Memphis Courts Big East

The word of the past few days out of Memphis, Tennessee, is that Big East officials are on hand to begin serious discussions of the University of Memphis joining the league as the ninth football member, and seventeenth basketball and Olympic sports member.

What, pray tell, does the Big East get out of this deal?

Pros:

• Ninth football member, meaning each team can play a balanced 4 home/4 away schedule.
• More basketball tradition and a current powerhouse basketball program
• Entirely new television market and geographic footprint for the Big East
• Probable bowl tie-in with the Liberty Bowl
• Beale Street

Cons:

• Seventeen basketball schools? Are you f’n serious? Sixteen is a glut, seventeen is absolutely the tipping point.
• We do realize Memphis is nowhere near the East, it’s on the Mississippi River and an eight-hour drive from the next-closest Big East school? Ask Boston College how it works out when you have to fly to every track meet, soccer match, and baseball game.
• On a personal level, if WVU never plays a John Calipari team again it will be too soon. U-Mass absolutely thrashed us in the A-10 days of Marcus Camby and Lou Rowe.
• If you have to add a ninth team for just football, there are better choices. Navy, East Carolina, I’m looking in your direction. Both would bring new media markets as well.

In my opinion, the Big East simply cannot expand at this point. The only option is to bring in a football-only eighth school, and really what school out there wants to agree to that deal at this point? The advantages of bringing in Memphis equate to tying up a scheduling snafu, possibly adding another bowl tie-in, although now there are almost forty bowl games, and making our ridiculously strong basketball conference even more ridiculously strong.

I think the only way this goes down is when the fabled football-basketball split goes down, which will be a sad, sad day for Connecticut, Syracuse and to a lesser extent Pitt who have deep running ties with the Big East basketball conference. But in that case, maybe you can go to 9 or 10 or even 12 teams.

A lot of people hinge the next conference realignment on Notre Dame joining a football conference, but it just won’t happen until the Irish roll off a string of 5 or 6 seasons as bad as 2007 and NBC ratings fall through the floor, which isn’t likely to happen no matter what. I suppose if the Big Ten and Notre Dame were to suddenly have a love-fest, then we could bring in Memphis to replace Notre Dame in basketball and have a ninth football school, but again does anyone really believe that’s happening any time soon?

Isn’t it funny that this once again starts coming up hot and heavy in the off-season? This could have happened in February and nobody would have noticed. But it happens in mid-May and all of a sudden a pipe dream grows into a monster story all over the Internet and everyone is blogging about Memphis to the Big East (myself included.)

Some more perspective from the Big East bloggers:

• Pitt Blather (No f’n way unless the conference splits. Also some hilarious comments from an Akron(!?) fan pushing for the Zips to become a Big East member.
• Troy Nunes is an Absolute Magician (Yes — No — Maybe)
• East Coast Bias (Not for basketball)

Tags: Big East, conference expansion, John Calipari, Memphis, off-season