Most of the BE expansion proposals I've seen are of 2 varieties: (1) an addition of Notre Dame and/or Penn State to save the BE or (2) the addition of a number of schools ranging from Army and Navy to Southern Miss and East Carolina merely to get the BE to 12 teams.

The problem with the former is that it is simply a pipe dream - there is no financial or competitive reason for either ND or PSU to join a conference that Miami, VT, and BC left. The problem with the latter is that most (if not all) of the prospective schools for expansion in the eastern half of the United States won't do anything to improve the quality of play or the visibility of the BE.

The biggest danger for the BE football is that it will lose any sort of credibility for a BCS bid. This is a much bigger problem than any sort of concerns regarding geographic purity. Therefore, I propose that in order for the top BE football schools to save themselves, they need to put aside the romantic notion of a purely eastern football league and create a conference that will have true BCS respectability. The way to do this is to start a new conference with the top 6 BE schools in one division and the top 6 Mountain West schools in another division.

Here's my proposed "national" conference:

East Division
1. Syracuse
2. Pittsburgh
3. West Virginia
4. UConn
5. Louisville
6. Rutgers (gets the nod over Cincy only because of historical significance as a charter BE member)

West Division
1. Utah
2. BYU
3. Colorado State
4. TCU
5. UNLV (can't pass up a Vegas location)
6. New Mexico (gets the nod over the "paper TV market" of San Diego State because of the Lobos' passionate fan base)

I'm more concerned about saving the true BCS schools of the BE rather than trying to save the Big East Conference itself in some sort of bastardized league. The potential TV and BCS revenues from this proposed national league outweigh any concerns about increased travel costs (TV pays the bills and TV is not going to pay much for East Carolina vs. Southern Miss).

The BE and the MWC are currently 2 leagues that are a substantial level below the 5 largest BCS conferences. It would be better for college football fans in general for them to combine their best teams to form a conference that truly would deserve a BCS bid.

I did not even see the "Big East July 1, 2010" thread until after I posted this. It looks like someone was thinking along same lines as me.

illinibluedemon, not only do you and I agree so do ESPN. It was very interesting to see the topic of expansion relignment discussed during the Rutgers/Pitt game.

Most in ESPN agreed that ACC did the right thing with expansion and 12 team conferences are the idea situation for fan interest.

Of course ESPN has some bias interest with ACC new football contract, however, the basic message was that colllege football needs to have a selected number of major conferences taking the best schools of the others to form the best within each 12 team alignment.

ESPN parent ABC is one of the major stake holders in the BCS that help to determine which conferences play in the BCS.

It would be in the best interest of the BE football schools to pay close attention to what is being stated.

I will post more on my BE Football 2010 thread.