The expectations will be high for the former boxer, and Adam Zagoria is among the writers who are hanging their hat on JVP’s coming season:

JayVaughn Pinkston, F, Villanova — After sitting out a season and then battling injuries last year, Pinkston could be a force in the Big East if he gets healthy and motivated. He averaged 9.6 points and 5.2 rebounds but had three games of 20+ points.

As one of Zagoria’s top 15 Big East players, Villanova’s forward will be expected to shoulder the load for the Wildcats and lead the team. It would be a new role for the big man, who had Maalik Wayns to take most of the pressure off of him as a redshirt freshman. Now, he will have to do it on his own as the primary target of defensive pressure.

He had a taste of that role during the few games that Wayns missed last year. If teammates don’t take some attention away from him, it will be easier for defenders to double him up or block him from getting into the paint, where he has been the most productive.

If no other Wildcats emerge in 2012-13 as legitimate go-to options, JVP will have to make some outside jumpers. He connected on 36.6% from outside last season, which was among the team’s best. His confidence in that jumper seemed to grow as the season progressed, however, and that trend may need to continue.

Regardless of where he ranks in the Big East, JVP is the Wildcats’ player-to-watch.

According to articles out this week, both have a chance to break out and have an impact for the Wildcats next season.

Jon Rothstein of CBS included Johnson on his list of ten likely “breakout” players for the 2012-13 season:

With both Maalik Wayns and Dominic Cheek opting to bypass their senior seasons and enter the NBA Draft, Johnson is now Jay Wright’s primary ball handler. The 6-foot-3 sophomore possesses good size, solid instincts, and showed major promise during a stretch in the middle of the season when Wayns’ was injured. Look for Johnson to be one of the Big East’s most improved players as he attempts to lead Villanova back into the postseason picture.

Rothstein’s assumption that Johnson will be a primary ball handler this season is at odds with the probability that Wake Forest transfer Tony Chennault will likely at least share those duties in the coming season — if his hardship waiver is granted. Johnson will also see competition from Arcidiacono, who is himself a talented point guard and possibly the biggest fish in ‘Nova’s 2012 recruiting class.

That doesn’t mean that Johnson won’t play in 2012-13 or that he would necessarily come off of the bench. He might, but so might the other two point guards. Johnson could be moved to shooting guard, either temporarily or permanently, because of it. Even a shooting guard for Jay Wright will ideally be able to play like a point guard.

Though Johnson’s role is in question, his development as a scorer and defender will be vital to the Wildcats.

Jay Wright is probably going to put Archy on the floor for  plenty of minutes as a freshman, even if he doesn’t start him — though that possibility isn’t unlikely either. In addition to being able to handle the ball and play point, he brings a skill to the table that Villanova had been missing in last season’s abysmal showing: shooting with range.

In a recent interview with Slam Online, he said that he expects to perform well shooting:

Hopefully I shoot really well—38 percent, 40 percent from three and maybe in like the 80s at the free throw line. I’m just hoping to lead the team. Whether it’s Tyrone Johnson or me or anyone else bringing the ball up the court, hopefully I can just get my teammates involved. I’m not really worried about what I shoot—I’m just hoping to get everybody involved.

Arcidiacono may get others involved, but even if Wright asks him to contribute off-the-ball, he will be the best shooter on the team. That means that even after the ball has left his hands, he will need his teammates to give it back to him when he is open for an outside shot. Daniel Ochefu and Markus Kennedy came to Villanova will a reputation as big men who can also pass the rock, and either of them could be helpful to make Arcidiacono more effective, but he will also need Ty Johnson and Tony Chennault to keep him in mind when they control the ball.

Early next month, Arcidiacono will head to the Team USA under-18 camp with hopes of making the roster for an international tournament in Brazil this summer. If he makes the team, he will come to campus in July and join the offseason program at that time. If he is cut, he will move to Villanova’s campus in June, during the first summer session.

“I’m planning on making the team, but if for some reason I do get cut at least I have a scholarship to go play at Villanova,” he told Slam. “It’s kind of a win-win situation but you’d always like to make the team.”

Fans, media and coaches all seem to have great expectations for both Ty Johnson and Ryan Arcidiacono next season. With that in mind, if Johnson doesn’t become the player that Jay Wright believes he will be, or if Arcidiacono struggles to acclimate to the college game, it could spell trouble for the Wildcats. Then again, with both breaking out next season, Villanova could have a quick turnaround after a terrible season.

