Cincinnati Newspaper Says Replacements for SU and Pitt

[sutomcat]

are expected to be UCF and ECU. They might be announced today.

Link

 

[SmilinBob]

Good solid choices but what guarantee do they have that other teams aren't leaving or do they even care?.

 

[Rocco]

What about TCU?

 

[Bayside44]

Makes the most sense. Both have pretty good football programs. ECU is the 2nd biggest school in North Carolina.

 

[Townie72]

are expected to be UCF and ECU. They might be announced today.

Link

Would any school join the Big East without a rock-solid commitment from the current 6 members that they were going to stay in the Big East?

Navy sure wouldn't.

Are UCF and ECU that desperate?

 

[All4SU]

I wonder if they would be Fb only.

 

[44PRIDE]

I heard that ITT Tech will be applying for Big East membership along with Columbia College and the University of Phoenix.

 

[chakka3421]

You people dont get it. It is very important for the BE to rebuild so that RU and UConn stay in a less than perfect conference. We need the BE to make the ACC look that much better. I certainly hope that ECU, UCF, Temple, Memphis, Navy and Army join to get them to 12.

 

[sutomcat]

You people dont get it. It is very important for the BE to rebuild so that RU and UConn stay in a less than perfect conference. We need the BE to make the ACC look that much better. I certainly hope that ECU, UCF, Temple, Memphis, Navy and Army join to get them to 12.

If UCF and ECU are added and if both are able to play next season (they will be), it paves the way for SU and Pitt to be able to leave for the ACC next year (for football anyway).

If more BE schools decide to leave, I don't think the BE football conference survives for next season.

 

[SmilinBob]

UCF and ECU have potential to be pretty good and if the BE stays as is, it'll still be very solid in football. Basketball, not nearly as strong. The problem is A: the basketball school debacle and B: WV, UConn, Louisville, Cincinnati, USF, and Rutgers will bolt the first chance they get.

You now have BE basketball in NC which could get interesting.

 

[Orangemen]

For the BE's sake, I hope this guy is right. These are the moves the conference has to make.

One thing I don't get, is why not Temple? Is Nova really that selfish that they will leave out probably the strongest candidate out there?

ECU, UCF, and Temple would jump at the BE. Even without a BCS bid, the BE far exceeds their current homes. Navy can sit and wait, because athletics don't drive the bus at their school. Their alumni don't care about BCS bids, so they can sit and wait to see what options might be out there.

 

[SmilinBob]

For the BE's sake, I hope this guy is right. These are the moves the conference has to make.

One thing I don't get, is why not Temple? Is Nova really that selfish that they will leave out probably the strongest candidate out there?

ECU, UCF, and Temple would jump at the BE. Even without a BCS bid, the BE far exceeds their current homes. Navy can sit and wait, because athletics don't drive the bus at their school. Their alumni don't care about BCS bids, so they can sit and wait to see what options might be out there.

V I L L A N O V A is why no Temple.

 

[orangenirvana]

You people dont get it. It is very important for the BE to rebuild so that RU and UConn stay in a less than perfect conference. We need the BE to make the ACC look that much better. I certainly hope that ECU, UCF, Temple, Memphis, Navy and Army join to get them to 12.

It is critical for SU that the Big East loses its BCS status.

It's not like the only thing preventing UConn and Rutgers from joining the ACC or Big Ten is the survival of the Big East. Both schools would leave the BE in a second if those conferences wanted to invite them.

 

[Orange87]

This is all academic. The Big East as a BCS AQ conference is all but over. the only people that don't seem to realize it are the fans of the schools still trying to keep it viable.

Loss of T.C.U. Imperils Big East’s Football Future

By PETE THAMEL

October 6, 2011

As the uncertainty of realignment continues to overshadow the college football season, Texas Christian delivered a crushing blow to the Big East Conference when news of its imminent departure to the Big 12 emerged Thursday.

Fitting for these chaotic times, T.C.U., which would have entered the Big East for the 2012 football season, left the conference before ever playing a game.

