Big East Expansion: Should the Big East Settle with Six New Teams or Add More?

The decimated Big East has reportedly come up with a strategy to invite six non-AQ schools—Air Force, Boise State, Central Florida, Navy, Houston and SMU—to try to help save a conference that has experienced four major defections over the last two months.

After Pittsburgh and Syracuse announced that they would join the ACC in September, West Virginia and potential future member TCU are attempting to join the ranks of the Big 12. That leaves the Big East with just five football member schools—Cincinnati, Connecticut, Louisville, Rutgers and South Florida, and the conference seems to be on life support at this point.

The move to invite teams ranging from as far west as Idaho and as far south as Orlando reeks of desperation, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and right now, the Big East is on the brink of extinction as a football conference and something major needs to be done to help stabilize things.

Inviting six of the top non-AQ programs in the country is a start, but does more need to be done?

There’s no guarantee that all six schools will want to join a conference that has been through so much recent turmoil, especially Boise State, a team that has managed to reach two BCS bowl games in the last five years even without being in a power conference.

If Boise State balks at the offer, who else could the Big East invite?

Temple would seem to be next on the pecking order, but that would cause a lot of grumbling from fellow Philadelphia school Villanova, who competes in the Big East for basketball.

The idea of Villanova joining for football has also been thrown around, but you have to wonder if the football program is really ready for that kind of big leap.

Army, a school that is located right on the Hudson River in New York state, is located in prime Big East country, but the Knights have already made it clear that they want to remain an independent right now.

Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino has lobbied for the Big East to add both Memphis and Temple, but Memphis’ football program has been an absolute disaster lately.

Right now, all of this is purely speculation, but if the Big East eventually does become the Big America, it will be interesting to see where all the new teams fit in, and if the additions will be enough to save the conference’s bowl bid, something that seems rather unlikely at this point, given the way the conference’s national credibility has been dwindling in recent years.

The real key to all of this is Boise State.

Do the Broncos want to risk it and move to a conference that’s centered on the other side of the country and one that could be in jeopardy of losing its only appealing enticement, a BCS bowl bid, within the next few years?

We’ll have to wait and see how it all plays out, but if Boise says no, conference officials are going to have to go with “Plan Whatever Letter it is at This Point” in a hurry, or else it could be curtains for Big East Football.