ACC presidents issued a statement of commitment to the league.

http://www.theacc.com/genrel/120612aab.html

More defections probably imminent now--like when the SEC voted not to expand then added A&M less than a month later. Big East made a similar statement after Cuse and Pitt left as well, and then WVU left, TCU didn't come and now Rutgers and Louisville have jumped ship.

http://www.cbssports.com/collegefoot...llion-per-year

Big East is really in trouble. TV deal is looking to only be in the $60-80 million per year range, and some new members like Houston have clauses that they can get out of league with no penalty if revenue projections they were promised aren't met. Pitifully low payout per team when they'll have 12 football members plus the basketball only members in 2014.

Some realignment tidbits/speculation from the Gator Bowl chairman in a radio interview (have seen this posted a few places).

http://gatortalk1.blogspot.com/2012/...alignment.html

In short, he thinks UVA and GT go to the Big 10, FSU, VT and Clemson to the Big 12 (guess he thinks the get 1 more from somewhere other than ACC) and UNC and Duke to the SEC.

http://espn.go.com/college-football/...ones-new-coach

Butch Jones is the new coach at Tennessee.

Originally Posted by dmaul1114 http://www.cbssports.com/collegefoot...llion-per-year Big East is really in trouble. TV deal is looking to only be in the $60-80 million per year range, and some new members like Houston have clauses that they can get out of league with no penalty if revenue projections they were promised aren't met. Pitifully low payout per team when they'll have 12 football members plus the basketball only members in 2014.

The league is dead. They should blow it up and become a Bball only league.

Time will tell on that. Not really anywhere for the football schools like Cincy, USF, UCONN etc. to go right now though.

If the ACC gets picked apart, then they can just merge with the leftover overs there--though I imagine all the west teams would go back to the MWC or other western conferences in that instance.

http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/sports/182573751.html

Some interesting realignment tidbits from Barry Alvarez.

-UMD and Rutgers were added to preven Penn State from leaving to another league (presumably the ACC).

-Another school recently approached the B1G and was turned down for academics. If an ACC school almost had to be FSU since I think all the others rumored to be moving are in the AAU (research association) and have top 100 US New Rankings and thus fit the B1G profile. Maybe VT I guess.

Originally Posted by dmaul1114 http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/sports/182573751.html Some interesting realignment tidbits from Barry Alvarez. -UMD and Rutgers were added to preven Penn State from leaving to another league (presumably the ACC). -Another school recently approached the B1G and was turned down for academics. If an ACC school almost had to be FSU since I think all the others rumored to be moving are in the AAU (research association) and have top 100 US New Rankings and thus fit the B1G profile. Maybe VT I guess.

B1G cares about academics, the exception being Nebraska which lost its AAU status last year. However, I am surprised to hear that they finally decided to listen to Penn St. Paterno spent the better part of a decade pleading with B1G to add an east coast team(s) and no one gave a shit.

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Originally Posted by dmaul1114 No different than Brian Kelly going from Cincy to ND... Hard to say how good a coach he is though. He's won at Western Michigan and Cincy, but he followed Brian Kelly at both places and didn't really stay long enough to be winning mainly with his players vs. Kelly's recruits...Rich Rod struggled at Michigan, but I don't think they gave him enough time to get his system in place and all the type of players he needed to run it--took him 4 or 5 years to really get things rolling at WVU.

Originally Posted by kill3r7 I think Rich Rod was doomed from the start due to the radical changes he was trying to implement at Michigan. Pretty much his fate was sealed when he failed to land Terrelle Pryor. IMO he was the perfect Rich Rod QB. The rest I can't say much about besides the fact that both, Brian Kelly and Petrino, took over "small" time football programs and turned them into offensive juggernauts. They both won the Big East and did so to with lesser talent (Petrino less so). I'm not saying that Butch Jones is not capable of accomplishing the same thing but based on what I've seen of Cincy he has yet to do it.

Though Butch Jones followed Brian Kelly's path from Central Michigan to Cincinnati their careers before that were quite different. Before CMU, Kelly coached for over a decade at Grand Valley State University, a powerhouse Div.II school in west Michigan where he won a couple of Div.II titles. I'd have to look it up to be sure but I'd bet that he won at least 100 games there over the course of a dozen years or so. After that, he spent a few years at CMU and with the Bearcats before going to Notre Dame. When he took the job with the Irish, Kelly already had around 20 years of experience as a successful head coach. Although most of it was on a much smaller stage, I believe his experience to be a terrific asset.

On the other hand, Jones is accepting the Tennessee job with only 6 years of experience as a head coach. I'm not faulting the guy for being younger and I still think he has a chance for success if he is able to sell recruits on the program and is given enough time to redevelop an identity for the Volunteers. Despite the fact that defense is a traditional SEC hallmark, I think that if Tennessee finds success again through Jones it will be through offense. I know that before he took on various position coach roles at Central Michigan and became their offensive coordinator, he was quite successful as the OC at Ferris State University (another Div.II school in west Michigan). I believe he also did something at W.Virginia in the heyday of RichRod for a season or two. It certainly is a tall order to find success in the SEC as an offensive minded program but if that's the direction the Vols are wanting to head in, Jones is a decent choice. Of course, it won't matter if he can't get the right players to execute.

