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Brett McMurphy ‏@McMurphyESPN 28m
Tulsa will join old Big East & East Carolina will be added as full member in 2014, sources told @ESPN

Brett McMurphy ‏@McMurphyESPN 7m
When Tulsa joins Big East in 2014, 9 of 11 teams in league will be former C-USA schools

Now, why does this have to do with the Big East?

Since Tulsa to the Aresco League in 2014 is official, they will have 11 all sports members and Navy as a football-only. What are the chances the league invites VCU for basketball and Olympic sports? VCU seems like a viable candidate and is a hot name right now.

If VCU is considered for a spot by the Big East, the BE presidents may have to act fast.

9 of the members of next year's new league were members of Conference USA.

bmorex wrote:What are the chances the league invites VCU for basketball and Olympic sports? VCU seems like a viable candidate and is a hot name right now.

If VCU is considered for a spot by the Big East, the BE presidents may have to act fast.

Who knows if they might invite VCU. The bigger question is if VCU would even accept given the invite. It won't likely be an upgrade in money, or at best a very small increase, but they'll have a huge increase in travel. Worse, the Metro still hasn't shown itself to be stable, so VCU's big catches, and many of their closer opponents, could be gone within a few years. They could be stuck with a $7 million exit fee in a conference maybe on par with their old CAA (no idea, there). That move only works for them, as far as I can see, if nobody else leaves.

Good for VCU if so. They aren't going to get invited to this league as a public school so if they can improve their lot an other way, more power to them

Edrick wrote:Good for VCU if so. They aren't going to get invited to this league as a public school so if they can improve their lot an other way, more power to them

It does sound like they're still in play. Assuming St. Louis is a virtual lock, I can see an internal know a lot easier with three teams in the discussion than with two. Public isn't the end of the world for the conference, and "like-minded" is hardly well defined.

VCU isn't going to pay the A10 $2M to join this group of schools. As shown this year, the A10 is still okay as long as they can keep it together.