Conference USA Expansion

Conference USA has just announced the addition of five new member schools (news release). As shown in the screen-capture below, the new members are: UNC Charlotte, Florida International, Louisiana Tech, North Texas, and Texas-San Antonio (I have added circles around these schools). With slight exception, "Each new member will join the league in all sports for 2013."

The home to a dozen schools this past season, C-USA first lost Houston, SMU, and Central Florida, and later Memphis, all to the Big East. Conference USA thus has 13 members at the moment, eight holdovers and the five newcomers. I've always been a fan of geographic compactness, which C-USA's new addition of the five schools clearly promotes

As we previously noted here, Conference USA had agreed to merge with the Mountain West Conference. According to today's C-USA news release:

Conference USA and the Mountain West will continue to discuss a future affiliation that could begin as early as 2013. Both Conferences agreed that adding membership at this time was important and have carefully coordinated new membership plans. Additional expansion remains a possibility. 

Temple to Big East

Temple University will join the Big East in all sports, immediately for football and for the 2013-14 season in all other sports. With Memphis also joining the Big East (in all sports, in 2013-14), the conference will regain some strength in men's basketball, after its loss of Syracuse and Pitt to the ACC and West Virginia to the Big 12.

Conference USA, Mountain West to Merge

The progression to mega-conferences continues, with Conference USA and the Mountain West announcing they will merge and perhaps bring in additional schools. According to this article, "The newly named league would have a membership in 2013-14 that includes at minumum UNLV, New Mexico, Wyoming, Colorado State, Air Force, Hawaii (in football only), Southern Miss, Tulsa, Marshall, Rice, UTEP, UAB, Tulane, East Carolina, Nevada and Fresno State."

Memphis to Big East

Memphis will be joining the Big East in all sports for the 2013-14 academic year. I created a geographic map in a previous posting, to illustrate the member schools (current and future) as of December 8, 2011. Two weeks ago (January 24, 2012), it was announced that Navy would join the Big East for football starting in 2015.

San Diego State Non-Football Sports to Big West

Following up on San Diego State's becoming a football-only member of the Big East (see below), the school announced that most of its other sports teams will compete in the Big West conference. What does it say about what's happening in collegiate sports that a school can (depending on the sport) belong to both the Big East and Big West?

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.

Mizzou to SEC/T-Shirt Update

Missouri is now officially headed to the SEC. I have updated my Big 12 t-shirt to reflect Mizzou's departure.