Speaking of RichRod and the right players...I agree that his fate was sealed when he failed to land Terrell Pryor. Pryor was his only hope to have the kind of success he needed to win over the Michigan faithful that believed he was all wrong for the job. From the start there was a lot of Wolverine fans in that camp. RichRod would have had to have found a great deal of early success in order to abate them. Most of Ann Arbor felt that he was all wrong for the job from the very beginning. One of my good friends and an old college roommate had been working as an assistant for recruiting under Llyod Carr when RichRod was hired. After meeting him and some of the new staff he told me, "...it's hard to put into exact words, Rodriguez, he just doesn't fit here. I don't think he ever will."

Sorry for the long post, I rarely get the chance to extol the football of Michigan's west coast!

Originally Posted by kill3r7 The league is dead. They should blow it up and become a Bball only league.

There's going to be a totally separate BBall league. Basically the existing schools without big-time football (Villanova, Georgetown, St. John's, Marquette, etc.) and they'll pick up some others like Dayton, Duquesne, etc.

Still, though, this is why I can't care about college sports anymore. Their whole angle was "tradition!" and now all that is getting flushed down the toilet in the name of making football conferences to get big TV dollars. F tradition, F basketball, we just want that dolla. The NBA and NFL are crooked as hell for exploiting these kids for their free minor league. That crap about "oh but you're getting a free education!" only flies for the people playing nothing sports like volleyball or soccer or field hockey or something.

Originally Posted by chuckie88 I believe he also did something at W.Virginia in the heyday of RichRod for a season or two.

He was a WR for a season at WVU.

It certainly is a tall order to find success in the SEC as an offensive minded program but if that's the direction the Vols are wanting to head in, Jones is a decent choice. Of course, it won't matter if he can't get the right players to execute.

Well, A&M did pretty well this year and it was Sumlin's first year without a team full of recruits geared for his system.

Florida did well under Spurrier etc. I think some of the SEC defenses are overrated as offenses have just been bad. So I think coaches like Sumlin and Jones can have a lot of success there. Have to find a good DC though. That's another thing that did RROD in at Michigan. He never got a solid defense together, and Greg Robinson was a terrible hire at DC. Especially his last two years he lost several games where he scored enough to win.

http://espn.go.com/college-football/...ky-hilltoppers

USF hired Willie Taggart from Western Kentucky as their new coach.

Originally Posted by dmaul1114 ...Have to find a good DC though. That's another thing that did RROD in at Michigan. He never got a solid defense together, and Greg Robinson was a terrible hire at DC. Especially his last two years he lost several games where he scored enough to win.

Couldn't agree more. Robinson was a terrible choice and that defense (or lack thereof) really cost the Wolverines.

Holy cow, Tuberville resigned from Texas Tech and is taking the job at Cincy!

http://www.sbnation.com/college-foot...xas-tech-coach

Not on the major sites yet, but will be shortly as several of their writers have tweeted about it. i.e.:

Pat Forde ‏@YahooForde: Tommy Tuberville to Cincinnati is done. Press conference tonight at 6:30 ET.

Just crazy to leave a Big 12 team for a Big East one--and he wasn't under pressure at Tech, tweets say Tech officials were blind sided and shocked.

Makes me wonder if Cincy already knows they're joining another league and was able to sell him on that along with throwing money at him.

Edit--ESPN.com has the story now: http://espn.go.com/college-football/...nnati-bearcats

Manziel won the heisman as expected, first freshman to win. Hard to argue with it with over 3,000 yards passing and over 1,000 rushing in the SEC. Glad Tavon Austin got some votes, but should have gotten more.


WVU fired their defensive back coach. Very happy about that given that the pass defense was 119 out of 120 FBS teams. Still not sold on DeForest as defensive co-coordinator (technically co-coordinator with Keith Patterson, but DeForest runs the D).

http://www.cbssports.com/collegebask...ible-breakaway

More on the Big East's impending doom. The basketball only members have been meeting and discussing breaking away. The small TV deal (they'd only get around $1 million a year) doesn't make it worth them to stay and have to water down the schedule and exhaust their travel budget with long trips to crappy teams like SMU and Tulane.

Doesn't really affect the football side of things obviously as the league still has 12 football members for 2014 barring further defections. But really s the schools like UCONN and Cincy who care about both sports as the basketball conference schedule would be super weak if Georgetown, Villanova, St. Johns etc. all leave.

Could very much affect the football side of things; depending on if Temple is considered as having a vote in the issue (their votes are only on football matters) the non-football schools have a large enough portion of the vote to potentially dissolve the conference. It isn't clear what powers their votes give them, and if that would including voting to become a non-football conference, kicking out the football members, or just leaving to form their own league. In the first two scenarios it sounds like they would keep the Big East brand, which would be huge.

http://espn.go.com/college-sports/st...ls-sources-say

Still plenty of speculation at this point though.

Big East brand isn't so important anymore as illustrated by how low their TV contract offers have been. Those 12 football schools aren't getting much of a deal regardless of what their crappy league is called.

The top few teams just have to hope the Big 12, Big 10, SEC and/or SEC go to 14-16 teams, and some of the nobodies just need to go back to places like CUSA where they belong.

Hope it happens as it would be an awesome basketball league with those 7 school and some others like Xavier, St Joseph's, Dayton, Butler etc. that they could probably easily get to join a new league. As is now, lots of crappy games with Houston, SMU, Tulane, UCF etc. coming in in all sports.

If they do blow the Big East up, how do they intend to divide up the exit fees from WVU, Syracuse, Pitt, Rutgers and Louisville? I'm not sure about WVU but I know Pitt and Syracuse are paying their exit fee over multiple years. I think that'll be the deciding factor going forward.

WVU's was all paid already I think (though we have to play the Big 12 back some--they paid $10 million of the $20 million, with $5 of it to be paid back).