“Old Dominion I understand is most likely to accept a bid to Conference USA,” he told a Richmond radio station. “I think that’s imminent from everything I’ve heard, that they’re making an announcement on Monday. I haven’t heard that from any ODU folks, but that’s what I understand is right around the corner.”

The move would leave the CAA in a weakened position, likely in need of a few additions in football in order to remain stable and viable long-term. It could also be the straw that breaks the camels’ back and forces current CAA football members to seek out other opportunities. Delaware, for example, has been very content to stay at the FCS level, where the school has been successful and profitable, but if the CAA appears to be collapsing, the Blue Hens may consider a move to the FBS ranks.

For other schools, an FBS invite won’t be as easy to come by.

As for new members, it seems that Stony Brook and Coastal Carolina could be on the CAA radar, but don’t look to Appalachian State; they’re heading to FBS sooner than later.

On the basketball side, it seems that while VCU is still considering a move to the Atlantic 10 conference, George Mason has opted to stay with the CAA.

Boise met with MWC

Meanwhile, in the Big East, CBS Sports reports that Boise State has met with a Mountain West Conference representative this week. The Broncos have not yet officially given the conference notice of their withdrawal, and the MWC is attempting to persuade the Broncos to stay. They were scheduled to join the Big East in the 2013 football season as a football-only member with their other sports moving to the WAC.

Recent changes to the WAC have significantly altered that conference, however, and only 5 members remain in the conference with two FBS-playing members likely to depart the league as well. If the WAC cannot rebuild into a viable conference for the Boise State programs, the Broncos will need to find an alternative home for their Olympic sports.

“We are actively monitoring the changing landscape in college athletics and remain committed to making the best long-term decisions for Boise State,” a BSU spokesman told CBS.

Boise State has until June 30 to formally withdraw from the Mountain West in order to join the Big East on schedule in 2013, according to the CBS report. The other five schools joining the Big East in 2013 have all given their current conferences formal notice already. Under their contract with the Big East, if they fail to join the conference, they would owe a $5 million fee — a fact that, combined with the much higher revenue potential of the Big East, makes a decision to stay in the Mountain West unlikely if a home can be found for their basketball and other sports.

This report comes shortly after Big East interim commissioner Joe Bailey said that he did not anticipate any changes in Boise State’s status.

“Well, my sense is that unless you hear differently, I think that there’s full commitment from their standpoint,” Bailey said on a Wednesday teleconference. “You can’t there’s an expectation market and then there’s the reality market. And the reality of it is that those schools have indicated, to my knowledge, to the executive committee and to the other members, that they have a big belief that the Big East is a really good partner for them.”

According to interim commissioner Joe Bailey, the Big East hopes to hire a new permanent commissioner within the next 3-4 months. The new commissioner would step into a conference that will be geared up to work out a new television deal and will be charged with building a stronger and more stable organization than the Big East has been since the early 2000′s.

Only one thing about that commissioner search is known — it won’t be Joe Bailey taking the job.

“[T]he answer [on whether he wants the job] is a no with an exclamation point,” Bailey told reporters on Wednesday afternoon. “I wouldn’t be interested in either the content of the work or the people that you would be working with or either personal or professional growth, because I think all of those are going to be here for this particular person.

“[I]t’s my feeling that the leader of the conference should be the leader for a long period of time; and therefore, has a long runway on which to build the conference and be a part of the fabric of the conference.”

The interim commissioner won’t have a role in television negotiations, instead the conference will hire media consultants to assist with those discussions and report directly to the university presidents. It is still believed that the conference will seek a new commissioner with some media connections and experience to help relations with television partners either this fall or in the longer term.

The conference is also going to look for a commissioner that has some football experience (on the business and administration side, preferably). It isn’t  a necessary factor in this case (or any case) and it isn’t the most important factor, but the next commissioner has to understand and pay due respect to the primacy of football among college sports.

College basketball is wildly popular in the month of March, largely due to widespread gambling through office bracket pools and the like. Overall, however, the television ratings for most regular-season games are dwarfed by college football and beyond a few major games, basketball is mostly relegated to “filler” content status by the television networks that buy it — ratings are good enough to air it, but the dollar-value doesn’t approach other properties.

That is why when the Big East negotiates a new television deal this fall, the majority of the money will be allocated to the football schools. Basketball will get plenty of money as well, but it is football that makes the Big East likely to get paid at a similar level to other major conferences (though, probably a 6th-place finish among FBS conferences).

While major conference decisions are made by the conference’s board (comprised of university presidents), the commissioner has to use his position to lead. Each school president is likely to act in the best interests of their school, rather than in the best interest of the conference, at least when those two things diverge. A good leader will moderate between various interest groups and work to build a consensus and a unified vision for the conference.

