Big East Expansion: Invites Delayed by Hoops Media Days, Clock Is Ticking

It is no secret that conference realignment has been predicated almost entirely on revenue generated from college football. This is why the Big East has had such a hard time in all of recent shuffling.

TCU, Pitt and Syracuse are all gone to the ACC, and the conference has yet to invite anyone to replace them. But according to reports, the only reason why that has not happened yet is because basketball media days are coming up for the Big East.

This is a great move by the conference. With so much of the talk surrounding football, the focus of basketball media days should be strictly about basketball and not what their school’s football team will be doing.

And with the Big East football teams doing so poorly this season, getting the attention off of that can only be good for the conference.

Another reason why these invitations have been delayed is because the conference has not agreed on what the new exit fee should be. As it stands now, the Big East will charge any school who leaves the conference $5 million, but that number is expected to at least double or possibly triple.

A vote on that is expected within the next day or two, but with media days being held on Wednesday, don’t expect any new conference realignment news to come out of the Big East until Wednesday night or Thursday at the earliest.

Yet with the Mountain West and Conference USA merger, it may be too little too late for the Big East.