Friarfan, good catch and did not intend to leave out Rutgers. Rutgers would have been a charter member of the Eastern All Sports and many reasons for not joining the original Big East which allowed for Seton Hall. Rutgers wanted to follow Penn State into this new league.

You have really good points on big city arenas. I think you are correct the Big East would have taken a couple more big city schools for attendance and TV purposes. Temple and Fordham would have made a good candidate for basketball.

Fordham is very interesting for Big East even in today's world if the football could be supported and brought back to glory days and a new city stadium could be built.

Temple on the other hand would probably have been picked for the All sports to bring the number to 10. Having Penn State would have been good for a Temple sellout every other year. Agreed, Maryland would have been boarder line, however, to this day WVU is Maryland's bigest rival in any sport. The folks in DC go wild for that football game surprising more than ACC basketball. Basketball rivals with NC and Duke would have been a tuff call to say good by, however, the East with Penn State at that time was much better than Florida Stateless ACC in football and that would have been the deciding factor is a guess. Fun to speculate!

Not sure about you, I think the 16 team Big East has really good promise and have changed my mind about a split (my observation only). Miami was a big issue that was hurting the old Big East with so much pull to build football. Was Miami going to stay or was Miami going to the SEC or ACC or going Independent. I think in long run, the Big East will be very happy to be rid of the school. The conference just fills more united now like the other major conferences. Maybe more united than since the original 7 members got together in 79.

I think they will split. Only a hunch really. Realistically, I think it's wait & see for them. If this thing is a success, of course they will hang together . . . sort of like sticking with a hot hand.

I think that the fb schools hung in there all those years because they also wanted to be in a premier bb conference & a fb conference wouldn't have offered that. However, with the emergence of UConn in the past decade to join Syracuse as a premier bb program at a BCS fb school & with the additions of Louisville & Cincinnati, they now have the nucleus of an all-sports conference that can still be a power in bb. They never had that before. Miami & Virginia Tech brought very little to the table in bb. BC was very good in bb but not great, not on a par with Syracuse.

The only thing that the bb schools really offer anymore is The Garden & exposure in other big media markets. That is still big. Time will tell how big.

Cheers,
Friar

Friarfan, you make very good points and the new Big East 8 football members are much stonger in basketball tradition that the orginial 8. If a split were to occur, just hope the Big East is smart and follows the Pac 10 avoiding expanding behond 10.

With 12 regular season games, round robin football is the only way to crown a football conference champion.

Maybe the Liberty is throwing bate to the Big East for future help with Memphis? Of course the SEC really wants to face a BCS school in the Liberty bowl!!!

If a split were to occur and Army/Navy could be convinced as full football members only, keeping 8 basketball schools would really be cool! I miss the old round robin basketball schedules were every conference member played home and home series. It does not get any better for basketball rivals.

Fun to speculate on the split. I think if the Big East football now stable and improves to the point that Notre Dame is not necessary for bowl deals, the schools may just split as you suggest. Health of Big East football will most likely be the key factor.

It would be very nice to see Notre Dame squirm for a change, however, do believe Notre Dame would remain with the 8 basketball schools and make a very nice 8 team all sports conference without football. Seriously dought Notre Dame will ever join the Big 10.

I guess we will all know if 5 years if there will be 16 or two seperate conferences. At this point, just happy to see football finally stablizing and moving on with members that really want to be together as a group.