That is as much about perception and trust as it is about any tangible qualities. If a candidate can’t work to unify the conference through a favorable perception and the trust of all members, the leadership needed to succeed will not be there.

The commissioner can’t make conference decisions, but he or she can steer the presidents in one direction or another, but only if everyone trusts that the commissioner is supporting their best interests.

John Marinatto was a lightning rod for criticism in the media, by fans and possibly (probably) by conference leaders themselves. The next commissioner can’t become a personification of the conference’s internal disagreements, but instead will be required to rise above those disagreements and be a moderator and diplomat.

A candidate like Rutgers’ athletic director Tim Pernetti already has too much negative baggage in that regard to accomplish the task. He has already butted heads with other athletic directors and conference officials on a number of issues and his strong association with Rutgers University doesn’t create an impression of impartiality.

The other inside-candidates may have similar problems, though none are so strongly associated with a current member-school. Big East senior associate commissioner Nick Carparelli and associate commissioner Tom Odjakjian are also candidates that are known quantities to the conference and members of the league are likely familiar with (and have formed opinions on) them — meaning that they may also suffer from the same issues.

The Big East realistically needs to look outside the conference for its next commissioner, to bring in a candidate who can relate to all of the 18 full members as well as three football-only members.

For Villanova, the new commissioner could have a profound effect on the university’s future relationship with the conference. Will the new leader help or hinder the Wildcats’ football program going forward as the school seeks to invest in and position itself to move up the food chain. Ultimately, a move to the Big East conference for that program would be determined by the conference presidents, but the commissioner can help to build a dialogue on the matter — or to ignore the issue entirely.

Really, its about the money

A lucrative new television contract will go a long way to smooth over any internal conference tensions. The value of the Big East’s television rights is yet to be determined but it is likely to be significantly bigger than the deal the conference currently operates under. Why? Television has more hours to fill and with low production costs and high interest levels, the value of sports content has never been higher.

FCS conferences like the CAA and Ivy League now have limited national television deals, and the major conferences are getting better deals for huge money and exposure. The Big 12, which was on the verge of it’s own demise a little under a year ago, agreed this week to a deal that will pay member schools $20 million per year though 2025. The ACC, which is the Big East’s closest competitor, signed off on an extension with ESPN that will pay out $17 million per year to each of it’s 14 members through 2027.

That could be good news for the Big East, who will be next up for a new deal in a market where valuations are increasing dramatically.

The flipside to the argument is that ESPN, the largest and most successful of the networks bidding is in less need for the content. The ACC deal includes 30 more basketball and 14 more football games on the network than the conference previously had.

ESPN will likely still bid on the Big East rights though, if only to try and keep their competition from landing the rights. The new NBC Sports and CBS Sports cable networks are hardly threatening the ESPN empire by broadcasting FCS football and mid-major basketball. If either of those networks or the planned Fox network were to land a major conference, it could change their fortunes.

The ACC rights that were extended never hit the open market, they were still under contract with ESPN after signing a deal just prior to the record-breaking Pac-12 deal was announced. If they were able to take their rights to the open market, they may have received even more with competitive bidding.

The only major conference that the new NBC and CBS (and maybe Fox) networks still have a chance of purchasing television rights for is the Big East. The other major conferences are locked into current television partners for more than a decade, leaving the reconstructed Big East as the biggest fish left in the sea for a long time.

The conference will hope to try and come close to the ACC’s current per-school revenue distribution. The more money a conference can offer its members through guaranteed revenue streams, the more stable it will be.

The final road bump

Negotiating a bigger number will be relatively easy compared to the debate over how to allocate the television funds. The conference will have 13 football-playing members in 2015 and 18 basketball-playing members starting in 2013. The current pay-out to basketball members is significant (thanks largely to a national broadcast deal with CBS), and the conference earns more money from NCAA tournament shares than from the BCS system at the moment.

The largest driver of growth in television value is football, however, but the basketball schools will expect to at least somewhat share in the new wealth. Without negotiating separate contracts for football and basketball, how do you put a value on the individual sports?

If the Big East is operating with optimal harmony, the Presidents will rely on an impartial consultant to value each side of the conference relative to the deal they agree to. If they are not, the conference will have a period of strife an potential fighting, leading to more of the same drama that the league has experienced in the last year or two.

