Big East Expands to West Coast

I realize that geographic compactness and literal interpretation of conference names went out the window long ago. Still, the expansion of the Big East conference all the way to San Diego, California, is about as odd as it gets. Yesterday, however, the Big East announced the addition of Houston, Southern Methodist (SMU), and Central Florida for all sports; and Boise State and San Diego State for football only. These changes come amidst other Big East craziness, such as Texas Christian University leaving the conference before even playing a single game in any sport, and the departures of West Virginia to the Big 12, and Pitt and Syracuse to the ACC.

The following is a Big East schematic I made, replacing an earlier one. The names of existing Big East schools are depicted in red, whereas those of the new members are shown in blue. The green squares represent schools that play all sports within the Big East. The white triangles illustrate schools that either don't play football at all or not within the Big East. Naturally, the football logo denotes schools whose only Big East presence will be in football.

According to the picture above, the Big East would be a 10-team football conference and a 16-team league for basketball and other sports. The status of Big East escapees West Virginia, Syracuse, and Pittsburgh still remains in flux, with lawsuits pending over the conference's requirement that members not leave for 27 months after declaring an intention to depart.

Assuming the Big East eventually looks like the picture above, several questions come to the fore:

• Will the conference change its name?
• Will more schools from the western U.S. be added to the conference to give San Diego State, Boise State, and the Texas schools some shorter road trips?
• If so, what schools might be candidates? One theme running through the new and existing Big East schools is that they're mostly located in large (or fairly large) cities, such as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Milwaukee, Washington DC, Tampa, Orlando, Houston, Dallas, and San Diego. Possible candidates would therefore seem to be other urban schools, perhaps Tulane (New Orleans), Texas-El Paso, or New Mexico (Albuquerque).

Nothing seems to be stable for long in the Big East, so check back often.