Big East Expansion: Adding Air Force & San Diego State Would Only Make It Worse

In college football, quantity does not equal quality.

Once Pittsburgh, Syracuse and West Virginia leave the Big East, the conference will have neither.

Commissioner John Marinatto thinks that the answer lies in the west with teams like Boise State, Houston and BYU. He also thinks that adding Air Force and possibly San Diego State would be good ideas.

Adding those teams would be an absolutely terrible idea in terms of play on the field.

Creating a Big East “West” is obviously important if you’re going to add a team like Boise because the travel costs would be ridiculous otherwise, but the cost of doing so appears to be too high.

San Diego State is a decent team but they aren’t quality by any means. Air Force used to be pretty good but they can’t recruit the same athletes that they did years ago and the college football landscape is leaving the Falcons and the other military academies in the dust.

Sure, there are not many great teams ready to jump on board what some perceive as a sinking ship, but the Big East has to do better in order to remain relevant. The fact that they are even considering adding the Aztecs and Falcons shows just how far the conference has fallen.

And it’s not like the conference is far away from fertile recruiting grounds; the Big East has schools in New Jersey, Ohio and Florida and has strong ties to Pennsylvania.

Adding small schools from Colorado and California do nothing to expand the brand because the west is so heavily dominated by the Pac-12, which has schools in each of those states.

The way for the Big East to become better is not by adding mediocre teams from the west, it is by playing good football.

Focus on that instead of teams like San Diego State and Air Force.