Basketball Bonanza Too
A league of its own: University of Houston gets a Big East invite, chance toforge its own identity
Case Keenum will never play in the Big East, but he can take some pride inhelping UH get there.
Expect another red-and-white balloon dropping celebration at the University ofHouston soon. The Cougars have a Big East invite.Photo by Thomas B. Shea/University of Houston
The University of Houston is poised to take a step up to the Big East, getting an invite from one of college football's Bowl Championship Series (BCS) conferences Monday night.
The invite's been expected for days as college football's frantic conference reshuffling continues. FOX 26 first reported that the Big East officially extended the official invite Monday after the league's presidents and chancellors held a conference call on expansion. The Big East is desperate to add members after Pittsburgh and Syracuse announced their intentions to bolt and TCU decided against joining and opted to jump to the Big 12 instead.
Besides Houston, the Big East is also expected to extend invites to underdog football power Boise State, service academies Air Force and Navy, and current UH Conference USA rivals SMU and Central Florida. Whether that will be enough for the Big East to maintain its automatic qualifier status (meaning that the conference champion is guaranteed to play in one of the ultra-lucrative BCS bowls) past 2013 when the current contract expires is uncertain.
Still for UH, the move would be a clear athletic status increase and would seem to reduce the university's fears of being left behind by the major football powers in this nation-wide explosion of conference reshuffling.
Big East commissioner John Marinatto will take realignment with reporters in a teleconference Tuesday. UH officials are expected to meet with the Big East's power brokers later this week.
Once the move becomes official, expect Houston to hold an exuberant press conference/pep rally along the lines of what the university did when it was deemed Tier One worthy by the Carnegie Foundation. Only magnified.
This move, like all the others in college sports recently, is all about king football. But for UH, the impact on its basketball program could be even greater. Coach James Dickey's program would be joining a conference with basketball powers like UConn (which won the 2011 national championship in Houston) and Louisville, if the rest of the Big East stays together.
For UH, this is a chance to forge its own athletic identity, separate from the University of Texas (which worked to keep Houston out of the revamped Big 12), separate from Rice University and other Conference USA schools that aren't as obsessed with going big time in college sports. It's a league of their own for the Cougars.