Then again…

Louisville is now being “transparent” about their desire to join the Big 12 or ACC in conference meetings, according to Andy Katz of ESPN. That may be wishful thinking on the part of the Cardinals’ administration, but it is demonstrative of a pervasive instability that can only be cured by a lucrative television contract and some renewed trust and strong leadership.

The ACC, for their part, probably wouldn’t be interested in Louisville or anyone as an expansion candidate. The ACC is not likely to expand to 16 members unless Notre Dame is one of the schools joining. That could change if the conference were to lose some teams to another conference, but there aren’t many threats out there.

That means that the Big 12 will determine whether the major conferences continue to play musical chairs. The Big 12 will need to decide whether to expand to 11 or 12 members, or to stand pat at 10. Their new TV deal includes a grant of TV rights that will make it difficult for members to exit the conference before the deal ends, meaning that they are stable now.  It may be impossible to find schools that would add enough value to the conference to increase the value of their TV deal beyond $20million per school annually, however.

If the Big 12 does expand again, Louisville would probably be among their candidates. They would likely also be interested in adding Notre Dame.

In the meantime, no Big East members have invitations from other conferences on the table, and nobody will be leaving the conference until that changes.

Now, much like a number of his former players, Talley’s “Get in the Game” program has gone pro.

New York Jets defensive coordinator Mike Pettine, a Pennsylvanian who once coached at North Penn High School and whose father is the famous coach of Central Bucks HS West, wanted to run a marrow drive of his own — but he didn’t know anything about it. Talley did, however, and Pettine was familiar with the Get in the Game program that became high-profile when star receiver Matt Szczur donated marrow to a young girl after winning the FCS National Championship.

So, earlier in the Spring, Pettine and Talley had a conversation about how to run a marrow drive.

Pettine was inspired bu a Jets fan named Michael Manganiello, who was diagnosed with “acute myelofibrosis,” a disease that causes the bone marrow to scar and stop producing blood cells. Manganiello needs to quickly find a matching marrow donor to survive.

According to NJ.com:

Pettine served as a co-host for the “Match for Michael” event held last night in Eatontown, which raised funds for the Manganiello family and the National Marrow Donor Program, but more importantly added more than 400 new people to the national bone marrow registry. Registering is as easy as taking a cheek swab, and bone marrow donation is now a less invasive procedure, the majority of the time being done via a non-surgical peripheral blood stem cell donation. Donors can usually resume normal activities within two to seven days.

Talley, who founded a non-profit organization two years ago to add donors to the national registry, gave Pettine advice on running such an event. Jets coach Rex Ryan and players Mark Sanchez, Sione Pouha and Aaron Maybin lent their support by attending the event last night, signing autographs and posing for pictures with the newly registered donors.

For more information on Andy Talley’s bone marrow Foundation, go to TalleyBoneMarrow.org or call 610-401-7665. This year’s drive at Villanova was on Thursday, April 19, 2012 and reportedly added over 500 new names to the National Marrow Donor Registry.

Soph. WR Lawrence Livers says goodbye

It started with basketball. Prior to the 2010-11 season, Villanova’s basketball team was told to get off of the popular social networking site, Twitter, as well as Facebook and other platforms until their season was over. Players disabled, abandoned and deleted their accounts. When head coach Jay Wright finally joined the social media age in late 2011, he too swore it off from the start of their preseason training until after the final game was played in March.

“It was nothing that our players did,” Wright explained of the policy. “It was more that people on websites were picking up just normal banter between the players and making issues out of things.”

Now, the football program is in on the act. Players were informed today that they would be required to disable their Twitter accounts, effective immediately. VUhoops has reached out to Andy Talley for comment on the matter, but the program is currently in the middle of an intensive recruiting period. It does appear that Talley has ultimately made the call to institute the policy. An email was sent out announcing the policy change to the team.

Unlike the basketball policy, the football coaches do not appear to be banished from Social Networking. At least one offensive assistant has tweeted since the policy went into effect for players.

The football policy is also different in that it appears to be in effect during the off-season. There may be some strategy to that, however, as the players have been prone to mention injuries and other information on Twitter that coaches would prefer to stay confidential. The extent of wide receiver Norm White’s injury was apparent during last summer’s preseason workouts, based on tweets by White and his teammates, well before it was announced by the school that he would redshirt. This spring, Dan Shirey’s achilles injury was first noted on the popular site, when the Senior lineman posted pictures of a scooter he had to use to get around campus.

While the basketball team instituted the school’s first-known social media policy, the athletics department generally has been concerned with the athletes’ use of these sites. Along with Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Texas, the Wildcats obtained the services of VarsityMonitor to check in on student-athletes’ use of the sites and report back to compliance and coaches when a potentially damaging posting is discovered.

