Where does the Big East fit into the playoff model?
BCS conference commissioners agreed in April to eliminate "AQ" and "non-AQ" status . . sources close to the BCS conversations say it's clear that the big five leagues -- ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC -- no longer consider the Big East part of their group.

Commissioners of the 11 Football Bowl Subdivision conferences and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick will meet in Chicago on Wednesday, when they're expected to begin hammering out details of a potential four-team playoff. A playoff wouldn't go into effect until the 2014 season. The current BCS system, which pits the top two teams in the final BCS standings in the BCS National Championship Game, will remain in place during the next two seasons.

Many of the details regarding a playoff are still unsettled. The commissioners must decide: (1) How the four teams will be selected (whether it's the top four teams, regardless of whether they won their conference championships, or three conference champions and a wild card); (2) Whether revised BCS standings will be used to select the four teams or a human committee similar to the one used to determine the seeding and at-large bids for the NCAA men's basketball tournament; and (3) Whether the national semifinal games will be played within the existing BCS bowl structure or outside of them. (There seems to be a consensus that the BCS National Championship Game will be offered to the highest bidding city.)

http://espn.go.com/college-football/stor...ngs-primer

Is this supposed to be a surprise? The Big East is essentially original C-USA with an even more nonsensical geographic makeup. Original C-USA wasn't good enough to be in the club, why would they expect a bastardized version of the same thing to get club access?