(08-30-2012 05:37 AM)GoApps70 Wrote: East Carolina should be taken by the nBE. Should have been taken years ago.
The Big East is composed primarily of urban schools that emphasize basketball, but also happen to play football, with a base originating in the Northeast. East Carolina is a rural Mid-Atlantic school in the middle of ACC territory that primarily emphasizes football. It has never been a fit in the eyes of the people who make these decisions and most likely will never be a fit.
Before anyone says Virginia Tech and West Virginia, the Big East only took those schools under force, and many basketball schools don't care about them leaving. You may not know this, but the Big East made Miami a full member in 1989, joining BC, Syracuse, and Pitt, in advance of starting football. Rutgers, Temple, West Virginia, and Virginia Tech were football-only.
In 1994, CBS offered the eight football schools a huge contract, but only by forming their own league. Rather than taking the money, and letting CBS bankroll them, they demanded that the Big East admit the football-onlies as full members. But the Big East compromised by adding Rutgers and West Virginia, along with Notre Dame, while screwing Temple and Virginia Tech.
A few years later, Virginia Tech was reluctantly given full membership, but hurt feelings lingered over the whole process. The movement to expel Temple over its football woes started shortly afterward, since UConn was preparing to move up, and Villanova would never agree to Temple as a full member. While deserved, other solutions should have been attempted first.
The only way East Carolina ever gets back with the football school now in the Big East, it will not be the Big East, since the Catholic basketball schools will have split, along with Louisville, UConn, Rutgers, hopefully Temple, and possibly Cincinnati having found homes in other leagues. Not the Big East. It will simply be a CUSA Reunion. Easier to just absorb the remnants.