West Virginia Will Join Big 12 in 2012 At $20 Million Cost
West Virginia remained defiant, called the Big East’s bluff and will compete in the Big 12 for the 2012-2013 calendar year.
Brett McMurphy of CBS Sports and breaker of nearly every piece of conference realignment news on the East Coast reports that a settlement is near. West Virginia plans to compensate the Big East in the neighborhood of $20 million to leave prior to the 27-month mandate for exiting members.
The Mountaineers were a party to the agreement that in order to stave off realignment, schools had to give notice and then wait a tick over two years to make their conference move official.
The legal proceedings just go to show that if you want something bad enough, and West Virginia wants no part of the Big East, it simply takes a high enough number to convince the opponent to let the issue go away.
Oddly, McMurphy also reports that the Mountaineers are trying to convince one of the future Big East additions to join in 2012 rather than 2013.
Scheduling a college football game seven months before it’s supposed to take place either requires a ton of money (so another school will break off a separate game) or blind luck (Texas A&M and FSU both have open dates this fall and might play).
With only seven football-playing Big East members left, each school would have to scramble to fill an open weekend, likely with an FCS opponent.
While the Big East tries to plug the scheduling holes, the Big 12 is ecstatic.
10 teams are in, all of whom will agree to a six-year grants rights term (signing over your media rights to the conference so that if you leave, the conference you’re exiting still owns the TV rights to your games).
Big 12 interim commissioner Chuck Neinas and West Virginia athletic director Oliver Luck confidently assured their respective institutions that this would happen.
Whether the Big 12 foots the bill or the Mountaineers need to sell a lot more beer at home games, a near-dead Big 12 conference is complete again. Well, two schools shy of the namesake but complete enough that no one’s leaving.
And this fall, an entire region of college football fans will be introduced to a campus that celebrates John Denver’s entire catalogue.
As a Texas alum, I can’t wait for the Mountaineer invasion.
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