Tulane, East Carolina to join Big East in 2014, leaving C-USA
The Big East moved quickly to replace Rutgers and braced for more possible departures, getting Tulane and East Carolina to agree to join the re-invented conference in 2014.
“I would go as far to say as this is a historic day for Tulane University … the Big East is coming to the Big Easy,” school President Scott Cowen said Tuesday.
Tulane, in New Orleans, and East Carolina, in Greenville, N.C., will make it six Conference USA schools to join the Big East in the last two years.
“We thank East Carolina and charter member Tulane for all their contributions to the league and wish them well,” Conference USA Commissioner Britton Banowsky said in a statement. “These are unprecedented times in higher education. Notwithstanding the changes, we are excited about our future and we remain committed to our strategic plan – a major market, two-division conference that is student-athlete friendly. To be clear, we have several options but no new member agreements have been made at this time. We appreciate the support of our members and will immediately begin a presidentially led process to evaluate our future options.”
Conference USA had already replaced the previously announced departing members. Next season Louisiana Tech, Florida International, North Texas and Texas-San Antonio will join C-USA, giving it 16 football schools.
In 2014, Old Dominion will join C-USA, and Charlotte is scheduled to join with its fledgling football program in 2015.
The Mountain West and Conference USA announced in Feb. 2012 that they are teaming up to start a new conference that could start as early as 2013-14.
The new merger was expected to have between 18 and 24 schools and feature a regional/divisional combination of the current members of the MWC and C-USA.
In May, Banowsky said “discussions with our good friends in the Mountain West continue. Each conference knows that we are much stronger working together than we are working apart. What form the partnership will ultimately take remains to be seen, but please know that we share a lot of things in common and we continue to work well together. I think this is a process that is going to take a while. We’ll have conversations again in June and try to understand if something is doable for 2013. Ultimately, the conversations may extend into the start of 2014. But the bottom line and takeaway is that the conferences really know that there is something here and there is a potential to work together. We’re just trying to figure out the best way to do that. We really aren’t working on a set timeline right now.”
UTEP President Diana Natalicio and UTEP Vice President Richard Adauto were not available for comment on Tuesday. Natalicio and Adauto also could not provide a statement reacting to the Tulane, East Carolina departures Tuesday or whether or not UTEP was fighting to join the Mountain West Conference or another conference.
In February, Natalicio told ABC-7 the most popular reasons to form the new league are television revenue and stability.
“What we would like to be able to do in the best of all worlds would be to achieve some greater stability going forward and television is very much a part of that,” Natalicio said. “Contractual arrangements could be a part of that. So we’ll see where that takes us.”
Back in 1996, the WAC, of which UTEP was a member, formed a 16-school conference that lasted only three years before eight member schools — including many of UTEP’s biggest rivals like New Mexico — left suddenly to form the Mountain West.
UTEP, which had been in the WAC since 1967, left the depleted league for Conference USA in 2005, where it has competed since.
Rutgers announced one week ago that it would leave the Big East for the Big Ten. Cowen and athletic director Rick Dickson said serious talks with the Big East began about a week ago.
“This is an unprecedented opportunity to join a national conference,” Dickson said.
Rutgers would like to join the Big Ten by 2014, along with Maryland, but the Scarlet Knights have left their departure date from the Big East ambiguous. Conference bylaws require members to give the league notification of two years and three months before departing, but the Big East has negotiated early exits for Syracuse, Pittsburgh and West Virginia in the past year.
West Virginia joined the Big 12 this year. Syracuse and Pitt will begin play in the Atlantic Coast Conference in September.
With Maryland leaving the ACC, there has been strong speculation that Connecticut or Louisville will be the next to leave the Big East as the Terps’ replacement.
If either does, the conference is still on target to have 12 football members in 2014, just not the same ones it will have in 2013 when the new Big East debuts.
“We’re not finished,” Big East Commissioner Mike Aresco said. “We obviously have some other plans for expansion.”
Boise State and San Diego State, currently in the Mountain West, are set to join for football only starting in 2013, anchoring the Big East’s new West Division. Also on schedule to join next season are current C-USA members SMU, Houston, Memphis and Central Florida.
