Jim Calhoun, who led Connecticut to the men’s NCAA Basketball title this year, will be at the Big East Conference meetings his week and is saying he doesn’t want to see anymore teams added. He believes it will mean the end of the Big East Conference as we now know it.
Expansion to improve the much maligned Big East football conference is expected to a hot topic when the meetings get underway in Ponte Vedra.
It seems everyone has Villanova on its mind and that could be good or bad from the Wildcats perspective.
An FCS (formerly I-AA) football powerhouse, Villanova has talked about moving up to I-A (FBS). However, the plan has been met with mixed reactions for a league that has been criticized for not deserving to be an automatic qualifier to the BCS bowls.
TCU comes joins the league as its 17th team for the 2012-13 year and brings instant football credibility. But now there is talk that the Big East needs to add one or more football playing schools.
Calhoun, the Huskies coach for 25 years, calls it a bad idea.
“I don’t want to see 18 teams,” Calhoun said Friday when he was attending the Dick Vitale Gala. “The Big East is not the Southeastern Conference, but neither is anybody else. Give it time (for football). We are only 11 or 12 years old in big time football and there is a chance to be very good.”
Villanova’s plan to become a football playing member has met resistance by some football members who see it as a negative. Some of the schools being talked about to join as a football member include Houston, UCF, East Carolina.
The criticism of Villanova is that among other things it plays in an 18,500 seat soccer stadium and its proposed expansion plans are not seen as much of an improvement.
Calhoun said expanding the Big East with more football schools would likely cause the seven non-football playing members to break away and possibly form their own conference. They are Villanova, DePaul, Marquette, Georgetown, Seton Hall, Providence, St. Johns.
