Prov. Journal: Basketball schools plan to break away if UConn or Louisville leave

[UConnSportsGuy]

How much of this is being driven by Neinas, the current commisioner of the Big 12?

Over the past year, he has been paid huge money as a consultant and is the driving force behind the MWC/CUSA merger for football in order to get a BCS AQ bid. If BSU, , Houston, SMU, UCF all go to the Big East, he knows that the MWC/CUSA merger is a huge FAIL, the Big East retains its BCS AQ status, and his consulting company takes a huge hit. However, if he steals Louisville from the Big East, he knows that the Big East will crumble and his original recommendation for the MWC/CUSA merger may be a success.

Think he might have a conflict of interest in leading the Big 12 through this expansion and maintaining his multi-million dollar consulting firm for when he leaves the Big 12 commisioner position?

Don't think for a minute that this isn't a factor in all of this!

We may just be at the point of a perfect storm where ESPN, the ACC, and the Big 12 (via Neinas) all want the Big East Football conference to die for their own reasons. While not one of those entities is the lone culprit in killing the BE Football conference, they are each doing their part to make sure it fails. Nice team work!

 

[HuskyHawk]

This all makes sense. The 8 remaining schools don't have any fondness for SFU for sure, and probably see UC and Rutgers as adding little value. They could do better with Xavier, Butler, St. Joes etc.

Everything I've seen from the Big 12 suggests that Louisville is ahead of WVU with them. More midwestern. I think they worry about the geography. BYU has a similar geographic problem. I think they'd be the first choice, but they bring issues like UT does with their network, plus the other things. I think WVU is much too far east to add unless they went all in and added all 3 BE schools.

So UL could very well be the domino that falls. It's all with Missouri really. It that sense, same as it was last week.