If you're discounting this round of expansion as just purely the MWC/WAC/BYU fighting for survival and max TV dollars, take another look. It may lead to much bigger things for the Big East's future.
Look at the current size of the MWC/WAC conferences (assuming BYU leaves the MWC as reported):
MWC-10 teams (Air Force, Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, Nevada, New Mexico, UNLV, San Diego State, TCU, Wyoming)
WAC-6 teams (Hawaii, Idaho, Louisiana Tech, New Mexico State, San Jose State, Utah State)
MWC could add 2 more teams to get to 12, and play a football championship. WAC needs at least 2 more for football, because if BYU goes for hoops/Olympic sports only, that puts the WAC at 7 currently without adding 2 more teams. BYU is actually considering the West Coast Conference from what I've read tonight.
There's only a few places to turn for football schools that fit geographically: CUSA and the Sun Belt Conference. And the options are fairly limited. Mountain West would probably put Houston and UTEP towards the top of their wish list. Others that would possibly fit in the MWC or WAC would be Rice, Tulsa, possibly Tulane, and maybe North Texas out of the Sun Belt. If CUSA gets raided, their only option would be turn to the Sunbelt, which is filled with recent D1 programs and also-rans like Louisiana-Lafayette that bring very little cachet to the table. Maybe the MAC, but it's too Northern for CUSA's footprint.
So if the western portion of CUSA gets raided, I can't help but think that the Memphis, Central Florida, East Carolina trio to the East would be too thrilled about possibly adding the likes of Louisiana-Monroe or Troy to their league. I think they may turn their eyes towards the 8 Big East football schools.
The Big East is considering their TV options for the future, including a Big East TV network, and Villanova is rumored to be considering a move up to D1 for football. A 20 team league would be near impossible to manage, so a split would be almost inevitable into a 12 team football league and 8 (maybe an additional 1 or 2) basketball-only schools. Even in that, neither are viable enough to maintain a TV network on their own. The football quality would be solid, but Morgantown, Greenville, and Syracuse aren't exactly huge TV markets. Nor would a basketball-only league, even with NYC, Chicago, and Washington, DC as lynchpins, command enough independently either as they're simply not football, and football is the name of the game right now. Both leagues may still be interdependent on each other to max out a TV deal and provide sufficient content to a cable provider.
Toss in the ND factor as well. In a 12/8 split, ND's basketball may head to the bball only league. But ND is still ND, and ND adds massive value to a potential cable network, particularly out East and in Chicagoland. Comcast is purchasing NBC, which has ND football locked thru 2014, and already has massive cable distribution out East and has regional RSNs in several major Big East markets (Philly, Chicago, DC). Perhaps this could end up being a multiple league college sports network with some ND football, Big East hoops, the football league, and carriage all the way to the Mississippi River. Comcast could utilize these two leagues to provide additional sports content to Versus (and challenge ESPN futher) and NBC Sports. Not to mention possibly carry a few ND football games a year too.
The Big East emerged from the first round of realignment intact. The current situation may open new doors for the Big East to shake things up again.
Sounds great. Not happening.
Plus, ND's sports program is far too big to align itself with the basketball-only schools. The B10 knows this. Either the BE football/basketball schools co-exist, or ND goes to the B10. That's it.
I don't think that Memphis and East Carolina are sitting there with Big East offers and saying no. Just because C-USA dissolves does not mean that any conference has to take them. If the Big East wanted them, they would be in.
Not happening. The WAC is not raiding C-USA. The raid already happened, and it went the other way. When the five C-USA teams moved to the Big East, C-USA quickly consolidated as a Southern football conference by raiding the WAC. Tulsa, Rice, and SMU jumped immediately, followed by UTEP once the MWC picked off TCU. No way any of those schools want to go back to the WAC. And no way the MWC wants Tulsa, Rice, or SMU. The MWC was formed when the structure of the sixteen-team WAC proved unwieldy. The problems were not just geography, which was bad enough, but dissimilar institutions. Small, private schools together with very large public ones. Good football programs together with poor ones. Now BYU might want to go on its own. The MWC response is to raid the WAC for a couple of big state schools who are respectable in football.
The MWC could possibly go after Houston and/or UTEP, and UTEP has some history with the current MWC teams, as it was in the same conference with them before the WAC expanded to sixteen. The other six members at that time formed the MWC. They left UTEP and Hawaii behind, and replaced them with San Diego State and UNLV. So if it does, C-USA will likely respond by grabbing La. Tech from the WAC, who tried and failed to join when UTEP did, and perhaps some other WAC team, or perhaps North Texas. But surely no Big East team is going to want to go to C-USA. USF is just giddy that they got to move in the other direction. No dominoes are likely to fall around here.
1. I don't think the MWC will find good expansion members and will stay at 10. Losing Utah and BYU, and gaining Boise, Nevada and Fresno, doesn't exactly help the MWC's automatic BCS bid status. Without that status, there really is no reason for schools like Houston or UTEP to leave CUSA, a conference that already has a championship game, to go to the MWC.
2. The WAC is completely screwed. There really are no good expansion candidates, unless they can convince schools like Montana to make the jump to FBS. Frankly, if I were a school like Idaho, I think "devolving" to FCS makes more sense. Rejoin the Big Sky.
But I've been wrong many times...I just might be again.
Quote from: goodgreatgrand on August 18, 2010, 11:59:05 PM
Sounds great. Not happening.
Plus, ND's sports program is far too big to align itself with the basketball-only schools. The B10 knows this. Either the BE football/basketball schools co-exist, or ND goes to the B10. That's it.
The ACC would gladly welcome Notre Dame.