The Big East conference will add the TCU Horned Frogs in 2012.
University Confirms TCU’s Intent To Join Big East
TCU’s gone and held their official press conference confirming the report that the Horned Frogs are, in fact jumping ship from the Mountain West to the Big East for the 2012 athletics season. If you’d like to view the Q&A in its entirety, the full video is available on the university website. For the impatient, we’ve got pertinent tidbits from the official announcement:
• The trustees’ decision to jump from mids to majors was unanimous.
Read Article >TCU AD: No Football-Only Big East Membership For Horned Frogs
At this point, pretty much all we know of the Big East conference expansion plan is that the conference does, in fact, intend to expand its ranks to include ten member football football schools. (If it can.) Following initial reports that the conference had spoken to TCU and Villanova about joining up, TCU athletic director Chris Del Conte first denied he’d been contacted about jumping ship from the Mountain West, and is now shooting down rumors they’d split up the school’s programs, saying he wouldn’t want to send Horned Frogs football to compete in a separate conference.
“We’re an athletic department,” he said in a telephone interview with Sporting News. “Whatever endeavor we do, you’re united as one. That’s who we are. That’s how we always compete. We compete as one unit.”
But, just to complicate matters, he’s of course leaving options on the table (and invoking Bette Midler?):
Read Article >Big East To Pursue Expansion To Ten Football Teams
We have official word at last that the Big East will, in fact, pursue expansion to ten football members. More importantly, we’ve gleaned via the conference’s official website that the conference uses ALL CAPS when referring to itself in print:
The BIG EAST Conference submitted the results of its extensive self-analysis and evaluation of the college athletics environment today at its annual Conference Board of Directors meeting. Based on those results, the BIG EAST presidents agreed that the interests of each of the conference’s 16 member institutions would be served by increasing the number of Bowl Subdivision football-playing members to 10.
SB Nation’s Syracuse community takes issue with the characterization of the statement as an outset of exploration if the conference has already spoken to TCU and Villanova, at least, and faces up to the geographical blind eye-turning that’s about to ensue:
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