The Big East Conference is considering their options for a 14th member, and the two most likely schools are Air Force and BYU, ESPN has reported.
When Navy joins the conference in 2015, the Big East will have 13 football-playing members. The conference wants to add a 14th team from the West to balance their divisions.
Another option the Big East has reportedly considered is adding Air Force, Army, and BYU to create a 16-team league with eight division members.
To accomplish this, the Big East would have to pacify three teams with separate issues. Air Force is currently loyal to the Mountain West Conference, Army hasn’t been interested in joining a conference since leaving C-USA, and BYU wants to keep their home television rights, among other TV issues.
ESPN also reports that the 14-team Big East will play an 8-game conference football schedule. The schedule will consist of six division games and two cross-division games. One of the cross-division games will be permanent, with the match-ups set as follows: Louisville-Cincinnati, USF-UCF, UConn-Rutgers, San Diego State-Boise State, SMU-Houston, Navy-Temple and Memphis versus the 14th team.
Regarding the divisions, ESPN reports that they will be named the Red Division and Blue Division. The most likely setup, which is not geographically oriented, is listed below:
Red Division
Connecticut, Louisville, Memphis, Navy, San Diego State, SMU, USF
Blue Division
Boise State, Cincinnati, Houston, Rutgers, Temple, UCF, plus 14th team TBD
This is garbage, the BIG EAST has turned to garbage. As a life-long BIG EAST HOMER I have the right to say that. I’m crushed over Pittsburgh, Syracuse and now Notre Dame leaving, the Basketball conference once the sports BEST is now garbage. Terrible.
These new teams are west coast schools no one cares about, it’s awful what happened!!
I love the Big East, Syracuse football was a dream for me to play for in the BIG EAST. I’ve been too many Big East Tourneys at the Garden on day one, which in my opinion was the best day besides the Championship game. Four games on days one w/ Seton Hall, Rutgers and so on now, you’ll have SMU, UCF, my god – What the hell happened???????
you are bull shit sal. It is a good move for the schools.
That is not garbage, I like the idea
I’m happy to see ND leave. They could have saved Big East football years ago. ND is special, they call the shots, and it’s all about them. The Orange and Panthers will be sorely missed in basketball – but, it appears that better (winning) football teams are joining the league.
Big East basketball will still be strong. Marquette, G’town, Nova, St. John’s, L’ville, UC , Temple, UCONN, Memphis.
That makes perfect sense, let’s put Cincinnati and Rutgers in the Blue Division and Memphis and Connecticut in the Red.
Houston & Temple use variations of red too
How about East and West or North and South like normal conferences.
No silly Red and Blue, or Legends and Leaders or Atlantic and Coastal.
Why is anyone considering joining this POS?
The Big East might as well just let Villanova upgrade at this point.
Well, that was rude and unnecessary.
BYU will not join the Big East, because they do not love Boise State.
Boise State enter the WAC, BYU founded the MWC, Boise State enters the MWC, BYU go on independet status.
The Big East will cover a greater space than the 16-team WAC, and will collapse.
UConn plays againt San Diego State ? Stupid.
This would be a better division setup:
Connecticut, Rutgers, USF, Temple, Navy, UCF, plus 14th team TBD
Blue Division
Boise State, Cincinnati, Houston, Louisville, Memphis, San Diego State, SMU
Yes they will
.
Hernandos
Your divisions make much more sense but the Blue(WEST) is much stronger than the other division. I think that is why they are trying to split this way, to balance power.
BYU going independent has nothing to due with Boise St. BYU has a multi-game contract with Boise St, in fact. BYU will join if home game TV rights are settled. I don’t see a “BCS-bowl” inviting the BE champion post-BCS though.
PNB, the strength of a division is how good you can recruit high school players.
You are wrong about BYU, they left because of the TV contract. If they hated Boise State so much they wouldn’t have signed a 8 game deal!
There will be on Big East in a couple of years. Teams in the west will start to pull out. It is ridiculous the teams in this so called conference.
At least Boise and SDSU will only have to make 3 or 4 football trips across country each year.
WVU will love sending the softball team to Lubbock and the volleyball team to Waco year after year after year.
The Big East may collapse but we have been saying that for 10 years and it still keeps coming back from the dead.
This is all BS last I read both BYU and Air Force turned down the big east before and wants nothing to do with it. BYU is still being considered a big 12 member an Air Force no desire to join a conference that will likely have auto birth only a year or two more! The way the MWC is will be stronger then the Big East, only thing East has in year or two is Boise.
Uconn wants in the ACC n Louisville and cincy want in the big 12. With ND joining ACC they need one more team to even basketball conference hence uconn will finally get invite. Big 12 will add two more teams to compete with other conferences adding both cincy an Louisville is smart for basketball an their football teams are good too also geographicly makes it nicer too. If Big 12 wants to up it to 14 BYU gets invite an to add in Rutgers yes I said Rutgers will bring conference up an complete to 14. These teams add in new tv market more money for conference overall. Adding these teams makes it easier for conference division too. If not Rutgers only other team I could see in Big 12 would be Nevada or Utah State which are both showing off strong this year.