Navy has committed to join the Big East for football in 2015. The conference had planned to find a 14th member to balance out its divisions even before Rutgers left. BYU and Air Force were top targets for that spot.
Aresco said that the Big East could even expand to 16 members, depending on what schools are available.
“We have to let that play out,” he said.
Officials from San Diego State and Boise State have said they are still committed to joining the Big East but have expressed a desire for the conference to add more western schools.
“They absolutely are extremely committed to the Big East,” Aresco said. “We absolutely will be looking at some western schools.”
The Big East’s membership also includes seven schools, including Georgetown and St. John’s, that either do not have football teams or don’t compete at the FBS level, but have helped it become a premier basketball conference.
Tulane seems an odd choice based on the school’s recent performance in football and men’s basketball, the two most prominent sports.
The Green Wave haven’t been to a bowl game since 2002 and last made the NCAA men’s basketball tournament in 1995. Tulane just completed a 2-10 football season under first-year coach Curtis Johnson.
It hasn’t always been this way for Tulane. Cowen said in the decade before Hurricane Katrina devastated the school in 2005, forcing it to shut down for a semester, Tulane won more sports championships than any program in C-USA.
Cowen said it took three years for the university to fully recover.
“Once we recovered financially and academically, we invested heavily in athletics,” he said.
He said the school has sunk $125 million into the athletic department for facilities and coaches. Tulane will open a new on-campus football stadium in 2014, which the school hopes will rejuvenate interest in the team.
The Green Wave currently play their home football games in the Superdome but have struggled to draw fans. Tulane’s average attendance for home games was 18,085 this season.
The Big East has been trying to gather as many major television markets as possible and New Orleans comes in at 53rd-largest in the country. Tulane also provides a regional rival for Memphis.
East Carolina has been a consistent winner in football and looked to get in the Big East for years. The Pirates have played in a bowl five out of the last six years and finished 8-4 this season, just missing out on a trip to the C-USA title game.
ECU AD Terry Holland said East Carolina’s next step is to find an “equally exciting and competitive environment for the 18 sports other than football.”
Conference USA had already replaced the previously announced departing members. Next season Louisiana Tech, Florida International, North Texas and Texas-San Antonio will join C-USA, giving it 16 football schools.
In 2014, Old Dominion will join C-USA, and Charlotte is scheduled to join with its fledgling football program in 2015.
“To be clear, we have several options but no new member agreements have been made at this time,” C-USA Commissioner Britton Banowsky said. “We appreciate the support of our members and will immediately begin a presidentially led process to evaluate our future options.”
The Mountain West and Conference USA announced in Feb. 2012 that they are teaming up to start a new conference that could start as early as 2013-14.
The new merger was expected to have between 18 and 24 schools and feature a regional/divisional combination of the current members of the MWC and C-USA.
In May, Banowsky said “discussions with our good friends in the Mountain West continue. Each conference knows that we are much stronger working together than we are working apart. What form the partnership will ultimately take remains to be seen, but please know that we share a lot of things in common and we continue to work well together. I think this is a process that is going to take a while. We’ll have conversations again in June and try to understand if something is doable for 2013. Ultimately, the conversations may extend into the start of 2014. But the bottom line and takeaway is that the conferences really know that there is something here and there is a potential to work together. We’re just trying to figure out the best way to do that. We really aren’t working on a set timeline right now.”
In February, UTEP President Diana Natalicio told ABC-7 the most popular reasons to form the new league are television revenue and stability.
“What we would like to be able to do in the best of all worlds would be to achieve some greater stability going forward and television is very much a part of that,” Natalicio said. “Contractual arrangements could be a part of that. So we’ll see where that takes us.”
Back in 1996, the WAC, of which UTEP was a member, formed a 16-school conference that lasted only three years before eight member schools — including many of UTEP’s biggest rivals like New Mexico — left suddenly to form the Mountain West.
UTEP, which had been in the WAC since 1967, left the depleted league for Conference USA in 2005, where it has competed since.
