If the Big East decides it wants a 12-team lineup, Tulsa makes sense on several fronts. Though it is the smallest school by enrollment in the Football Bowl Subdivision (3,200 undergraduates), it sits in a decent television market (59th in the Nielsen DMA rankings) and has been the most consistently successful football program in Conference USA since joining that league in 2005. Tulsa finished 10-3 last season, won the conference title and defeated Iowa State in the Liberty Bowl.
It also has a solid history in basketball, though is currently in an NCAA Tournament drought stretching back to 2003.
One issue for Tulsa is that it currently does not have an athletic director. Ross Parmley was fired in early December after his named surfaced in an FBI investigation into an alleged sports gambling ring in Oklahoma City. Parmley had initially told the school he was questioned only about a family connection but later admitted he had gambled on sports, violating NCAA rules.
Because Tulsa responded quickly upon learning of Parmley's gambling, it appears unlikely the school would be hit with major sanctions.
School president Steadman Upham made it clear to the Tulsa World in December the school would prefer to get out of C-USA and re-join SMU and Tulane – smaller private schools with similar academic prestige – in the Big East.
With Houston, SMU, Memphis, Central Florida, Tulane and East Carolina migrating to the Big East over the next two years, C-USA has backfilled with eight public schools, four of which are moving from the Sun Belt.
"I also want to be in a conference that we can be proud of academically," Upham told the newspaper. "Losing two of the private shools in Conference USA is damaging to me, in the way I think about the conference. Whether that forces us to take an action, I can't speculate. For one thing, it's not our call. We have to have an invitation."
