One of the matters that was discussed was the hiring of a new commissioner. Interim placeholder, Joe Bailey, told ESPN.com that they were prepared to begin interviewing search firms next week to help the league decide on a new leader. Originally, Bailey told reporters that the conference would have a new commissioner in place in “three-to-four months” and while that timeline still stands, the league’s membership would prefer to move quicker.

“We will interview search firms next week, and probably a decision [on which firm to use] will be made shortly thereafter and [we will] immediately go into the market,” interim commissioner Joe Bailey [told the Philadelphia Inquirer] Wednesday, the final day of the meetings here. “I think we will fast track it. To the degree that we can move the process quickly, [it] would be in the best interest of everyone.”

As for what the league is looking for, Bailey told ESPN:

“I’d say to you that there’s always the definition of an effective leader — on balance, that’s what you’re looking for,” Bailey said. “Someone that can take the conference and continue to move it forward over an extended period of time. You’re not looking for an individual that would be some sort of caretaker but somebody who would be able to grow with the conference itself. You’re going to find an enormous number of capable people interested in a position like this.”

A new television deal will undoubtedly be worth significantly more money to each member. Consultants reportedly told the conference that the conference would fetch $6.4 million per year for each football-only member (Boise State/SDSU/Navy) on the low-end (about double what current football members receive) and basketball members are expecting to at-least double their pay-out to around $3million per year (to compare, the Atlantic 10 splits about $1million 14 ways every year).

Some believe that with competitive bidding, the conference could do better than those numbers, however. Former CBS executive and current consultant, Neal Pilson, told the New York Times that, the league could approach or exceed the ACC’s $155 million annual deal with ABC/ESPN.

The plan appears to be to hold off on any further football expansion until a commissioner and television contract are in place. According to San Diego State athletic director Jim Sterk, the conference hopes to approach western candidates from a “position of strength” after securing a new deal. They hope to add at least one more western football-only member in 2015 when Navy joins the conference.

The conference has already had discussions with Air Force and BYU and is expected to make another push for those schools. Other candidates to become a western partner might be considered, however, if those two schools continue to opt to remain in their current situations.

It isn’t unthinkable that the league would take both schools if there were mutual interest.

“Notre Dame has options,” Dodds told Brett McMurphy. “I think they love their position. I certainly think they can continue to do what they’re doing and do it well and be a major player. But they have options.

“We’ve talked to Notre Dame about the Big 12 … They could put some football here [by playing a few non-conference games against Big 12 opponents].

Notre Dame doesn’t appear to be ready to make a move just yet. For much of the last year it was believed that the Irish preferred to lean east — with the ACC having the best chance of landing the valuable Notre Dame brand if they were to change their mind on staying independent. Now with FSU’s very public displeasure with the ACC’s television contract and their place in the conference power structure and rumors that four schools have reached out to the Big 12, the ACC seems less stable than ever before; and no longer in prime position to grab the Irish interest.

That is where the Big 12 may have an opening. Potentially offering members a payout of $20-$30 million per year, the Texas-dominated conference would be an attractive platform for the Notre Dame football program — IF they were to join a conference.

That is a big if, however, as the Irish are still publicly very committed to the Big East conference and football independence.

“I know right now we’re focused 100 percent on [rebuilding the Big East] but there’s no question contingency plans [about joining another conference] on those pay grades higher than me have been discussed and will be discussed,” ND basketball coach Mike Brey told CBSSports.com on Monday. “[I]f it doesn’t work out [in the Big East], everybody’s got a spot for us [in another league].”

Outside of Notre Dame, however, it appears that the Big 12 is going to have a fight over whether to add any additional schools to the league. Texas has a lot of say in conference proceedings and the Longhorns aren’t convinced that a conference championship game is beneficial.

“I don’t think it needs to expand,” Dodds told CBSSports.com. “We could expand but the question is ‘do we need to expand?’ In my mind 10 is perfect because you play everybody in football and there is a double-round-robin in basketball.

“When we get into whatever system we get in for a championship, I think those coaches that play in a conference championship are going to say ‘What in the world are we doing?’”

If those championship games are truly as lucrative as people think, though, the answer to Dodd’s question may be, “laughing all the way to the bank.” For schools like Texas and Oklahoma, in no danger of running an athletics deficit, perhaps the few million dollars that a championship game might represent isn’t worth the additional step between themselves and on-the-field glory.

Either way, even if expansion occurs in the Big 12, there is less and less talk of Louisville and other Big East schools among the candidates.

The basketball coaches have told the conference athletic directors that they prefer to invite all 18 schools to compete in the tournament. Athletic directors are going to have to work out the details of such an arrangement, which would probably put the 15- through 18-seeds into a “play-in” game on the Monday of tournament week.

