I know it's been quite a while since I posted anything but a combination of family matters and personal health issues has kept me away from the keyboard. Hopefully, that's behind me now and posting will resume on a more regular basis, if not quite as frequent as in the past.
As most of you probably know by now, yesterday the Big East Conference and TCU announced that TCU will be joining the Big East as an all sports member beginning in 2012. While football was clearly the draw here, TCU would not move from the Mountain West Conference unless it could take all of its teams into the same conference. The Big East finally got comfortable with moving to 17 members (making it the largest D-I conference ever) and the rest is history. TCU got admission to a BCS automatic qualifying conference and the Big East got its important ninth football school and a recognized nationally ranked football team.
Much has been made about the distance of Dallas/Ft. Worth from the rest of the Big East but since the conference permits its individual sports to play locally, it is only the team sports, i.e. football, men's and women's basketball, volleyball, baseball and men's and women's soccer which require a conference schedule. Since the Mountain West required all sports to compete during the regular season against conference members, it's likely that TCU will actually have less travel in the Big East.
If this move stabilized football, as it should, and enables the conference to upgrade its television contracts with the addition of the Dallas/Ft. Worth television market, then it's much more likey that the conference will be able to survive any impending conference realignment. That doesn't mean any members may not defect to the Big Ten, it just means there is a better shot at surviving such defection with its BCS AQ intact.
The biggest loser in this move is Boise State, who is jut having a week from hell. The Broncos woke this morning to discover that they had jumped from the WAC to the ...well with Utah, BYU and TCU gone, ...the WAC.
