The Big East Presidents and Athletic Directors will meet in Atlanta
on Friday to discuss the timing and the details of the break up with the
Catholic 7 group of schools who announced their departure from the
conference in December.
Although no formal announcement is expected, the group, which
includes all the schools still committed to the Big East, is expected to
approve a plan which would sell the name “Big East’ to the Catholic 7,
as well as allow the group–which includes Seton Hall. St. John’s,
Georgetown, DePaul, Marquette. Providence and Villanova–to leave in
July.
In exchange for leaving two years earlier than the scheduled
departure date of July 2015, the Catholic 7, who will not attend the
Atlanta meeting, would agree to take considerably less money from a
reserve pool of conference money earned by the Big East from exit fees
and NCAA basketball tournament shares which is reported to be in excess
of 60 million dollars.
The financial details of this arrangement still must be worked out,
but both sides appear ready to announce that the Catholic 7 group will
leave in July and take the Big East name with them.
Once that is done, both conferences can move ahead with their future plans.
The football group of schools, which will include a surviving core
group of Temple, UConn, Cincinnati, and South Florida, as well as Tulane
(2014) East Carolina, (2014) Central Florida, SMU, Houston, Memphis
and Navy (2015), will play with a 10 team league next season, which
will include Rutgers and Louisville.
Both of those schools will leave the Big East for the Big Ten (Rutgers) and ACC (Louisville) in 2014.
Once the Big East name is sold, the football conference must find a
new name and forge a new identity–perhaps the Great American Conference
or the Big American Conference–as well as a new marketing strategy for a
league which has been literally torn apart in the past 10 years of
conference reconfiguration.
The basketball group will have an easier time of it in establishing
an identity with the Big East name as well as a base of seven former Big
East schools.
A move to expand to at least ten teams is expected quickly. Butler
and Xavier are the heavy favorites to receive two immediate
invitations–with Saint Louis, Dayton, Richmond and Creighton also
regarded as viable candidates