The 2010–13 Big East Conference realignment refers to the Big East Conference dealing with several proposed and actual conference expansion and reduction plans among various NCAA conferences and institutions. Following on the 2005 NCAA conference realignment, resulting in the move of 23 teams across various conferences after an initial raid of three Big East teams, the Big East was severely impacted in the follow-up 2010–2014 NCAA conference realignment. Beginning in the 2010–11 academic year and continuing into 2013, 13 Big East schools announced their departure for other conferences and 13 other schools announced plans to join the conference (eight as all-sports members, and five for football only), but three of the latter group later backed out of their plans to join (one for all sports, and the other two for football only). Most notably, the seven schools that did not sponsor football in Division I FBS announced in December 2012 that they would leave as a group, which led to a formal split of the conference effective in July 2013.
In the end, the "Big East" name, history, and contract to the Big East Tournament location rights at Madison Square Garden were exchanged for almost the entire balance of over $110 million left in the NCAA National Tournament prize pool accumulated by the Big East in prior years. The FBS schools retained the charter of the original 1979–2012 Big East Conference, starting the 2013 academic year under the new name of American Athletic Conference, since changed to American Conference.
Background The Big East was founded in 1979 by seven universities in the Northeastern United States—Boston College (BC), Connecticut (UConn), Georgetown, Providence, St. John's, Seton Hall, and Syracuse. The seven founders consisted of five Catholic institutions, one private but secular university (Syracuse) and one public school (UConn). More significantly, only two of these schools—BC and Syracuse—then played football in the top-level Division I-A (now Division I FBS). Another Catholic school, Villanova, joined the following year, and Pittsburgh (Pitt), a quasi-public institution, joined in 1982. At the time of their respective arrivals in the Big East, both Villanova and Pitt had I-A football programs, but Villanova dropped football after the 1980 season, only reinstating the sport in 1985 at the Division III level and upgrading to Division I-AA (now Division I FCS) in 1987.
About a decade after the conference's founding, the members decided to launch a I-A football conference. To that end, the Big East added five schools with I-A programs—Miami as a full member, and Rutgers (which had turned down an invitation to become a charter member of the conference), Temple, Virginia Tech and West Virginia as football-only members. Big East football began play in 1991. In 1995, West Virginia and Rutgers became full members of the conference, and Notre Dame, with an independent football program, joined as a full but non-football member. These moves in the first half of the 1990s led to an unusual conference structure, in which only some of the full conference members played football in the Big East. Another of the 1991 football-only members, Virginia Tech, became a full member in 2000. Temple remained a football-only member until 2004, when it was voted out of the conference due to poor attendance figures, lack of playing success, and inadequate facilities. In the meantime, UConn announced in 1999 that it would upgrade its I-AA football program to I-A; its transition was completed in 2002, and it joined the Big East football conference in 2004.
Once the Big East established a I-A football conference, tensions between the "football" and "non-football" schools were a constant issue, though mostly under the surface. Miami in particular had been dissatisfied with the Big East as early as 1999. These tensions came to the surface in 2003, when the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) announced plans to expand from 9 to 12 members, which would allow that conference to hold a potentially lucrative football championship game. Miami, BC, and Syracuse were rumored to be the three schools under consideration; however, Syracuse men's basketball coach Jim Boeheim publicly opposed a move. The five other football schools—UConn, Pitt, Rutgers, Virginia Tech, and West Virginia—filed two lawsuits against the proposal, one against the ACC and the other against BC and Miami (Syracuse was not sued because its administration made no public comments on the situation). Due to political pressure applied by Virginia governor Mark Warner on the ACC and the University of Virginia, the ACC decided to invite Virginia Tech instead of Syracuse. Tech immediately accepted, and filed legal papers to remove itself as a plaintiff in the lawsuits. At the last minute, North Carolina State cast a "no" vote on BC, which meant that only Miami and Virginia Tech were invited to join. By mid-October 2003, NC State had reversed its original "no" vote on BC, and the ACC also extended an invitation to that school. Due to timing issues, BC was not able to join the ACC until 2005, a year after their former Big East brethren arrived in the ACC. These moves by the ACC became the trigger for a major wave of conference realignment.
The Big East responded to the loss of three football members by "raiding" Conference USA. Five members of that league were invited to join the Big East, with all five entering in 2005. Three of the new members were public schools with I-A football programs—Cincinnati, Louisville, and South Florida. The other two, DePaul and Marquette, were Catholic schools without varsity football programs.
The most recent, and largest, wave of realignment began in 2010, after both the Big Ten Conference and Pacific-10 Conference (now Pac-12) announced plans to expand to 12 members. These plans triggered a cascade of conference moves, with the Big East as one of the main centers of activity.
