To take Temple's spot for joining C-USA more than likely.

Tigersharktwo, I have been hearing a lot of rumors of ECU to the Big East as a football only member?

Not sure if there any fire to this smoke?

It is a very interesting solution as the BE really needs 9 or 10 football members to balance schedules and allow for 8 conference games to match the other BCS conferences.

ECU does have very good attendance and is close to the other BE schools. Would really pis& off the ACC to have a non ACC BCS member in the state of North Carolina. Not a bad pay back.

Mr Ouija, ECU varsity sports could rejoin the Colonial League. The only benefit to ECU in the A10 would be for the BE to keep Temple as football only member. This would ensure one of the A10 marquee basketball teams does not have to jump ship to find if football membership requires all sports.

The only issue in BE taking on football only members is how the BCS will view top to bottom conference performance in the future.

Since Pitt and Syracuse are in a bit of ackward BCS situation, would be interesting for a Meadow Lands rematch game with the champions of the North versis the South.

North: Syracuse, UConn, Rutgers, Temple, Army, Navy

South: Pitt, WVU, Cincy, Louisville, ECU, South Florida

Fans of Louisville this is only for fun as your team would most likely be in one of the playoff spots if you were competing in this arrangement this year.

Would the ECU-to-the-BE thing becoming a reality mean a split is more likely? I only say this thinking the A-10 would become quite crowded, and the theories of BE split often included the whole Catholic league-idea taking some members off the A-10's hands.

Even if it doesn't I can see this as a possibility, with ECU being looked at as either bottom feeder for other programs or a source for traveling fans when they do well. Granted, CUSA would have to reload yet again.

"Hello, Mr. Tranghese? La Tech here! What can we do to help make ECU more attractive to you?"

Gunnerfan, I am guessing the ECU to BE is more wishful thinking from ECU and La Tech fans.

It does seem like wishful thinking, being from the ECU area, and living in Greenville, I'd like to see ECU in the Big East. I think that ECU has had enough history in FB to recieve an invite, and with a possible "big name" coach in Ron Zook being interested at the ECU job, I could definitely see a FB only invite very possible...

The Big East would benefit from having more members...and ECU is familiar with almost all of the Big East Teams...Greenville is not as populated as any of the BE teams, but Greenville is also one of the fastest growing cities in NC. The Eastern Section of North Carolina supports and loves ECU, and would definitely pack the stands with a BE schedule.

ECU deserves a FB invite to the Big East much more than Duke deserves to stay in the ACC in Football...

I think it's wise for the Big East to see how the 2005 Football season works out for Memphis and ECU...in a weaker conference set up....you might see Memphis win 10 games and ECU win 6 or 7 games...I'd give them both an invite for the 2006 season and see how well they do.

Louisiana Tech, short of a major sea-change in their operations, needs to move on. If they didn't get in last time, they aren't getting in. C-USA went 1,000 miles southwest of them, and next time they may go 1,000 miles northeast of them---whatever it takes to solidify the league.

No, they really are not. I live in Carrollton a suburb of Dallas. I hear the SMU horror stories. SMU hasn't drawn since the death penalty. That is a generation ago. Not to be cold about it, but the people who used to pack the cotton bowl are dead. SMU's great fan history was established before there were pro sports in the Metroplex. Most of the old SMU fans who attended games in the 70's and 80's were attending in the 50's and 40's.

SMU's facilities are better than UNTs, but not nearly as much as you'd think, and there is not the type of commitment to improving their programs as there is at neighboring private TCU. SMU is no TCU and likely never will be.

SMU is a small private school with an athletic program that is failing and bleeding money. SMU is trying to hold on. UNT on the other hand is building up their program---granted not with as much steam as TCU, but they are building.

In terms of alumni, UNT has about 3 times the alumni in the metroplex as SMU. You tell me who is going to pull better ratings. In addition, UNT is about the same distance between Dallas and Fort Worth and the majority of their grads move from Denton to one or the other. If CUSA had got UNT instead of SMU, they could ligitmately argue to the networks that there are more UNT alumni in DFW than there are TCU AND SMU Alumni.

In addition, I think most private schools are going to be forced out of Div 1 in the next 15 years and SMU is no exception.

I don't agree with this statement. I think it is a done deal that the next Big East team will be Memphis. You know Cinnci and Louisville will be working very hard to get that done. Now if the rumours of ECU as a football only member have some validity CUSA will be down to 10 members. In this instance, I can see a UNT invite and possibly a La Tech invite.

I do think La. Tech should break down at this point and come back to the Sunbelt. At this point the bottom half of the WAC is no better in terms of membership. There is no point in bleeding their athletic program to death to stay in the WAC. They would do a lot better to join the sunbelt, funnel the money saved into facility improvements, and try to dominate it again to get their fame back up for the next round of expansion.

Maybe even try to form an alliance of up and coming Sunbelt teams (Ark St, UNT, Troy St, and the FL schools) and maybe try to steal the remaining better CUSA schools (Houston, UTEP, Marshall, UCF, UAB, S. Miss.) in a few year.

Something that I think is interesting is UNT's relationship with Arkansas St. From everything I have read there seems to be a lot of love for Arkansas St. If CUSA dropped to 10 schools, would UNT try to bring Ark St. along into CUSA? For the first time in forever, UNT's situation seems to be generating some conference leverage....

Hmm, SMU has a dying sports program how come they finished 44th in the nation all around sports programs. Seems to be dying huh.

http://nacda.collegesports.com/sports/directorscup/spec-rel/062904aaa.html

Who actually follows sports other than football and (men's) basketball?

Sports other than football do matter. Football is driving it, but decent other sports are necessary. Utah St. lack of a women's bb program kept them out of consideration for the WAC.

The comment was that SMU had an athletic program that is failing and bleeding money. SMU has regularly finished among the top non-BCS programs in the Sear's Cup. They are probably 2nd after BYU. All the non-BCS are bleeding money. Some of the BCS are.