Figuring Out the Big East's Future

I don't know this for a fact but I am willing to be that their have been more blog articles written in regards to the future of the Big East Conference than any other athletic conference in America.  For those who don't know the Catholic 7, Rutgers, and Louisville are all leaving the Big East and San Diego St and Boise St have decided not to come.  Pending the determination of the exit dates of those schools, in 2014 the Big East will consist of:

UConn
Temple
South Florida
Central Florida
Cincinnati
Memphis
Tulane
Southern Methodist
Houston
East Carolina (fb only but presumably will be names a full member)

Navy is supposed to join in 2015 for football only but they may decide to cancel those plans.  The Big East needs to have a long conversation with officials from the Naval Academy to determine for certain whether or not the midshipmen still consider the Big East a suitable home and/or if the departure of any certain school (or schools) would change Navy's mind.

I also think East Carolina is owed full membership due to their willingness to sign on to this league in their hour of need.

Once things are straightened out with Navy and ECU the Big East needs to determine what course of action they are going to take.  Adding Tulsa seems like a no brainer--they are a competitive team that has a history with all of the western members of the Big East particularly fellow private schools Tulane and SMU.

Tulsa's addition would put the Big East at 11 members for all sports and 12 for football provided Navy is still honoring their agreement.  I think this is a tenable set up.  Scheduling for Olympic sports might be a little hectic but I think this is the best possible scenario for the Big East (unless of course Army decided they would like to be a football affiliate and then the Big East would be in the position where they would need a 12th all-sports/14th football member.

UMass keeps getting thrown into the Big East expansion conversation but the Minutemen simply are not ready for Big East play.  They were pitiful in their first year of FBS in the MAC and their average attendance was around 10,000 a game.  This simply will not be tolerable in the Big East.  The problem is that Temple is pulling for them and UConn either is agreeing with Temple or at least not vocally opposing Temple's suggestion.  Their are two schools of thought regarding UMass--one says that the best way to get UMass up to par is to go ahead and add them; the other is to wait and let them prove themselves in the MAC.  The potential problems associated with adding them now are quite obvious.  They could be a flop and the BE would be permanently stuck with them unless their were terms written into their BE contract that would allow the BE to expel them if certain performance and attendance benchmarks were not met.  the other potential problem with them is that if another if the ACC loses another member then UConn is the next school to join that conference.  Depending on how hard the ACC is hit in a future raid the BE's other northeastern member Temple might even work their way into that conversation.  This would saddle the rest of the Big East with a geographic outlier, UMass.

Rice also gets talked about in Big East conversations because they are old friends of SMU, Tulane, and Tulsa.  But Rice also has a tiny alumni base and are completely overshadowed in their own media market, a market that the Big East already has with Houston being a member.  

Southern Mississippi, a stand up member of C-USA also gets talked about in Big East talks but they don't bring any sort of media market and media markets are the driving force of expansion nowadays.

I am putting UTSA in the Big East expansion conversation because I think they are program on the trajectory to have the same meteoric rise as USF and UCF.  Their attendance is amazing even though they have only played lackluster opponents thus far.  They are also in a top 40 media market that is without the NFL.  Maybe they don't get added right now but this is a program to watch closely. Maybe the Big East adds them in a couple years alongside UMass if UMass improves.  The thing with the UTSA Roadrunners is that the MWC is also monitoring the program closely. The MWC would love to get into Texas and UTSA would be a great add for them as well. If the Big East wants them they will have to move before the MWC does.

I am also going to slide an FCS program on this list but only because I think they have the potential to make the same kind of FCS to FBS jump that UConn did.  The school I am talking about is Delaware.  They are a perrenial Top 5 school in FCS attendance so they can draw enough fans to support an FBS program (which UMass has yet to prove).  They are also a highly competitive conference, the CAA, and they are an FCS playoff regular.  

In my mind, the 2015 Big East should look like this:

East: UConn, Temple, Navy*, East Carolina, Central Florida, South Florida

West: Cincinnati, Memphis, Tulane, Tulsa, Southern Methodist, Houston

by 2017 UMass or Delaware could be added to the East and UTSA to the West.