Here are a few more Big East notes from media day, courtesy of associate commissioner Nick Carparelli.
1. I have gotten a lot of questions about how the Big East intends to distribute all the money that it will receive from outgoing programs West Virginia, Pitt, Syracuse and TCU. The Mountaineers are set to pay a reported $20 million fee to the league, with Pitt and Syracuse set to pay $7.5 million each and TCU $5 million. There also are entry fees incoming members will pay.
"One of the misconceptions is that we have this pile of money sitting in a bank," Carparelli said. "A lot of those payments are staggered over a period of years, so it’s not at our disposal just yet. In addition, we’ve incurred a lot of expenses throughout this process: legal expenses, consultants. It’s money well spent. We don’t know what all those expenses are just yet. So the prudent thing to do is to figure out what our expenses are, use that money to pay them and then divide up the remaining amount among the ongoing members."
That means the five remaining Big East football schools (Cincinnati, UConn, Louisville, Rutgers, USF) and the eight remaining non-football schools will receive the money. Carparelli said they have not determined how the money would be divided between the football and non-football schools.
2. Yes, the Big East has reached out to the Big West to see if it can do anything to help Boise State become a member of the conference. Boise State joins the Big East as a football-only member in 2013 and has an arrangement to have its other sports play in the WAC. But because of defections, the league may not survive into the future. The Big West is reportedly going to vote by September whether to accept Boise State's other sports.
"We’ll help Boise however we can," Carparelli said. "If there’s anything we can do for the Big West that will make it appealing for them to add Boise, we’d certainly entertain that. We’re not at the point where we’ve agreed to anything, or that they’ve even told us what they would like, but they have indicated there might be some room for discussion there."
3. We thought divisional alignment for 2013 and beyond would be announced in Newport, but no decision was reached. The Big East is waiting for television discussions to begin in order to see whether one model is more appealing to a prospective network than another. The two that are under discussion are the geographic model, and then another that would split up rivals into separate divisions.