UC will receive share of West Virginia settlement money
02/14/12 at 4:29pm by bkoch

UC will receive a share of the reported $20 million that West Virginia is paying the Big East Conference as part of a settlement to allow the Mountaineers to leave the conference for the Big 12 after June 30 of this year.

“It is my understanding that will be distributed to the member institutions,” UC athletic director Whit Babcock said Tuesday. “I don’t yet know the formula and I don’t know if the Big East goes and finds a replacement school, if some of that money will have to be spent.

“I would have liked to see them stay in the conference period, but especially for one more year. For about the last month, we kind of saw this coming. West Virginia was just bound and determined to go. They weren’t staying under any circumstances. I don’t love the fact that they’re leaving.”

Babcock said it’s unlikely that UC would seek to establish a non-conference series with West Virginia in either football or men’s basketball, at least in the near term.

The early departure of West Virginia leaves a hole in UC’s 2012 football schedule, which now has two open spots. In addition to replacing the Mountaineers, the Bearcats are also looking for a home game to replace TCU, which was scheduled to enter the Big East this season but accepted an invitation to join the Big 12 instead.

The UC schedule currently consists of six Big East games – with a possible replacement for West Virginia – to make seven – plus a game vs. Virginia Tech at FedEx Field in Landover, Md., and a road game at Toledo.

The Bearcats will play non-conference games against Miami and Delaware State at home. Their Big East home games – all at Nippert Stadium – are against South Florida, Pittsburgh, Rutgers and Syracuse. They will play on the road at Louisville and Connecticut.

Pittsburgh and Syracuse are scheduled to leave the Big East for the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2014.

On another topic, Babcock said the athletic department is waiting to see how much money UC will receive from the Big East’s new television contract, which will be renegotiated this fall, with an eye toward using some of that money to help finance the renovation of Fifth Third Arena and/or Nippert Stadium.

In the meantime, he said, the department is “in the process of reviewing some of the previous drawings and renderings that have been done.”

“We want to be moving already,” he said.

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