All of Villanova’s varsity athletes were sent an email in January, telling them to add the service as a “friend” on their Facebook and Twitter accounts. That would allow the company to see anything that they post online and help the school to “develop and enforce fair and effective social media policies.”

It was an unpopular move at the time, but less strict than a complete ban.

The use of VarsityMonitor is the only athletics department-wide policy that has been instituted at Villanova, but coaches are free to institute their own rules and regulations on the matter.

“Each coaching staff is responsible for their own set of rules and regulations,” explains Villanova spokesman Dean Kenefick. “They would not need Athletic Department approval to implement this type of team rule.”

For a while, it looked as if the Big 12 would be the one to go, as Texas A&M defected to the SEC, group of three or four schools remaining in the conference flirted with the Pac-12 and Missouri begged to join A&M in the nation’s premiere football conference. That could have left, Iowa State, Baylor, Kansas and Kansas State without a home and without much ability to rebuild the Big 12 conference. Texas and Oklahoma decided that they were better off without USC and the Pac-12 at the last minute and the conference survived.

Then it looked like the Big East would be the conference to disappear, with the ACC on edge, they took on Syracuse and Pittsburgh to increase their own numbers while the rest of the football schools in the conference scrambled to find better options. That lead to TCU backing out of their commitment and WVU agreeing to an abrupt move to the Big 12. The conference was able to add UCF, Houston, SMU, Memphis and Temple in all-sports and Boise State, San Diego State and Navy as football-only members to likely ensure survival.

The Big East’s moves tore up the membership of the Mountain West and Conference USA, however, and for a time it looked as if the preferred solution was for those conferences to combine forces, wiping one of them from the map as an entity. It now appears, however, that their merger plan has been called off and the two conferences will survive as separate entities — at least in the short-term.

With that marriage called off, the new targets for conference destruction will be the Sun Belt and WAC (and it has not been lost on us that the MAC joins only the Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC among conferences that haven’t sweated their imminent demise recently). Conference USA will reportedly offer an invitation to the University of Texas at San Antonio, who were set to join the WAC with their upstart football program in 2013. UTSA set an NCAA record for attendance at a first-year program last season and that, combined with the San Antonio market, was a big enough draw for C-USA, it seems.

Conference-USA won’t stop there, however, and there are plans on the way to take on Louisiana Tech from the WAC as well as North Texas (based in Dallas) and Florida International (Miami) from the Sun Belt as well. The additions would serve as replacements for SMU, Houston, UCF and Memphis — who will all join the Big East in 2013  — and allow CUSA to remain at 12 members.

The Sun Belt, who just agreed to add Georgia State in 2013, would go from 11 members down to 9 after the moves and would then need to add 3 more members to get to their stated goal of 12 teams.

The WAC would meanwhile be down to just Idaho, New Mexico State, Utah State, San Jose State and Texas State as football-playing members, which would not be enough to field a football conference. Making things worse, is that there are reports circulating that the Mountain West conference is also on the verge of adding Utah State and San Jose State from the WAC, which would leave that conference with just three football-playing members as well as Seattle, Denver, UT-Arlington and Boise State (who are slated to join in Olympic sports in 2013).

That would get the MWC back to 10 members and in compliance with all NCAA rules, but it would leave the WAC in a bind.

According to a gloating Big Sky commissioner, the WAC had reached out to six schools from his conference (Montana, Montana State, Cal Poly, UC Davis, Sacramento State and Portland State) and each of them has declined an invitation to move to the flailing FBS conference. that report came almost a year ago, however, and while those Big Sky members may reconsider their own FBS options, the WAC may be in too-dire of straits to accommodate.

The Sun Belt conference, likely surviving this next set of moves could offer a home to some of the WAC’s left-over members. Texas State would certainly be an interesting option for the Sun Belt, located between San Antonio and Austin, the Bobcats would allow that conference to maintain its presence in one of the nation’s best football markets. Interest in New Mexico State and Idaho is more difficult to gauge, and one or both could compete as an independent, reclassify their program to FCS, or if times got difficult without a conference affiliation, drop football altogether.

The Idaho Stateman reports that UT-Arlington would also consider backing out of the WAC as a non-football member if Texas State and UT-San Antonio both head to greener pastures.