Those play-in games would have to be at a neutral site, with Madison Square Garden preferred if the conference can extend it’s stay at the World’s Most Famous Arena to block the professional teams that call it home out for an entire week. If not, league officials have said that the location of the games would have to be close to New York City to allow the winning teams to easily travel to play in the next round at MSG.

If the Big East can’t host the play-in games at MSG and puts them out to bid, the Barclays Center in Brooklyn might be an option, but the Atlantic 10 tournament taking place there in the same week would probably create some issues. The home of Seton Hall basketball, the Prudential Center, is another option — just two stops on NJ Transit from Madison Square Garden, but a deal would have to be worked out with the New Jersey Devils hockey team, who control the arena.

If neither of those arenas were available, the Big East could look to Atlantic City. The Atlantic 10 recently abandoned Boardwalk Hall after a successful run there and the city is hoping to land another big college basketball event. A pair of play-in games isn’t quite what Boardwalk Hall was looking for, but the Big East is more high-profile than most of the other conferences they could reasonably book that week.

Beyond that, there is the aging Nassau Colliseum on Long Island that is the primary home of the New York Islanders hockey team, the Izod Center arena in New Jersey’s Meadowlands complex that has no primary tenant anymore, and a number of smaller arenas throughout the New York Metro Area.

Campus sites could also be considered, but that would make travel planning for the play-in teams more complicated, with potential red-eye flights needed from Houston or Tampa to New York on Monday night.

All current school coaches were in attendance except for Jim Calhoun (who has had numerous health issues recently) and Rick Pitino; SMU’s Larry Brown and June Jones were also absent, apparently choosing the recruiting trail over the meetings, and Memphis coach Josh Pastner was similarly absent.

The most interesting development from the first day of the meetings was that the conference had invited representatives from NBC and Fox to give presentations about their networks and their plans for the conference’s television deal. No numbers were discussed at the time, since ESPN has an exclusive negotiating window with the conference through the early fall. The presentations allow conference officials to “feel out” the interest from those networks before sitting down with ESPN.

From the Orlando Sentinel:

Representatives from NBC and Fox Sports networks outlined the value they see in the Big East, noting the league will have teams in 13 of the top 50 media markets spanning four time zones in 2013. Once newcomers UCF, Houston, Memphis, SMU, Temple, San Diego State and Boise State all join the league, the Big East will represent nearly 32 million television households — twice as many as other conference in the country.

ESPN added:

“There was excitement over the TV presentation possibilities,” [Cincy coach Mick] Cronin said. “The Big East can’t negotiate now but there was interest in our product. You could see people spending valuable time on the presentations and they say we’ll be even stronger with the media market changes in adding Dallas, Houston and Orlando, which only helps the big picture.”

They also met with media consultants who advised on how to “position the league to best maximize TV revenue.” The hope is that multiple interested bidders will drive the price up for the conference’s television rights.

The ACC has a redone contract with ESPN that has their teams slated to earn an average of $17 million per year, but that contract never touched the open market. The ACC was locked into a deal with the worldwide leader that they had signed a year ago, so ESPN was only bidding against themselves. The Big East will have the benefit of competition from Fox Sports and NBC, both of which are trying to expand their college sports offerings.

All of the athletic directors — basketball and football schools —met together during the meetings. Apparently, even when the football coaches and athletic directors were discussing their preferences for the BCS playoff format (they prefer a system where only league champions are included).

The revenue that the league is able to derive from that playoff, along with the television contract, will constitute an important part of the FBS schools’ annual revenues. If the numbers are favorable, the league could emerge stronger than before.

“Everything that’s being discussed at some level is going to include the performance of the teams in each conference,” Big East associate commissioner Nick Carparelli told ESPN. “If you look historically at the number of teams we’ve had ranked, revenue-wise, we’ll do fine. Some conference may end up making more revenue than others but it’s probably deserved. And in the end, the pool of money is going to be so much greater this time around, we feel pretty confident we’ll have an increase in revenue we will be getting.”

There has also been concern that some new members, specifically Boise State, would renege on their commitment to the conference. Boise had planned to put its basketball team and other sports into the WAC, but that conference has seemed to implode and is down to just five members going forward. Boise has not yet officially withdrawn from the Mountain West Conference, and there was speculation that the Olympic sports drama could have them thinking twice. Reports came out that they had been talking to MWC officials a few weeks ago, but MWC officials told Brian Murphy of the Idaho Statesman that it was a “one time opportunity” to reconsider and that Boise had ended the discussions last week.

Tomorrow the meetings continue. Divisions will be discussed and a few options for how to structure the new, larger league will be generated but no decision would be finalized until later in the summer. Football will have to be divided into two divisions, but there has not been any indication whether basketball or olympic sports will also have a split format.

After the first day of the meetings ended, Jay Wright told the Orlando Sentinel that he was confident about the league’s future.

