soon

[813knight]

Memphis is a fun road city once you get there. BBQ and Beale Street are fun and it's cheap

[Rizman]

Dump Notre Dame from all other sports.  Football will not join then they can suck it.

[Bullpride08]

According to this article Tranghese denies anything is going on. Interesting read posted today on the subject.

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2009/sep/17/tranghese-proud-of-tiger-fans/

You have to give Tranghese credit.  In these tough economic times he's able to zap these poor ignorant saps in Memphis for $5k a month to tell them the obvious....'you stink, your program is a mess, you're on probation for hoops for the third time in 30 years, and you program in sandwiched by UT, LSU, Ole Miss, and ARK....so no one cares except when you're cheating at hoops'.

Seriously though, this Answer from Tranghese is what I've been telling people all along.

A: R.C. asked me about that, too. A lot of people assumed I was making those decisions, which I wasn't, trust me. It was the presidents. You have to understand at the time, after Boston College, Miami and Virginia Tech had left (for the Atlantic Coast Conference), we had 11 schools. We were going to invite five schools. But two of those were going to be basketball schools. The membership had decided they wanted to split the membership in halves to deal with the variety of governance issues. There would be eight basketball schools and eight football schools.

The basketball schools felt very strongly about inviting Marquette and DePaul. Now you're at 13. The one school the membership was absolutely committed to taking was Louisville. ... Louisville was a consensus choice for everybody. Now you're at 14. Then there were people within the group who felt strongly about Cincinnati because of its market (size). That left one school and it basically came down to South Florida because our football people just felt they had to be in Florida. I don't think Memphis could have done anything more. I don't think it was anything negative about Memphis. The football people felt for the long-term need that they had to have a presence back in Florida. They had experienced that with Miami and felt it was important for recruiting.

That summarizes it in a nutshell it's 8 on 8 and there's no breaking that stalemate.  And before I read another hair-brain that says-- well just kick the non-football schools out.  You can't do that since the BE is structured in a heirarchy approach.  The original members, are primarily the hoops schools of Providence, Seton Hall, Gtown, St. Johns, and Nova...along with Uconn, Syracuse, and BC, and Vtech and Miami were added later.  Now that some of those schools are gone the weight belongs on the side of the hoopsters.  The football schools couldn't go on their own because the tv, bcs, and bowl tie-ins, plus those kazillion basketball units that make millions for us are all tied into the BE and the founders.  If football broke away they'd go it alone, with no revenue, and no tie-ins....to risky when every conference in America is trying to beat down those very same football schools from a BCS.  none would dare take away our BCS tie-in because of the BE media markets, and exceedingly strong hoops program, but if the football programs spun out, and thought they could use their clout to get back in the BCS...I wouldn't take that risk.

For now the set-up is what it is as this AD claims.

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news?slug=td-newsflash091709&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

But I must give Tranghese props for milking those ignorant Memphis fans, and their dumb-arse AD who still thinks like a dinosaur, for $5k/month.  Here's a suggestion, "Hey RC, maybe you should consider getting your hoops program out of probation first."

[bulldozier1]

Thought I read that the Big East did not want to bring in any non bcs teams. Why is there ANY talk of a c-usa team coming in the BE. Don't we ever want respect for his conference. If they bring in these duds, they will lose more respect, and there BCS status.

[Cow Pie]

I can see Memphis being announced as the 9th BEast team in 6 months (03/17/2010), but UCiF is pointless to add... ECU would be better then UCiF.

Regardless of y'alls opinions of Memphis the BEast has to expand or face another raid by the Big 10 in a year or so... the Big 10 (namely Penn State) is drooling and tripping over itself to get a Conference Title Game to compete with the SEC.

Thus why the urgency for expansion now rather then later... I don't see UCiF being added...

[Costa]

If they bring in UCF...kiss this conference goodbye. Memphis is a good fit...UCF, not so much. Might as well go back to C-USA. Central brings nothing to the table except ****** fans.

[deters-]

ECU is the best choice currently in C-USA, but i don't even think that to happen. Adding these small schools just isn't good for the conference. Maybe get a team from the ACC, and then the ACC can take a team from C-USA like Memphis or UCF while the BE gets Maryland & ECU.

[DELdaBull]

ACC gives each member school about $800,000 more for football for the Big East. How are we going to lore an ACC school to the BEast?

[Guest hm101]

what a bad move to bring in c america teams

big east is better standing pat

sometimes best moves are no moves

agreed.

adding these 2 would downgrade our already-poor status in the BCS

[Danm1983]

lol at all this. BE isn't adding ****. if anything, i only prefer we become a 9 team league, to round out the schedule (4home/4away every year) and help lessen the madhouse of scheduling OOC games.

as much as i HATE HATE HATE Notre Dame, they're a logical fit if we could somehow convince them to at least join the BE for football at least in a scheduling sense. They'd still be able to have 4 OOC games (where they can get smashed by USC, Michigan, Mich State, and play a cupcake) too. They can keep their NBC "winnings"  :

We're not luring away any ACC teams, esp not a charter member like maryland. they suck anyways and Rutgers and UConn have a hard enough time recruiting as it is.

ECU makes sense being football only (for now), but NC is a pretty saturated recruiting ground.

UCF would make a fit if it was a better program, but they need to prove to be a good CUSA team first. [i don't understand the massive hate for them though, someone fill me in on what UCiF stands for? I attended there and don't know that one]

I really don't like the geographical fit of teams mentioned like Southern Miss, Memphis, etc.

Hell, even USF doesn't make sense as a Big East team without Miami in the picture since we're isolated geographically, but at least we have the best recruiting base in the country here in Florida.

I don't see the BE making moves for at least 2-3 years. Bringing up someone else wouldn't be worth it, and promoting any of our b-ball schools doesn't work (though Villanova is pretty good, it's smack dab in WVU/Rutgers/Pitt recruiting country). Bringing in ND, Army, and Navy could work (army could be a doormat for a few years but isn't THAT bad), and we'd get the Army-Navy game. but i don't see that happening either.

I like it how it is right now. If we can find ONE team to bring in, good, but screw that 12 team crap. It won't help the depth, and the pipe dreams of getting penn state or some other established BCS school just aren't going to happen.