For the Big East, the demise of the WAC could jeopardize Boise State’s ability to maintain its athletics program. It is possible that the WAC could remain viable as a non-football conference, but rebuilding from just 3 schools could be a difficult task and a tough sell for the remaining members. If the WAC cannot transform into a basketball-first conference, then the Boise State Broncos will need to find a new home for their Olympic sports — they were turned down by the Big West and WCC prior, but may be able to present a more convincing case now. Failing those two, they would have to try to land in the Summit League or Big Sky.

According to the Statesman, however, backing out of their Big East football commitment is not a likely option. The Big East money and exposure is too much to give up for the sake of their non-revenue sports.

The MWC will apparently hold off on any move to 12 members until the Big East television contracts are renegotiated this fall on the odd-chance that a disappointing result could send Boise State and San Diego State back to the conference. The Big East will also potentially make additional moves that could affect the MWC as they seek another Western member, and if BYU does not become that member, the Big East will almost certainly be looking to  add an MWC school (with the Air Force Academy leading the way). If the Big East moves to 16 members, they would likely require two more western schools.

Upgrades and A10

With Georgia State leaving the CAA to move up in football and join the Sun Belt and the Atlantic 10 reportedly trying to woo VCU and George Mason as well, Old Dominion has reportedly been checking out their options. David Teel in the Daily Press reported that ODU officials have reached out to Conference USA about potentially becoming a member. The fledgeling football program will enter its second season in FCS in the fall, but the university has been interested in an eventual move to FBS since voting the program into existence — the potential instability in the CAA may drive them to move sooner.

CUSA is reportedly still considering bringing current A-10 member Charlotte on-board to allow their new FCS football program to make a quick jump up to the Bowl Subdivision and add a larger television market to their line-up. ODU could potentially join with them to bring the tally to 14 members after they both complete a transition period.

It isn’t clear if Old Dominion would depart for a new conference if VCU and George Mason were to remain in-place, but the possibility is clearly out there for the Virginia school. If they were to depart, the CAA would be down to just 8 football members and would be no-less geographically-challenged.

VCU may choose to stay put, however. It was also reported that Rams’ AD, Norwood Teague, was set to recommend to his university president Michael Rao that the school remain in the CAA for at least one more season. That recommendation might not carry much weight with Teague moving on this summer to the University of Minnesota, and it might not stop the Rams from opting to move to the Atlantic 10 for the 2013-14 basketball season.

Even if VCU stays, George Mason may still go, especially if it seems that Butler will join as well.

“The CAA is obviously experiencing some change,” Villanova athletic director Vince Nicastro said, describing it as a “fairly typical” result of the “natural evolution of the I-AA football world.”

The conference is not planning to sit still while these changes occur and plans are being formulated to deal with the football and basketball defections from the conference and to hopefully hold the CAA together as a viable conference.

“The CAA Commissioner is working proactively with the membership on a plan and we are focused on working with him on this strategy,” Nicastro noted.

New BCS playoff may be good for Big East

The BCS is changing, eliminating the current model of “automatic qualifier” conferences and going from a plan for one-off bowl games to a 4-team playoff that would co-exist with the Bowl system. A number of plans were discussed recently in meetings, and the model that appears to have the most support is the “Anchor” model.

In this model, the current BCS bowls would remain in place with conferences arranging to send their champions to various bowl games. The top two teams based on the ranking system would play “host” in whatever BCS bowl their conference was affiliated with (or in the event that a team from a conference without a BCS bowl affiliation was ranked highly, presumably they would displace someone) to either the third or fourth team. The winners of those games would then meet in the BCS title game a week or two later, which would be held in different locations from the bowl games.

Even though automatic qualifiers are going away, officially, five of the six current AQ conferences maintain an affiliation with a BCS bowl game — the Pac-12 and Big Ten have the Rose Bowl, the ACC has the Orange, the Big 12 has the Fiesta Bowl and the SEC has the Sugar Bowl. The four current bowls, plus two additional bowl games and the national championship game would be packaged together to forge a larger new television contract that would pay each affiliated & participating conference an even bigger sum.

The two new bowls would almost certainly include the Cotton Bowl, which had been a part of the “Bowl Coalition,” a predecessor of the current BCS. Other options for the new BCS bowl games aren’t known, but the new additions would create an opportunity for the Big East to sign on for a BCS Bowl affiliation for the first time since 2005.

Automatic qualifiers are going away in college football, but affiliations are alive and well. The Big East can perhaps even leverage Notre Dame to secure an affiliation with one of the new BCS Bowl Games and maintain a seat at the table with the major powers.