T.C.U.’s decision does not mean the death of Big East football, but there are a lot of possibilities that make its survival tenuous. The Big East is down to six football programs — Connecticut, Rutgers, Cincinnati, South Florida, Louisville and West Virginia. Louisville has recently served as the anchor in trying to keep the league together, while Rutgers and especially Connecticut flirted with other leagues. But even the outlook at Louisville is bleak.

“It’s one of the most disappointing things I’ve seen in 35 years in the game to see this thing break up like this,” Rick Pitino, the Louisville basketball coach, said. “We’ve stayed loyal to it all along. We’ve stayed loyal, and by staying loyal we’re not sure what’s going to happen to us.”

Pitino can wax nostalgic about the Big East basketball tournament, which has emerged as the nation’s best conference event, but that does not seem to matter in a market driven by football.
“We should all celebrate this last year,” Pitino said. “It could be the last year we have a chance to play and go through the Big East tournament.”

After adding T.C.U., the Big 12 will focus on keeping Missouri. The Big Ten, where Missouri wants to go, is not interested in the Tigers.

The Southeastern Conference does not like to appear as a second choice, but it may take Missouri to fix the scheduling problems inherent to having 13 teams. Although there have been conflicting reports on the SEC’s interest in the Tigers, it is unlikely that a flirtation would have reached this point if the SEC commissioner, Mike Slive, did not have the votes to get Missouri in.

Give the Big 12 credit for shedding two decades of dysfunction to try to keep the Tigers. In a 24-hour blur, it added T.C.U., agreed to a six-year minimum grant of television rights and found a truce over broadcasts on the Longhorn Network. Funny what desperation can do.

Will the agreements be enough to keep Missouri? We should know in the next 10 days. The decision appears to be in the unpredictable hands of Missouri’s board of curators.

Once Missouri decides whether to stay or go, the Big 12 has to figure out how much it wants to expand. If the Tigers stay, the league could remain at 10 teams. But that would probably be a point where it would explore potential revenue options.

Opinions are split in the Big 12 about whether Louisville or West Virginia would be a better fit for No. 10 if Missouri leaves. For now, give a slight edge to West Virginia because it is a better television draw.

How does T.C.U.’s decision affect Notre Dame? Sometimes amid the realignment frenzy, it is easy to focus on the chum instead of the fish. Notre Dame is one of the biggest fish in college sports, and a destabilized Big East may force its future toward a conference in football. The eyes of administrators around the country are on the Irish athletic director, Jack Swarbrick.
“Everyone is waiting for Jack to figure out what he’s going to do,” the Colonial Athletic Association commissioner, Tom Yeager, said.

The Irish will not be keen on staying in the Big East if the conference’s football side dissolves. Notre Dame has not entered discussions with the Atlantic Coast Conference or the Big Ten. But as the future of Big East football dims, the possibility of those conferences as landing places increases considerably.

The best possibility for Notre Dame is finding a partial landing spot in the A.C.C. That could mean Notre Dame’s basketball and non-revenue sports teams would become full-fledged A.C.C. members. In football, Notre Dame could set up a scheduling agreement with the A.C.C. in which it would play a certain number of the conference teams each season yet keep its football independence. Television executives believe that each Notre Dame game could be worth about $3 million for the league.

If Notre Dame did this, UConn, not Rutgers, would round out the A.C.C. as the 16th member.
It is likely the Irish would enter a creative scheduling agreement before entering a conference as a full member. (The Big 12 has also been amenable to such a deal, but the A.C.C. would probably be Notre Dame’s preference.)

Jim Delany, the Big Ten commissioner, has been adamant about not expanding, but it is no secret that he has always had eyes for the Irish. He would not, however, agree to a partial deal for Notre Dame football.

Will the Big East’s basketball members break from the football ones? Not yet, but this is certainly more realistic than it was 48 hours ago. The Big East still has two precious commodities: its Bowl Championship Series bid and its basketball tournament.

The Big East cannot survive many more football defections, although all it can really do is wait until the vultures pick it clean and attempt to regroup. The same names will surface — Air Force, Navy, Central Florida, Temple and East Carolina — to join the conference.

