Big East Expansion: Update on Potential New Members and Larger Exit Fee

The Big East is not going to die.

In fact, they are about to get a lot bigger. According to the Associated Press, the latest plan is to have a 14-team league in football with a conference championship game.

That means it’s time to go shopping for new teams, and it’s pretty obvious that geography has nothing to do with their potential decisions.

Right now, Boise State is the top candidate—a team that isn’t even located in eastern Idaho, let alone the eastern seaboard. Not too far behind is Air Force, which is about 5,000 feet higher in elevation than South Florida.

Other teams that have been mentioned are Navy, Central Florida, Houston and SMU. Pete Thamel of the New York Times is also reporting that the conference wouldn’t be opposed to adding schools strictly for basketball to replace Pittsburgh and Syracuse.

This is going to be a huge process, and no team has received a formal invitation just yet, according to ESPNs Joe Schad.

He says that the major factors going into the selection process include the television market, philosophy of the university and the academic profile. In other words: what programs can generate the most income for us while getting the conference the most exposure possible.

It also sounds as if all of the current teams in the conference (aside from Pitt and Syracuse) aren’t going anywhere. The conference has agreed unanimously to raise the exit fee up to $10 million. Considering the old fee was only $5 million, I doubt a team would willingly vote to have to ante up that much extra money to leave.

So, now we are headed to a nation-wide conference filled with teams that are at the top of their respective lower-end conferences. Hope Boise State and Air Force get used to those three-hour, potentially four-hour, flights.