First wave: TCU On November 2, 2010, the Big East Conference officially announced its plans to expand from 8 to 10 football-playing schools. ESPN.com named TCU and UCF as leading candidates, along with the upgrade of current member Villanova's FCS football program to the FBS level. Other candidates included former Big East member and current football-only MAC member Temple and C-USA members Houston and Marshall.
On November 29, 2010, TCU officially announced that it would be joining the Big East Conference as an all-sports member starting in 2012. TCU was not subject to an exit fee from the Mountain West; under MWC bylaws at that time, a member was allowed to leave with no penalty if it registered its intention to leave with the conference office by September 1 of the calendar year before its departure.
The original idea that TCU should join the Big East reportedly came from a somewhat unexpected source—Pitt men's basketball coach Jamie Dixon. On September 18, Dixon, a former basketball player at TCU, attended the TCU–Baylor football game and suggested the idea to TCU athletic director Chris Del Conte. After the discussion, Dixon then went to Big East commissioner John Marinatto, which started the league's expansion talks. Rutgers AD Tim Pernetti pushed especially hard for the conference to invite TCU.
At first glance, the entry of TCU—a school located more than 750 miles (1100 km) from its nearest Big East neighbor in Louisville—would put huge financial pressure on both its athletic program and those of other Big East schools, specifically with regard to travel expenses for non-revenue sports. However, Marinatto pointed out to ESPN.com Big East reporter Brian Bennett that this issue was less serious than perceived. At the time, the Big East did not require that its member schools play other league schools in the regular season in sports based on individual competition (such as swimming and diving, track, golf, and tennis). Conference teams in those sports could compete against local schools or in meets in their region and still compete in the Big East tournament. The conference only required travel to other league schools in pure team sports (such as football, basketball, and soccer). By contrast, the MWC then (as now) had such a requirement in all sports. The distance between TCU and the other conference members is less than the 1,300 miles between football members South Florida and Syracuse and comparable to the distance between Louisville and Providence.
The TCU move put pressure on Villanova to decide whether to accept its invitation to join the Big East in football. Marinatto indicated that he expected word from Villanova no later than the school's next scheduled board meeting in April 2011, and preferred to see a decision by the end of 2010. If Villanova decided not to upgrade to FBS, UCF and Houston were seen at the time as leading candidates for future expansion.
Loss of Pitt and Syracuse At that time, speculation was rampant that the Big East might be able to attract a school from the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), which was in the midst of negotiating a new media deal. However, according to one industry source, "At that point when the Big East was intact, the only schools the Big East could have legitimately added that made sense were UCF, Maryland, and Boston College; and those schools wouldn't even return the Big East's calls. But the Big East couldn't add UCF because Judy Genshaft [president of UCF’s in-state rival South Florida] kept shooting down UCF." A source within the conference added that Genshaft's insistence on keeping UCF out was a major contributing factor to the instability that would soon plague the Big East.
The trigger for this instability proved to be the negotiations for a new television deal that took place in April 2011, when TCU was on board. Marinatto and the conference reached a nine-year, $1.4 billion deal and recommended that the conference presidents, who had the final say on the deal, accept it. The presidents reportedly voted 12–4 to accept in a preliminary vote. However, while the conference was going over the final details, the presidents had second thoughts upon learning of the deal that the Pac-12 had just reached with ESPN and Fox, reportedly worth $250 million annually, and in a second vote turned down the deal 16–0. In May 2012, one Big East source told Brett McMurphy, then of CBSSports.com, that turning down the deal "was the stupidest decision ever made in college athletics. To have the equity of ESPN as your brand and the stability that would have gone with it." Another source added, "If the TV deal was accepted and UCF had been added, who knows if Pitt and Syracuse ever leave. Everyone left because of stability and right there was your stability with that TV deal."
Five months after the aborted media deal, McMurphy reported on September 16, 2011 (coincidentally, the same day that Conference founder Dave Gavitt died) that two of the conference's mainstays—the University of Pittsburgh and Syracuse University—would leave for the ACC. He recalled in May 2012 that he tried to contact Marinatto for a quote, but could not reach him, and found out several weeks later that Marinatto first learned of the two schools' plans from McMurphy's report. In fact, no one at the conference office or at any other Big East school knew that Pitt and Syracuse were leaving until this report, and Jim Boeheim (who at the time had been involved with Syracuse athletics for over 50 years) did not know of Syracuse's intentions until they were announced as a new ACC member.
On September 18, Pitt and Syracuse submitted formal applications to join the ACC, which were accepted later that day.
First major membership turnover