TCU Joins the Big East

http://sports.espn.go.com/dallas/ncf/news/story?id=5862368

I might do a College Football rundown later this week, if not next week, but until then I found this story humorous.

TCU is in Fort Worth, Texas (of Dallas/Fort Worth region fame).  It is WEST of the Mississipi river, usually the indicator of East/West in NATIONAL PROFESSIONAL CONFERENCES.

That's enough caps for now.



Anyways, seeing as how this was done purely for football, the two closest schools it will play in said sport are Louisville and USF, which are in Louisville, KY and Tampa, FL respectively.  Going past football, Depaul is in Chicago, but I really don't feel like busting out a map and seeing who the closest is, otherwise I wouldn't have narrowed it down to two football schools in the first place.  Personally, I am looking forward to the upcoming intense regional rivalries with Syracuse and UConn.

Is this how much of a joke the Big East has become?  Honestly, at least WVU was still good when Rich Rodriguez was coaching, and Rutgers had that solid run, oh and Kelly ran a decently competitive Cincinatti team, and Rick Pitino had a pretty solid Louisville team.  What's the common denominator?  They all left.  The Big East, by all accounts, should not be a laughing stock of a conference.  The shear population density of the region should supply a decent amount of recruits, and like I just showed, they've had good teams with good coaches (implying good programs/structure) in the very recent past.  OK, so losing Miami, Virginia Tech, and Boston College was a major blow, well they're pretty much dominating ACC football, so think about that.  Oh, and look at this little fascinating nugget.  That's right -- in the "elite" and ostensibly even matched inter-conference play known as the bowl season, the Big East was undefeated in 06-07.

OK, got sidetracked there -- is this how much of a joke the Big East has become that they have to span across the entire nation to find a team that is decidedly not in the east to join their conference and make them competitive?

On a side note, the Big East pretty much has an open football invitation for Villanova, should they want to promote themselves from 1-AA (I refuse to use FCS).  'Nova would have to expand their stadium to meet 1-A requirements, but it would be nice to see Temple not having to make any more excuses for losing their annual game (though actually Temple has slowly been building a solid mid-conference team, is this joke still applicable?).

And to think, if Miami voted differently in the early 80's, Penn State could be stuck in this suck!

-- Knuttel