TCU accepts invitation from the Big East

Breaking news from Brett McMurphy of Fanhouse: TCU will join the Big East in 2012.

The Horned Frogs, formerly of the Mountain West Conference, will officially join the Big East on July 1, 2012 and begin play in the 2012-13 school year.

This move will certainly help the Big East shed its current "Big Least" reputation in football.  While it has long been a basketball powerhouse, sometimes sending 9 of its 16 teams to the NCAA tournament in March, the Big East has lost its swagger since Boston College, Virginia Tech, and Miami (FL) defected to the ACC in 2003.  The additions of Louisville, Cincinnati, and South Florida never made up for that loss on the gridiron.

This season, TCU is 11-0 and ranked No. 3 in the BCS, which guarantees it a BCS bowl game.  Even better, the current four-year evaluation period for the BCS concludes in December 2011, so TCU's past BCS rankings – three consecutive top 11 BCS rankings, including this year – will transfer to the Big East since it joined the league before the 2012-13 school year.  And it's clear that the move will benefit TCU's television revenues (their current contract expires at the end of the 2013 season) as well as those of the Big East.


The remaining question is who else will join the Big East's football ranks.  On the basketball side, the conference is now up to 17 teams, so that door is pretty firmly shut.  But there are only 9 football schools now.  The Big East has also extended an offer to Villanova, a 30-year basketball member of the conference.  The Wildcats, who presently play in the Conference Formerly Known as Division 1-AA, are expected to accept or refuse that offer by the end of the 2010-11 school year.  If they turn it down, UCF looks to be next in line.  Either way, the conference is going to have 10 teams and be much stronger in the 2012 season and beyond.  For fans of UConn and all other Big East schools, this is a watershed moment.