Big East looking to get bigger

THE BIG EAST held a regularly scheduled meeting yesterday at an airport hotel. Commissioner John Marinatto, as expected, said the conference is ready to hand out membership invitations. While he wouldn't get specific, sources have said the plan is to bring in Southern Methodist, Houston and Central Florida for all sports, and Boise State, Air Force and Navy for football only.

Marinatto sounded confident he'll receive the answers he wants, although some have speculated some or all of those football-only candidates aren't necessarily locks. Anyway . . .

"I look forward to announcing their acceptances," Marinatto said. "Hopefully, over the course of the next week, we'll wrap some of this up. There's a lot of [details] that need to be done. I know some people think it's like fantasy football. As we've learned, don't believe anything anybody tells you. Nothing's done 'til it's over. That's why I'm obviously being cautious.

"It's actually a little more complicated than it may seem."

The Big East is trying to reinvent/salvage itself, having lost three founding football members - Syracuse, Pittsburgh and West Virginia - and Texas Christian (before it actually joined) over the last 2 months.

The latest defection was West Virginia, last week. Then it sued the Big East, trying to get out of its 27-month exit commitment, saying four of the remaining five football schools - Louisville, Connecticut, Rutgers and Cincinnati - also have discussed leaving. Not usually a healthy sign.

Despite that, Marinatto said there were "no issues in the room." All 13 schools, including eight that don't play FBS football, were represented yesterday.

The Big East's plan is to get to 12 for football, which now means adding seven. That would figure to bring Temple back into the mix. Temple, which played in the conference for football from 1991-2004, wants in for all sports. Villanova, which has been in for most sports for three decades and was set to vote to move up from the FCS level for football last April before the vote got tabled, was only willing to support Temple for football. And Villanova, not surprisingly, had the support of the basketball voting block.

There's also a rumor that Brigham Young could become part of this equation, for football. Marinatto did reference a "quote-unquote Western Division."

But the commish said no new additions were discussed at this meeting. "It wasn't the time," he explained. "We want to go through the vetting process, make sure we do what we need to do, with all the knowledge and thoughtfulness [necessary] . . .

"Today was a reaffirmation from our members of the way they wanted to go, what we've been talking about the last 3 to 4 weeks. We have a school in Philadelphia. Obviously, we're contemplating further expansion, and at some point [having a football team here] might happen. The door's open. We haven't shut any doors yet.

"We only focused today on the things we've been working on. I'm sure at some time in the near future we'll sit down and start to deal with the [next] questions and even the answers.

"A lot of factors will go into it. Certainly [the value of rivalries is] one of them. We want to protect basketball as much as we can, in the wake of losing three really good programs. There are ways we can enchance basketball with further expansion, once we have what we need on the football side. We want to get that established [first]. I work for all the schools. I take all of their issues very seriously . . .

"The world is changing."

You think?