It's NCAA Conference Moving Day!

July 1 is the day in NCAA collegiate athletics that schools get to move to their new conferences for the 2014-15 academic year.

One of the schools moving to a new conference today is the University of Louisville, who leaves the American for the upper crust digs of the Atlantic Coast Conference. 

The ACC welcomes the Cards into their conference ranks as their 15th member with a ceremony at Fourth Street Live! in downtown Louisville starting at 5 PM EDT.

While I'm going to miss seeing them in the American, can't be too mad at U of L   I've had a ringside seat during my time in the city to see how the school and AD Tom Jurich has worked to be in the position to make their program an attractive one and build the facilities.   The payoff of that investment was the Cards being asked to join a better and more nationally ranked power conference like the ACC.

When I was a Coog, we were a nationally ranked kicking butt member of the dearly departed Southwest Conference.  We went to three consecutive Final Fours and a Cotton Bowl, and I'd love to see them playing at that Top 25 level again in all sports.  Maybe with that burnt orange wearing UH hater Deloss Dodds gone into retirement, the new football stadium opening next month, and the upcoming renovation at Hofheinz Pavilion, we'll eventually get that Big XII invite that has been denied us. 

The University of Houston deserves that sitting in the largest city in Texas, and I hope UH is paying attention to how Louisville made it happen for themselves since they were in similar dissed circumstances back in the day.

Speaking of conference moves, the Big Ten welcomes former ACC charter member Maryland and the AAC's Rutgers into their ranks.  

On top of that with the entry of these two schools this fall, the Big Ten scrapped the Leaders and Legends Divisions and went to the more logical geographic divisional setup. 

Should be interesting to see what these two schools bring to the Big Ten table besides the Washington DC and New York-northern New Jersey TV markets, especially when basketball season kicks off. 

As for the American (AKA the old Big East) which is the Coogs current conference home, we get reunited with some old C-USA foes in East Carolina, Tulane and Tulsa this fall with Navy joining in 2015.  

Our crosstown rivals Rice in C-USA will also get some new conference members in Old Dominion, which is moving up from the FCS level and Western Kentucky, with Charlotte scheduled to join C-USA after an FCS transition in 2015.

This is the 2014 edition of NCAA conference moving day.   We'll see how well it plays out for all the schools involved this fall.    It also brings up the question, will there be another round of conference shuffling soon?   
   

UH Formally Invited to Join Big East

You have failed Emperor Palpatine (oops DeLoss Dodds) in your burnt orange mission to keep the University of Houston out of a BCS conference. 

UH got that rumored invitation to formally join the Big East Conference in all sports late last night after the Big East presidents and chancellors met via conference call to discuss expansion.   AD Mack Rhoades and UH President and Chancellor Renu Khator will head to New York later this week to meet with Big East officials.

If they accept, they would join the Big East for the 2013 season.  They would not only get that coveted AQ spot in football, but it would be a major boost to the men's and women's basketball programs.  Where it would hurt would be in baseball, where C-USA is one of the strongest collegiate leagues but right now the grins over on Cullen Blvd and in Cougar Nation are as wide as Texas.

After being Left Behind during the formation of the Big XII, we're now in a better conference than the Big XII that Texas AD DeLoss Dodds was keeping us out of.   He and his bretheren in the Big XII-3+1 will pay for his lack of vision and the burnt orange flavored hateraid he was drinking when it comes to UH.

Take that Longhorn Elementary.   As the old saying goes, when you dig a grave for one, better dig one for yourself as well.

Being that the University of Houston not only has Tier One academic status and sits in the fourth largest city in the nation, the largest in Texas and the prime recruiting area for Lone Star high school talent in all sports, potential Big East membership will not only help the financial bottom line, it also helps UH tremendously in terms of recruiting.in football and especially basketball since the Big East is the premier basketball conference in the collegiate men's and women's game.

So we'll see how this conference realignment drama will play out, but for now a long sought after UH return to the stage of big time collegiate athletics is within its grasp.

Utah Joins The Pac-10

Utah has been in the shadow of Brigham Young University for years and BYU alums never let them forget it or the national football title they won in 1984.

Now Utah fans have a big trump card to throw in whatever Ute-Cougar dissfest they engage in from now on: Membership in a BCS conference.

The University of Utah announced that they will be leaving the Mountain West Conference to begin playing in the Pacific-10 Conference in 2011. They join Colorado, who was extended an invitation to join the conference last week.

The Pac-10 now increases to 12 members, enough for them to split into two divisions and hold a conference championship game. The divisional setup has yet to be determined, but I think a North-South one would make the most sense.

You could have a Pac-12 North that would consist of Washington, Washington State, Oregon, Oregon State, California and Stanford.

The Pac-12 South would consist of Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, Utah, USC and UCLA with the winners of each division facing each other in a championship game that could be rotated between Denver, Glendale, AZ, Los Angeles, Seattle or the San Francisco Bay Area.

They'll have a few years to sort out the details, assuming that the Pac-10 is done with their eastward expansion for this round.