ACC is not adding anyone. If they do, they would have an odd number of football schools.
this would make sense for the acc… add uconn, rutgers, and georgetown… give you 16 for football, 18 for everything else… and they would do basketball scheduling like this: 18 games, 17 against everyone else, another 1 against your rival: (fsu-mia) (gt-clem) (unc-duke) (wake-ncsu) (uva-vt) (umd-gt) (nd-pitt) (cuse-uconn) (rutg-bc)… football: 2 eight team divisions… easy!!!
There’s some very good points made by many of you, BUT AS YOU CAN SEE THERE’S MANY CHILDREN IN HERE STARTING WITH connER. There’s no-reason to call someone names – GROW UP!!!!!!!!!
I concur.
I just hope they’ll consider renaming the conference. They are tarnishing the legacy of the Big East conference, and with some prominent members moving to the ACC, they may as well stop the charade and give the thing a new moniker. How about just the “Big Conference”? “Confused Conference”? “We’ll Take Anyone We Can Get Conference”?
One idea I floated was to have one division with the teams that were in C-USA (Louisville, Cincinnati, USF, UCF, SMU, Houston, Memphis), and the other division with teams that weren’t (UConn, Rutgers, Temple, Navy, Boise St, SDSU, 14th team). This rationale would be that one division traveled both short and long distances, and the other division traveled only intermediate distances. Thus, the average distance per road trip for each team would be roughly the same. I wasn’t crazy about this “zipper” alignment at first, but it gives teams the opportunity to travel all parts of the country, which is great for recruiting.
Think about it. Your idea has Texas, Florida, and Ohio all stuffed in a division to go up against Idaho and Conneticut? Many players will commit to schools when they know that teams will come to their area. It’s how Boise won recruiting battles against PAC-12 teams in Stockton and Elk Grove with several now NFL players: they played Fresno State every other year. And no matter how you dice it, with a hole being carved with WVU, PITT, and SU gone, all the teams are going to have lengthy travel. Might as well just try to make the division competitive.
I see BSU blasting through with 0-2 losses a season for the next 5-10 years anyway, which honestly might give a lot of validity to the conference since they seem to show up in big games. They replaced the whole damn team this year, and MSU still just squeaked by them. It’s been like 5 years since boise has lost by a full score or more.
I think the Big East should under the table declare war on the ACC. They should target school and pursue trades with them (except memphis). Just prove that your the better football conference and be done with it. Now the ACC is the trash conference.
I have found a better schedule for a 12 Team conference with two 6 teams division:
5 divisional games
3 rotating intraconference games
4 out-of-conference games
Let’s see if Boise State ever plays in the Big Least or if they take the TCU route and go with a better offer at the last minute. Big Least football is embarassing.
Boise will never join the Big12 or Pac12 because of two reasons
a) no tv market
b) academic standards not high enough
Caimy,
Boise will never join the Big 12 because of academic standards? Really? Once you get beyond Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Stanford, and the Service academies, academics are pretty much all the same at these state schools. There is really nothing unique about the academics at a Kansas State or Oregon versus a Boise State or a ECU or LA Tech. Academics play no part in conference alignment at top level football schools.
They’ve got to go east/west:
SDDU, Boise, the texas schools, and perhaps fresno, tulsa, or colorado state or byu is the route to go. You can’t have an SDSU in the same conference as a cincy or uconn.
I feel the Big East was just initially trying to add in better football schools. Who has been better the last five years: Boise State or Pittsburg. UCF or Syracuse. Honestly, the quality of football will go up overall. West Virginia is a lose, but Houston and SMU are bigger TV markets and more fertile recruiting grounds. You’ll have teams (in theory) tapping into California, Texas, Florida, Ohio, and budding Northwest region. Under no alignment should Loiusville and Boise be in the same division. Say what you will, but those two have the best history to this point. If they could pull another team with a national market following that also yields a quality football program, that really would be the icing on the cake. This COULD work.
This conference has almost no appeal at all—well, minimal. Might as well make it a true geographic division (west/east) and take BSU and San Diego ST rivals Fresno St. and Colo St. (or possibly BYU with Fresno/CSU). Maybe tap into the emerging Vegas market with UNLV.
Big East?
epic fail.
BYU will join the big 12 I see that happening in the next 2-5 years or so along with Utah state or if Utah gets invited bye and come and leave the PAC 12 conference than BYU and Utah can keep there rivalry going And the PAC 12 invite unlv or Utah state if BYU joins the big east BYU will be in the blue division with Air Force smu Houston sandiego state temple Boise state and Louisville that I see happening
I can’t believe the comments–there is NO WAY BYU joins the Big East. No way. They have absolutely no reason to. They are making plenty of money as independents, and they are getting better schedules as the years go on. The only conference that would make sense for BYU to join would be the Bifg XII, and the Big XII should invite them soon because they will quickly realize they need 12 trams. But then again, in the post-BCS world, does conference affiliation really matter for BYU? Maybe not.
I don’t know what the Big East was thinking when they added Tulane and East Carolina there are better schools out the like Northern Illinois,Tulsa,Fresno St.,Utah St..They just made themselves weaker.