It seems that what the NCAA Football teams are looking for is stability and money. Those seem to be the two key factors when it comes to picking a conference. But this year has been filled with rumors and behind the scene talks from schools trying to make the best out of the conference realignment fever that has taken over the country. And yet, at the end it seems that with all this movement, with all this realignment, it is precisely stability and money what could be lost at the end. I might have been nave enough to believe that once the Oklahoma Sooners and the Texas Longhorns decided to get their act together and stick around with the Big 12, rather then leave for the Pac-12, things would settle a bit. It was clear that once the big two powerhouses of the conference decided to settle down, things would go on a bit more smoothly not only for the Big 12 but for other Football Bowl Subdivision conferences. And yet, we weren’t even close. Now things are stirring up in the Big East. Currently, the Big East has six football members committed to the conference beyond this season. As a matter of fact, the conference has eight schools that do not compete in the league in football, including Notre Dame, which has independent status. For many years, the Big East was one of the strongest conferences in the nation. The NCAA had given them credit for their tradition and competitiveness offering the Big East status as an automatic qualifier in the Bowl Championship Series. But that was all about to change very quickly. First Pittsburgh and Syracuse have accepted invitations to join the Atlantic Coast Conference, as if that was not a tough blow, TCU announced two weeks ago that instead of joining the Big East in 2012, they would move on to the Big 12. Now it was up to the Big East to make a move and try to protect its status as an automatic qualifier. They first move was to seek for new teams to join the school. Rumor has it the Big East's will be sending conditional invitations to Houston, Southern Methodist and Central Florida for all sports, and to Air Force and Boise State for football only, in an attempt to make this conference attractive and worthy of its status. The thing is that, despite their efforts, the Big East can’t really take any chances until they figure out what’s going to happen with Missouri. According to some reports, it seems the Mizzou Tigers would officially apply for a spot in the SEC in the next few days. Then again, the Big 12 is making a huge effort to try to keep the Tigers in their conference, but despite what the SEC has said about not wanting to expand, it is only logical that after the SEC took on TCU as it’s 13th team, they would try to find that 14th team that would just make scheduling a much easier and profitable task. The only thing the Big East could do under this circumstances is to increase the league's withdrawal fee from $5 million to $10 million when an expansion plan is executed
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