Updated (Late): It now appears that Texas State and UT-Arlington will both join the Sun Belt conference instead of the WAC, according to a CBS report. The Sun Belt could also soon add Appalachian State, Georgia Southern and Old Dominion as well, if Old Dominion and Charlotte do not join Conference USA.

Yesterday, CBSsports.com reported that the deal that would turn the two conferences into a single entity was likely off. That report said that it was still likely that the leagues could remain separate and share some resources, including television rights, marketing and scheduling resources.

Another report from the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, coming out a few hours later, conflicted with the earlier CBS report. Citing the chairman of the MWC Board of Directors, the Hawaiian paper said that the merger plan was “on course and proceeding as planned.”

A resolution to the matter should come by early June.

The merger will affect all of college athletics, as the jumbo-sized MWCUSA’s success or failure could be instructional for the higher-profile leagues as they explore the possibility of expanding further and further. More immediately, the addition of teams to the two leagues in order to reach a total size between 18 and 24 members would probably have a negative effect on the Sun Belt and WAC conferences, who seem most-likely to be raided.

Those raids could force the Sun Belt and WAC to merge into a second geographically-massive mid-major conference, force the WAC to disappear entirely or reclassify to FCS. Depending on how badly each conference is hit by the shifting of realignment, the WAC and Sun Belt could also look to the FCS ranks to reload their membership. For the Sun Belt, the obvious choices to upgrade may be schools from the Southern Conference, the Ohio Valley Conference and CAA (the WAC offers a number of Texas schools that may also be wooed by the Sun Belt). For the WAC, the best targets would be members of the Big Sky conference, Missouri Valley or to a lesser-extent, the Great West.

Both conferences would potentially be able to look at the Southland Conference membership.

The Big East remains on the lookout for one or perhaps two more western partners, but conference shifting at the highest levels of NCAA sports has otherwise seemed to slow down recently. Nonetheless, shifting isn’t over, and it now appears likely that less powerful conferences will begin to participate in the jockeying for position.

The CAA has already lost football and olympic sports member, Georgia State, to the Sun Belt. Will that be the last exit from the FCS’s best conference, or are more departures yet to come?

We reported that there may be some big plans for the CAA football conference that could change the fortunes of a number of schools. Merging conferences and the disappearance of others, might create the opening that the CAA needed for that to happen.

First, however, the MWCUSA needs to come to fruition.

“That’s just the way that I play,” he told the Tribune. “But with those passes, I don’t get that many turnovers off them. When I jump, I know where I’m throwing the ball. And it’s usually a hard pass. I just try to hit the open guy.”

Magic Johnson scored over 17,000 points in his NBA career, but had 10,141 assists as well, in 13 seasons. The Dallas Mavericks lead the league in assists-per-game while riding a passing game to last season’s NBA title.

According to McClure though, the pass is a lost art in the NBA. Professional offenses eschew bounce passes and often fail to timely swing the ball. Today’s NBA runs on isolation plays and pick-and-roll offenses and imitation is commonplace in all sports, leading college coaches to adopt many of the same strategies.

In college football, we discuss whether teams run the “pistol,” “spread-option” or if they have a “pro-style” offense, and when it comes time for a quarterback to prove himself to the scouts, the ones who have success in “pro-style” offenses seem to be viewed through a less-critical lens. Can a quarterback that succeeded in a shotgun or pistol offense learn to throw off of a three-step drop?

Can a point guard who ran a pass-heavy offense in college learn to master the pick-and-rolls and isolation plays that NBA coaches love? Or will they become less effective without the passing game to set things up?

When you can see a player operate in the same offense you would plan to put him in, projecting his success as a professional becomes much easier.

Whether the passing game should have an NBA-renaissance is largely irrelevant to the college game. Just as the USC Trojans churned out an insane number of NFL-draft pick quarterbacks (from Carson Palmer to John Booty to Mark Sanchez) using Pete Carroll’s pro-style offense as a showcase, top college basketball programs will also seek to adopt strategies that give their players their best chance at making it to the professional ranks.

So, while the NBA eschews the passing game, the NCAA will likely trend away from it as well, and we’ve already seen that trend at Villanova in recent years.

That doesn’t mean that all programs will give up on ball-movement. College sports will always feature greater variety in their schemes than the professional ranks. Partially that is because of a lower level of overall talent in college and a far lower level of experience.

While Villanova fans clamor for timely passing and ball-movement to open up shooters and create offense in the half-court set, there seems to be less and less of those things on the court. The Wildcats aren’t alone, but the offensive scheme appears more and more to mimic the schemes preferred by NBA coaches. Iso plays to create opportunities for one player or another are the tendency, pick-and-roll (or as Jay Wright often calls his version, ‘pick-and-pop’) plays will be leaned on as well.

