Interesting news from ESPN.com's Andy Katz this evening. We know that the Big East is expecting to invite teams and the Boise St. Broncos and Air Force Falcons are on the list. The assumption was made by a lot of people, including myself, that the Mountain West and Conference USA went ahead with their alliance because each league was losing schools to the Big East.
However according to Katz, the Broncos and Falcons may not be going to the Big East after all:
According to a source with direct knowledge about Boise State's and Air Force's situations, the conferences went ahead with the alliance when Boise State indicated to the MWC that it didn't plan to leave the conference. The source also said Air Force had soured on the Big East deal a bit when Army decided against joining the Big East and Navy became skeptical of the plan.
[...]
The source said that if Boise State and Air Force had reservations about the MWC, C-USA or the alliance between the two, they would would have abstained or been absent from Friday's conference call. The source cited Missouri's absence from the Big 12's conference call announcing the addition of TCU as an example. Missouri The Tigers are currently deciding whether to leave the Big 12.
Now this is getting interesting.
We already know that Army is not going to the Big East and initial thoughts that it would stop Air Force from joining, but it seemed that Air Force was ok with joining the Big East as long as Navy went. As for Boise State, they have been unsure of joining the Big East during this whole process.
When I first heard on the teleconference that Boise State and Air Force participated and approved the vote I did find that odd, but did not put two and two together. Normally when schools do not participate in voting on league items mean that they are not long for the league.
This just got a whole lot interesting regarding Boise State and Air Force and I am still skeptical that they will stay in the Mountain West, but as the line from Dumb and Dumber goes, "So, you're saying there is a chance."
Hat tip: airforcetwo
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