Short term would be to stay in the Big East as the conference adds whatever number of D1 FB schools to keep them at or above 8. Also pray that the BSC continues to give them the automatic bid as they wait for an ACC invitation during the next round of conference raids.
Not much of a long term solution, but I don't see the B10 or any of the other BCS conferences letting us in, nor would they be good for UConn. I've heard some talk about the Big-10, but that would be a geographic nightmare among other issues, not to mention getting our FB ass's kicked in by a bunch of midwest farm boys.
It's probably been mentioned, but we can all thank the NCAAs and the BCS for this entire mess. If it were not for the BCS and their automatic and not-so-automatic bowl invitation structure, plus the NCAA's 12 team (is it 12?) minimum for allowing a Conference Championship game, I'm not sure we'd be in the mess.
Or if you care to flip this around, if they had some sort of round-robin 32 team - 4 round single elimination tournament, being part of some mega BCS conference wouldn't be nearly as critical.
Can someone explain to me how any of this is good for good of college sports and the fans? Answer: There is none. This only benefits monetarily those programs that end up in one of the BCS conferences when it's all said and done.
This whole mess has managed to kick to the curb the rich histories of some of these storied conferences. You can drive a spike in the ground when whatever happened before and after 2012 in the Big 12 and Big East have nothing to do with each other. Once the raiding of these two conferences come to a close, neither will likely look anything like what it was during their glory days. Even though the ACC, Big-10 and Pac-10 will likely hold on to their most successful charter members, these programs are going to find out that finishing on top in both FB and Hoops will not be as easy as it has been. I think the top SEC FB powers will remain at the top, though they are a very top heavy conference FB wise with a bunch of programs that beat the heck out of each other most years. It's similar with the Big-10 though Nebraska will make some noise in FB. Basketball will likely be unaffected.
It has also messed up the regional practicalities that had existed with most of these conferences. (ex. TCU in Big East! Some Texas teams to the PAC-10, Northeastern teams to the ACC, which had been a mid-atlantic (MD) on down before they added BC and now SU. Why not add a Canadian college for goodness sake! The only conference that has shown some sort of sanity when it comes to regional additions is the Big 10. They've kept it to the states that either border one of the Great Lakes or are one state removed. Although the ACC is expanding north, they're keeping it Eastern Time Zone, and Atlantic coast states or in some cases one state removed. Pretty much what the Big East decided to do when it ventured south and added the FL schools though they ventured west as well reaching into Indiana for ND, not quite as west with WVU before recently reaching well out of region for TCU. That move was clearly one of desperation, which in the end doesn't look like will help either the BE or TCU.
