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from today's CFN:
who do you think the Big East will suck in from CUSA in the event of another expansion raid? – MW

A: Here’s the trickle-down effect I see potentially happening in the very near future. To get to a 12-team league, the Big East will likely snag UCF, East Carolina, Memphis and Southern Miss because of their size as well as their football programs. Marshall might be in that mix taking USM’s spot, but the Big East wouldn’t be doing jumping jacks over having two teams from West Virginia. Conference USA would then likely pick get Navy and then make offers to Toledo, Miami University, and Northern Illinois from the MAC. Remember, this is all speculation.

http://www.collegefootballnews.com/2006 ... sk_CFN.htm

You could call the MAC the "Sun Belt Light" if that would happen. And we would be stuck holding the bag in the MAC. I don't care what some of you think of the C-USA, but it would be a step up from the MAC. And a scenario like this would be devastating.

Well then we're totally safe. If there's one thing we've learned, it's that the best way to make sure a prediction doesn't come true is to have that prediction be posted on CFN.

Anything can happen, so I wouldn't totally dismiss this.

One wildcard is what the Big East decides to do in basketball. Remember, they have a HUGE hoops conference with a lot of non-football schools.

Interesting stuff...at this point, I wouldn't count anything out.

1987alum wrote:Anything can happen, so I wouldn't totally dismiss this.

One wildcard is what the Big East decides to do in basketball. Remember, they have a HUGE hoops conference with a lot of non-football schools.

Do you think the Big East will jettison the non-football schools? I mean they have 16 schools arleady for basketball. Adding another 4 and they got 20 teams! I don't see how that can work unless they drop the schools that don't play football (Villanova, G-town, St. John's Providence, Marquette, DePaul, Seton Hall) or are too good to have thier football team in a league (Notre Dame). That would get them to a managable 12 teams.

I absolutely do not see the Big East getting rid of their non-football schools. That's a huge deal for them.

orangeandbrown wrote:I absolutely do not see the Big East getting rid of their non-football schools. That's a huge deal for them.

I agree...Villanova, G-town, St. John's Providence, Marquette, DePaul, Seton Hall. I don't see these schools getting kicked out or leaving the Big East. The Big East is Hoops first and foremost.

As time allows, I've been digging around a bit on the whole realignment issue. It's tough to get any concrete information, but here is what is certain:

* The Big East will move a lot sooner than people suspect in adding football schools. They advent of the permanent 12-game schedule pushed up their timeline, which was originally set for 2010.

* There is a lot - A LOT - of tenstion between the football and smaller non-football schools.

One scenario that seems to be gaining some steam is that The Big East would add two schools for all sports, giving them 10 football schools, a good scheduling number. In basketball, they'd split into two divisions with limited crossover games. In reality, this would be more like two leagues with a scheduling agreement, but would allow the conference to maintain a lot of status/prestige collectively.

orangeandbrown wrote:I absolutely do not see the Big East getting rid of their non-football schools. That's a huge deal for them.

But the non-football schools could walk.

I can't imagine a MAC school agreeing to join Conference USA at this point.

If anything, maybe Marshall would come back to us in the scenario outlined above.

I think we stamp Temple return to sender and hangon Buffaloe as postage due.

I don't know of any MAC school which could afford the C-USA travel costs.

Schadenfreude wrote:

orangeandbrown wrote:I absolutely do not see the Big East getting rid of their non-football schools. That's a huge deal for them.

But the non-football schools could walk.

I can't imagine a MAC school agreeing to join Conference USA at this point.

If anything, maybe Marshall would come back to us in the scenario outlined above.

Schade: Good conjecture. I get the feeling that the next few years are going to be much bigger and broader in terms of teams realigning that the past few years have been.

If UCF, Memphis, ECU, and Southern Miss all left C-USA, it wouldn't be much better than the Sun Belt. At that point, why would any team in the MAC even consider joining it?

San Diego Falcon wrote:If UCF, Memphis, ECU, and Southern Miss all left C-USA, it wouldn't be much better than the Sun Belt. At that point, why would any team in the MAC even consider joining it?

Six Bowl bids vs three bowl bids and national TV contract with ESPN would be two off the top of my head.

quote:
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Originally posted by San Diego Falcon:
If UCF, Memphis, ECU, and Southern Miss all left C-USA, it wouldn't be much better than the Sun Belt. At that point, why would any team in the MAC even consider joining it?
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Six Bowl bids vs three bowl bids and national TV contract with ESPN would be two off the top of my head.

Good points. But wouldn't those bowl bids disappear rather quickly with that conference membership? Is the C-USA ESPN contract better than ours? Even if it is, I imagine that would disappear quickly as well?