The T.C.U. decision also underscores how unstable the Big East is for attracting future members.
As for the basketball colleges, they have pledged loyalty to their football brethren. But talk has been cheap in recent weeks. Look for Xavier, Butler, Dayton and Richmond to emerge as possible basketball additions if the Big East goes back to its basketball roots.

 

[Chip]

Would any school join the Big East without a rock-solid commitment from the current 6 members that they were going to stay in the Big East?

Navy sure wouldn't.

Are UCF and ECU that desperate?

Yes, they are. That's why the Big East would approach them. Then they can go to Navy and say we're at 8 strong, need you to be 9.

Navy, of course, wouldn't do anything until Mizzou is resolved. And even if Mizzou stayed Big 12, wonder if Navy would look at what's left and say, nah. We already tried the Conference USA route.

 

[orangenirvana]

Yes, they are. That's why the Big East would approach them. Then they can go to Navy and say we're at 8 strong, need you to be 9.

Navy, of course, wouldn't do anything until Mizzou is resolved. And even if Mizzou stayed Big 12, wonder if Navy would look at what's left and say, nah. We already tried the Conference USA route.

But the Big East is still a BCS conference at least through 2013, with the possibility of keeping it beyond that. That alone should be very enticing to Navy. What would be the downside to joining? If the conference blows up, they can just go back to being Indy a few bucks richer.

 

[BlazeOrange]

What about TCU?

No need to replace them. Adding two gets the conference back to the necessary minimum of 8 teams and maintains equality with the 8 BB schools.

Adding TCU was a bone thrown to the FB schools that was obviously not enough to maintain conference stability. No need to go down that road again until the dust settles.

 

[chakka3421]

I would really like the BE to expand to 10 or 12 teams and keep their BCS status. Just saying that the BE would be seen as the lesser conference than the ACC on the east coast and should be great for recruiting purposes.

 

[dollarbill44]

I have to laugh at Pitino's quote about how Louisville has stayed loyal to the BE all along. How long has that been exactly (7 years?) and what was your alternative?

Yeah, it sucks to be in UL's situation, but let's not pretend that they would have been so loyal had one of the big conferences come to them first.

 

[Madbiker]

UCF and ECU, how exciting. The truly desperate and the needy. The mismanagement of a once great conference is sad. But if the BE remains in business, SU games may not be on TV in metro NYC after the move and that is my big concern now.

 

[Scooch]

Rick Pitino would screw a waitress on a restaurant table to get into the SEC.

Oh wait.

 

[orange79]

You people dont get it. It is very important for the BE to rebuild so that RU and UConn stay in a less than perfect conference. We need the BE to make the ACC look that much better. I certainly hope that ECU, UCF, Temple, Memphis, Navy and Army join to get them to 12.

^^^This^^^. And, if they have a viable league, SU and Pitt can leave sooner.

 

[OrangePA]

For the BE's sake, I hope this guy is right. These are the moves the conference has to make.

One thing I don't get, is why not Temple? Is Nova really that selfish that they will leave out probably the strongest candidate out there?

ECU, UCF, and Temple would jump at the BE. Even without a BCS bid, the BE far exceeds their current homes. Navy can sit and wait, because athletics don't drive the bus at their school. Their alumni don't care about BCS bids, so they can sit and wait to see what options might be out there.

Here in Philly, Temple is a blip on the screen.

Very little media coverage - few fans attending games.

Poor football infrastructure.

It is not the strongest candidate out there - I don't think it's even close.

 

[OrangePA]

are expected to be UCF and ECU. They might be announced today.

Link

I agree that could be a positive for the BE and for the Orange.

We need the BE to survive for many reasons.

Lets hope this works and that Rutgers, Louisville, So. Fla, Cincy, UConn and WVU are comfortable remaining in a conference that possesses an automatic BCS bid.

 

[All4SU]

I agree that could be a positive for the BE and for the Orange.

We need the BE to survive for many reasons.

Lets hope this works and that Rutgers, Louisville, So. Fla, Cincy, UConn and WVU are comfortable remaining in a conference that possesses an automatic BCS bid.

What exactly are these reasons?