Big East Expansion: Louisville and West Virginia Targeted by Big 12
With the recent announcement that the Missouri Tigers are going to apply for admission to the SEC, the Big 12 will be left with only nine teams.
It has been widely known that two of their targets are Louisville and West Virginia with one other school in mind to expand to a 12-team league once again.
This could put a huge damper on the plans for the Big East to expand to a 12-team football conference. Losing Louisville and West Virginia would not only hurt badly in basketball like losing Pittsburgh and Syracuse did, but it would also hurt more in football as West Virginia is the class of the football conference.
This leaves the Big 12 with 11 schools, if West Virginia and Louisville commit and could leave the Big East reeling once again.
The Big 12 is likely to add a third school, which they would like to be Houston, but Texas will not allow that. The other possibility might be Cincinnati, which would be another blow to the Big East.
If that happens, the Big East could possibly be turning into a proverbial mid-major conference and if the new teams that are set to receive invitations do not act quick, the Big East conference could dissolve as a whole for football with the remaining teams filtering into other conferences.
Big East Commisioner John Marinatto has said that no official invitations have been sent out as of yet, but once one of the schools targeted by the Big East commits, the exit fee will double from five million to ten million dollars.
That is a healthy chunk of money for teams to leave the conference, but still will not be enough to keep teams from jumping ship to greener grass.
As talk of expansion continue to drag on, hopefully pieces will start falling into place in the next couple of weeks and there will be some stability in the college sports landscape.
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So you’re saying that Bevo’s league is willing to stay at 9 members until 2014 cause they’re gonna have to wait out the nasty 27 month departure rule on any BE defectors they try to poach ! This will probably launch Bevo back to court BYU !
Good point. I am not sure what they are going to do about that. They might not have a choice but to wait at nine teams.
I don’t really think that is a problem because I don’t think they will try to take three teams from the Big “soon to be dissolved” East. It would make more sense to add a team that they could bring on by next year like BYU or Boise State to get to ten then wait out the 27 month provision to get WVU and Louisville.
That’s a good point and a strong possibility. I think they would like to get BYU if possible.