Big East officially looking at 4 CUSA schools

[Billiken Law]

Cincy, L-ville, DuhPaul and Marquette. No mention of SLU. Looks like the 8 football/8 hoops split conference is the preferred alternative.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/coll...ports-headlines

[billiken_roy]

not sure how that helps their bcs woes. i thought the whole point was that they needed 12 football schools to enable that conference championship and be a part of the bcs bowl picture.

[Billiken Rich]

I'm not thrilled to see that! My greatest fear at this point: Hosting drake at the newly built 5000 seat Biondi Dome.

[Billiken Law]

I wouldn't be shocked to see Drake drop down to a lower level. My fiancee's friend used to run track for them and said the school is almost 70% female now and attracting male students is getting more difficult. Maybe a Butler for Drake trade by the MVC if SLU has to join the MVC?

[NashvilleBilliken]

70% female? A guy has to like those odds!

[Quality Is Job 1]

We already knew that the Big East is attempting to gather information on Cincy, Louisville, Marquette, and DePaul. That's not a formal invitation to those schools. They may have also requested information on some Atlantic 10 schools, but we can't expect that to be reported by East Carolina's president.

Also, as Roy said, the Big East is going to have to build football for the sake of the BCS, which still drives the athletics departments of its football programs. In the final analysis, will the football schools feel comfortable with their position having just eight football-playing schools? And they need to have the plan in place before the end of THIS football season. I still believe there will be a divorce.

[Major Majerus]

70% female? Maybe it's time for me to return to college for post graduate study...

[billiken_roy]

ask syracuse and boston college about being a conference preliminary pick.

[Mobile-iken]

I read somewhere that the only reason DePaul and Marquette were thrown into the mix was to give the Big East basketball schols options in case of the divorce...Who knows what is going to happen at this point?

[Basketbill]

The one piece of info in the article that was new to me is the timetable of mid October. I seem to recall the time table of before school starts before......do not know what that means.

[gister]

This is nothing new. It is basically the same article reported last week. I agree, the mid-October time was new. Also, the following paragraph certainly implies that a lot is going to go on between now and then.

"I think what we're seeing is that this may take longer than everyone first thought," Chryst said. "People are going to take their time and go through the process they need to go through."

[Taj79]

Old joke .............

Q: Why are the footballs fields in Iowa made of astro-turf?

A: So the cheerleaders don't graze.

[davidnark]

It looks like SLU may have to take the lead in putting together a new midwest conference. I am sure Creigton would be happy to join SLU in its efforts. SLU needs to recruit schools like Creighton, Butler, Xavier, Dayton, etc. to form a new basketball-focused midwest conference. If such a conference were in the works, maybe Marquette and DePaul would consider the alternatives. There is no reason such a conference couldn't be good enough to compete for top recruits and send 2-4 schools/year to the NCAA.

[kwyjibo]

There are two separate issues. The drive to a 12 team tackle football conference is based on the revenue associated with a conference championship game. The ACC is specifically trying to reduce this requirement to 10 teams (I believe both the Pac-10 and Big 10 have both stated that they would not have a conference championship game even if they could have one).

The other issue is the automatic BCS bid. First off it is important to note that this automatic bid is for 6 conferences + ND. This is NOT decided on the field a play but an oligopolistic decision of BCS conferences. Their only argument for excluding the CUSA, MAC, WAC, Mont West, Big Sky (and the others I may be forgetting) is that they were the best and could do what they wanted (and did not want to share). The Big East without Miami and Va Polytechnic would not be better than the Mountain West or CUSA. So for the sake of appearances the Big East has to make a run at some football teams in order to make themselves look better or to make their competitor's for the last BCS place look worse.

If the BCS worked on the basis of fairness the Big East would never had a place at all so their addition of Louisville and Cincy should provide enough cover to protect their exclusive club. Fairness be damned. The really sad part is that all these "greediron" machinations have impacted basketball so much. Even Coach K at Duke was not immune.

The Big East adding two basketball teams is only a desperate move to keep the internal basketball vs. football tensions at bay in the fragile Bigger East. It might work until the gentlest breeze comes along and topples it again.