When the pro’s do pass, it is usually an alley-oop, or a bounce pass to an open teammate for a shot. For the most part, the ball will do most of its moving while a guard dribbles it down the court, or into the lane.

“There still are some good passers in this league, but we rely on different things now – putting dominating players in certain positions,” Phoenix Suns guard Steve Nash told the Chicago Tribune. “I think 20 years ago and before, we played a much more cerebral game. There were more guys involved, more ball movement, more reading and reacting.”

Some might blame the AAU circuit for the decline in passing games. There isn’t a huge difference between some AAU games and the AND1 Streetball tour, so it is easy to place the blame on youth leagues of that sort.

High School coaches also get to spend some time working with players as well, and college coaches could force players to learn how to pass, but players don’t always need to display their passing skills in college to make it to the NBA. Especially with the pro-circuit’s declining emphasis on that area of game play.

With many elite college recruits already thinking ahead to their potential professional careers, the tendency for the foreseeable future will likely be to continue to move away from a passing game.

Now flush with revenue from six seasons in the Big East, the Blue Demons are talking about plans to build a 10-12,000 seat arena on campus — or at least nearby in their Lincoln Park neighborhood.

DePaul has made the NCAA tournament just 13 times in 32 seasons since moving their men’s basketball games to Rosemont, including their most-recent string of futile seasons. Many observers have drawn conclusions connecting those two phenomenon and the only solution is to move games back on campus.

Would moving back on campus bring in the fans, or more-importantly, the recruits?

Villanova has also moved games off-campus to an arena just a little further away than Allstate is from DePaul. While DePaul has struggled, Villanova only seems to have benefited from the arrangement. The Wildcats set the record for attendance at a college basketball game in Pennsylvania at the Wells Fargo Center, and they have had consistent sell-out crowds at the on-campus Pavilion.

What is the difference?

At least three factors work in Villanova’s favor with off-campus games. First, the Wildcats have moved their games from the suburbs to the city, making it easier for fans and alumni to get to games. DePaul moved their team from the city to a nearby suburb. Second, the Wildcats have only a part-time arrangement off-campus, allowing them to move just the 3-to-5 most-popular contests to the higher-capacity Wells Fargo Center, rather than attempting to fill 17,000 seats for contests with less-compelling opponents as DePaul does. Finally and most importantly, Villanova has not had the same long-term competitive futility that DePaul has suffered through.

DePaul isn’t the only school with plans to improve on-campus basketball facilities. UCF has a brand-new arena, Southern Methodist and Houston are both spending approximately $40 million to renovate their facilities, and USF is in the final stages of their own $35 million renovation of the Sun Dome. Even locally, Drexel has announced plans to renovate the DAC. Those renovations increase capacity, add luxury suites, concessions and video boards that create a game day product more comparable to professional competition.

Villanova Pavilion

Villanova’s situation isn’t perfect, however, the Pavilion was opened in 1986 at a cost of almost $25 million and was almost-immediately criticized. The arena was too small to fit a full-sized indoor track inside, and a strange roof configuration limited seating capacity and affected ambiance. In house concessions are also sub-par.

With a capacity of 6,500 at the on-campus arena and a season ticket waiting list currently in the thousands, the demand far exceeds Villanova’s current ability to capitalize on that. In an ideal world, every member of the waiting list would be able to buy a season ticket and make the larger compulsory donation to the university as well. As it stands, the University is limited to selling around 5,000 full-season tickets.

To that end, athletics department sources claim, Villanova has been working on plans for a “heavily renovated” Pavilion or even a brand-new on-campus arena. Details are scarce and the idea is very much in its infancy at this point.

The university has prioritized the $200 million campus expansion along Lancaster Avenue and might not want to ask Radnor Township to approve a larger traffic-producing athletic facility right now. While the Wells Fargo Center is available to the Wildcats, there is no desperate need for such expansion.

Maybe the addition of Temple University, and its 10,200-seat Liacouras Center to the Big East conference could accelerate Villanova’s plans. The Wildcats currently still have at least partial exclusivity as a college program at the Wells Fargo Center, which means access to the best basketball arena in the region. The need for an immediate on-campus advantage is lessened.

Will Villanova eventually join the on-campus building phenomenon? The ambition exists, but so did the ambition to construct a 25-40,000 seat football stadium in 1955. That stadium expansion never transpired, so despite the internal ambition to build nothing should be considered a done-deal until the contractors and architects are hired.