DOUBLE CONFERENCE CHAOS! WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR USF?

The Bulls' 70-17 bulldozing of A&M last night came at a time that some USF fans could have used some kind of good football news. Earlier that day it had become apparent that Syracuse and Pittsburgh had been silent all this time and just submitted applications to join the ACC. Weeks of speculation about the Big XII conference members in trouble had sort of distracted the media from the fact that the Big East was still an unstable mess. Mentions of West Virginia to the SEC being the next domino to fall started talks among Big East fans about what would happen to them if the conference rifted. At the beginning of the month, some may recall, I drew up what a collection of four 16-team superconferences could look like. I didn't want to be right, but it's looking more and more like a possibility, and USF is one of those teams in limbo that doesn't have a definite home. I imagine the conversation between Doug Woolard and Judy Genshaft looked something like this:

So where exactly does this leave us?

Thoughts on Big East Conference Shake up

Will the Big East survive this shake up?

By now we have all heard the news with Pitt and Syracuse making it official they are heading to the ACC as the conference announced they have accepted them. Now we are not certain when the two teams will head out and move into the ACC, it could happen next season, there is a 27 month waiting period, but this will be negotiated and the monetary buyout won't affect the move.

Well It's Official, Syracuse and Pitt to the ACC

(From ESPN) As we all heard yesterday, Syracuse University and Univeirsty of Pittsburgh, the flagships of the Big East Conference had applied for membership into the Atlantic Coastal Conference. The ACC Council of Presidents voted on both member's candidacy last night and have announced this morning the unanimous decision to accept both Syracuse and Pitt's application into the ACC expanding its current membership to 14 schools. The time frame for transitions has yet to be announced, but more information will be released by the ACC when they hold a media conference today at 9:30 AM EST.

The 2011 Conference Realignment Project

With the clamor of football season opening up today and the uncertainty that came over us when Texas A&M announced its departure for the now 13-team SEC (probably), many of us have grown restless over what the future holds for many of our teams. A group of four 16-team megaconferences seems more to be an inevitability than a possibility now. So what does that mean for USF, and for many other schools?

Luckily, I've taken the liberty of projecting what a compilation of a bunch of megaconferences would look like, and I'm going to share them with you, starting with what would be the four BCS conferences after the jump.

Has USF Football Been Scheduling Down Too Much?

I woke up this morning thinking about the South Florida's upcoming 2011 season (I wish I woke up every morning that way). After running through home and away games, it occurred to me that the out-of-conference football games are rather weak. In the weeks following the biggest challenge of the season in Notre Dame, USF plays Ball State (4-8 last year), Florida A&M (an FCS team), and UTEP (a below-average team in C-USA). USF's only non-conference BCS opponent is Miami, who will be experiencing a transition year after the firing of coach Randy Shannon.

After thinking of my disdain for this year's schedule, I began thinking about OOC schedules of previous years. I'll link each schedule to the respective season. Last year, we opened with an FCS team in Stony Brook, went to Gainesville to play Florida, and prepared for conference play with games against two bad Sun Belt teams in FAU and Western Kentucky. In the year before, USF scheduled TWO FCS teams and a game AT Western Kentucky(!) in preparation for a trip to Tallahassee. Not to mention the large sum of money USF has to pay these fluff teams to come in for a thrashing. FAMU is getting $400,000 to come in next season, while UTEP is getting $650,000. In addition to losing that kind of cash, there is no income since no fans want to go see USF put up 70 points on a team mostly of big high schoolers. What I see going on here is the schedule makers putting one marquee OOC game per season on the list, and then fluffing the rest of the schedule with cupcake teams.