Big East Football: A Look Back at the Past Year
The Big East has been through more as a conference in the past year than most other conferences go through in a decade. In the last 13 months, the Big East has had expansion, hiring and firing of coaches and more turmoil than a conference can handle.
All-in-all, the league has added five teams and lost three. Here is a breakdown of the past 13 months for the Big East conference.
On November 30, 2010 TCU announced they were joining the Big East conference to become the ninth football member. Talks then began about adding Villanova as the 10th and final football member. Those plans foiled when TCU announced in October they were joining the Big 12.
Pittsburgh has had a saga of their own. Panthers head coach Dave Wannstedt was fired on December 7 of last year and Mike Haywood was hired, only to be fired two weeks later after being arrested on domestic violence charges.
After getting blown out in the Fiesta Bowl, Connecticut head coach Randy Edsall bolted Hartford for Maryland of the ACC.
Bill Stewart resigned from West Virginia and assistant Dana Holgorsen was named his replacement, giving nearly half of the league a new head coach heading into the season.
Along with all the head coaches leaving, the Big East also had a few teams jump ship to other conferences. First Syracuse and Pittsburgh announced they were heading to the ACC and then West Virginia jumped ship to the Big 12.
West Virginia proceeded to file a lawsuit against the Big East saying that they had no intention of waiting the mandatory 27-month waiting period to leave the conference.
While this battle is still yet to be decided, the Mountaineers are ready to leave the conference this summer if they can.
This left the Big East with only five teams remaining and on the brink of folding completely as a football conference.
Just three weeks ago, the Big East added five teams to the conference. Houston, SMU and Central Florida joined the conference for all sports and Boise St. along with San Diego St. joined for football only.
This was one of the few positive announcements for a conference that had been floundering for the past 12 months.
Whether or not it will be enough to save the league remains to be seen, but after a year of disappointment and departures, adding some teams will give the league a little stability heading into 2012.
