Good Article on Big East Expansion....

[BullFan98]

http://www.courant.com/sports/college/hc-jacobs-big-east-football-column-1120101107,0,7451443.column

[SRQ]

he's spot on and Ilike hearing it from basketball heartland

[bullwark]

Great Article!

[Cow Pie]

Best article I have read regarding the BEast expansion fiasco to date... Nova would make a good logical fit to avoid a premature schism, but only if TCU is added... TCU will never join unless they are given an invite in all sports.

If TCU turns down the invite and goes public with it, then this means that the BEast refused to give them an all sports invite and like the reporter says, the Football schools need to stand up and put these basketball schools in their place -or- break off and start a new Big East.

Football > Basketball

[Guest nybullsfan]

TCU's already on record as rejecting a football-only bid.

I think they'll get an all-sports bid, along with UCF, within the next week or two.

Hopefully Houston and Memphis can get competitive and make it 12 football / 20 basketball next year.

I don't care if we go to 16 / 24, we can figure out the scheduling. No need to kick anybody out.

[DELdaBull]

Good read.

[TyBull]

TCU's already on record as rejecting a football-only bid.

I think they'll get an all-sports bid, along with UCF, within the next week or two.

Hopefully Houston and Memphis can get competitive and make it 12 football / 20 basketball next year.

I don't care if we go to 16 / 24, we can figure out the scheduling. No need to kick anybody out.

Screw Memphis & Houston. Texas jusr announced they will be getting their own Longhorn Network. The Big 12 is going to eventually fall apart. Let us go get Mizzou and any combo of KU, K-State and TCU.

[BleedGreenAndGold]

TCU's already on record as rejecting a football-only bid.

I think they'll get an all-sports bid, along with UCF, within the next week or two.

Hopefully Houston and Memphis can get competitive and make it 12 football / 20 basketball next year.

I don't care if we go to 16 / 24, we can figure out the scheduling. No need to kick anybody out.

If the Big East offers TCU a football only bid we'll know two things: 1) Rhode Island produces the best crack anywhere, bar none, and 2) the powers that be have just resigned themselves to the fact that Big East football won't be around in 5 years.

16 teams?  Works for me, let's just start calling schools until we find 8 that want to play.  We can figure out the geography later.  I just wish they'd do SOMETHING.

[Bullshiznitz]

TCU is the key.  I don't think any reason to go to 16 though. 

Could add TCU, Houston/UCF as full time members, have Nova updgrade and add ECU as football only.  Gives a 12 member football conference (can hold a championship game), and an 18 member basketball conference.  The basketball conference could split into 2 9 team divisions where you play everyone in your division twice (giving TV more marquee matchups), and 2 cross division teams per year.  Easy enough to play the basketball conference tournament as well by having the 8/9 seeds in each division play a "play in game", and then just do a Sweet 16 type of tournament.

[clevername]

A split is absolutely necessary for the long term. I feel that the basketball only schools are just entertaining the football members right now, and expect serious headaches when full member invites are mandatory.

Clearly, if the Big East cared about the Big East, and this includes football, there would be at least fifteen votes to put the pressure on Notre Dame to move in. ND AD said that he could foresee needing to join a conference, and I think that is what he was referring to.

I think it is safe to say that we all knew that the Big East couldn't last in this format much longer. It either would have lost its AQ status, or teams would eventually get poached. The football schools make a pretty competitive basketball league without the other eight, and even with a split and an expansion to 12 football members, they could still have two basketball only schools for market presence (Nova, extend bowl relationship with ND). If they found solid enough football members, the fourth could be memphis, and pretty soon you have a league just as tough as the Big East supposedly is.