Big East Expansion: Boise State Would Be Horrible Fit in Bloated Conference

As a college football fan, I would love nothing more (aside from seeing UCLA beat USC) than for Boise State to jump into a Big Six conference and have a legitimate shot at the BCS National Championship as a result.

Just not with the Big East.

With TCU opting for a spot in the Big 12 and Syracuse and Pittsburgh headed to the ACC in due time, the nation's most fragile football conference is once again on the lookout for an infusion of fresh blood. According to ESPN, that could mean six schools receiving invitations, with Army, Navy, Air Force, Memphis, Central Florida, East Carolina and Temple among those being considered.

Pete Thamel of the New York Times has reported that some of the athletic directors with football programs in the Big East want Boise State to be on the short list of invitees:

However, the Big East is not the conference for Boise State, nor would having the Broncos in the conference be particularly beneficial to any of the league's current or potential future member schools.

The move up would be great for Chris Petersen's club, as it would open up a much more certain path to BCS glory. No longer would the Smurf Turfers be locked out of the national championship chase simply because of the size of their league. Were Boise State to be offered a bid and accept, it would get to play against (marginally) bigger and better competition, week in and week out to prove that it belongs with the big boys of college football.

For the Broncos, though, a move to the Big East is anything but a natural fit. Rather than getting to play against regional opponents as they do in the Mountain West, they'd have to go back to the days of traveling thousands of miles every other week just to play football, as they did in the Western Athletic Conference, putting additional strain on their student athletes and making it difficult for fans to travel to games.

The Big East isn't exactly the safest bet for any team looking for a long-term home, either. The league is already on shaky footing, with its fractious divide between FBS schools and everyone else. If anything, adding more schools to the conference with different degrees of membership will only worsen the situation, thereby putting its future, Boise State's included, in serious jeopardy. As such, the Broncos would be well advised to hold out for membership in a more geographically friendly league like the Pac-12 or the Big 12, which bolstered its ranks on Monday with TCU and will likely continue to add institutions in its crusade for stability.

As for the Big East's interest in Boise State, the conference doesn't have enough compelling pros to outweigh the cons of bringing on the Broncos. Idaho isn't exactly a burgeoning media market, not one into which the Big East would be able to reach its tentacles and extract truckloads of new TV money for its members as a result.

Certainly not enough to warrant having student athletes from the East Coast bust their way out to the borders of Big Sky country on a weekly basis.

So while the Broncos football program is certainly a gem to be mined from the Gem State, it's not a good fit for a conference that is already too big, has too much drama and, if nothing else, is too far away for the union of the two to be feasible, much less formidable.