“We’ve been through this so many times,” he told the paper. “I remember seven years ago when Miami, Boston College and Virginia Tech left, everybody thought that was going to be it. We thought we were done. And we wound up being better than ever. And so I really look at it the same way. It’s going to be different, but it’s going to be better and it’s going to be exciting.”

According to the University of Pittsburgh, their athletic director had begun discussing a 2013 exit with Marinatto, but when the commissioner resigned, the conference offices stopped responding on the issue. The Panthers’ program had been scheduled to leave the conference a year later on July 1, 2014, based on conference bylaws, but West Virginia’s early release and the conference’s new additions have encouraged Pittsburgh and Syracuse to seek an early exit as well.

The lawsuit surprises many because it was widely believed that the early exit of the two schools heading to the ACC would be granted by the conference.

On the suit, Pitt released the following statement:

“Since the University of Pittsburgh made the decision to join the Atlantic Coast Conference, we have done everything possible to move through a smooth transition with the Big East. Though we have been excluded from governance activities, meetings, decision-making and operational functions of the conference, we have been positive and respectful of the Big East.

“On September 26, 2011, when we notified the Big East that we were withdrawing from the conference, we paid the first half of the exit fee of $5 million. When the 2012-13 season is complete, we will have competed in the Big East for two seasons, thus providing ample time to re-form the Big East Conference for the future. Beginning with the 2013-14 season, the Big East will actually have four more football playing schools and more schools overall than when we gave notice that we were moving to a different conference.

“Although the Big East’s stated position is that we must stay through the 2013-14 season, the Big East acknowledged publicly that a discussion of our departure after the 2012-13 season was appropriate. A few weeks ago, Steve Pederson met with John Marinatto to begin the process to work toward an exit after this upcoming academic year. The Commissioner indicated that he was doing this with the authorization of the Chair of the Big East Presidents. However, attempts to contact the Big East in the following weeks to move the process forward have been unsuccessful, leading us to conclude that negotiations would not occur. Given the change in leadership of the Big East and the lack of response to our attempted contacts, on Friday, May 11, 2012, we filed a law suit in the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, seeking resolution of this matter. We are confident in our position as stated in the complaint, but believe that this matter is best resolved between the parties. We have notified the Big East of this action, and continue to hope that our departure can be accommodated through private negotiations.”

The Panthers claim to be concerned that the conference may try to hold them and Syracuse to their full withdrawal period, causing them to file the lawsuit. The suit was filed in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, but don’t count on another parallel suit in the Providence courthouse (the conference could file a motion to transfer the case to a Philadelphia courthouse, but that may be denied). The Big East will most likely prioritize exit negotiations with Pitt and Syracuse and settle this suit out of court. Like West Virginia, the Panthers will have to pay money in excess of the $5 million withdrawal fee, but their early release is likely to be granted.

“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.

“I thought that the basketball and football schools coexisted beautifully up to the point when Syracuse, Pittsburgh and West Virginia departed,” Tranghese told the NY Times on Monday. “At that point, I thought the basketball schools ought to take a real hard look. Whether they’re going to, I don’t know.”

Suggesting as he did, that the basketball schools of the Big East — Providence, Seton Hall, DePaul, St. John’s, Marquette, Georgetown and Villanova — would seriously consider splintering from the conference to form a new league, has many on the internet debating the possibility. As the Providence Journal has noted, relations between the football and non-football sides of the conference are not at war with each other, and the basketball schools have tended to approve measures that the football schools claim they require to move forward to a more lucrative future for everyone.

Villanova and Georgetown in particular (but they are not alone in this) have no interest in leaving the newly reconstructed Big East conference. Perhaps an offer to play in the “New” ACC would tempt those schools, but barring such a power-conference move, the feelings of administrators lean heavily toward the big TV money and exposure that the Big East conference can afford — even with SMU and Houston on board. TV revenue more than covers the cost of flights and the new footprint puts these schools’ brands in new markets.

If a split were coming, the Providence Journal argues, the basketball schools would have blocked bids for UCF, SMU and other new football-first members.

A fracture between the basketball and football schools has been predicted by observers for almost two decades now. So far, despite changes on the football side of the conference, the oft-predicted split has never been as close as speculators think.

That hasn’t stopped now-outsider, Tranghese’s quote from pushing the Boston Globe’s Mark Blaudschun from writing that John Marinatto’s resignation (reportedly encouraged by the basketball schools) was a signal that the hoops contingent would split apart. Blaudschun’s take on the issue reads like the kind of speculation that is discussed on Twitter or messageboards and quickly shot down by people in the know.

A Tennessee-based blogger who focuses on the SEC (and on finding new ways to insult “lesser” conferences like the Big East) takes it a step further. He suggests that the basketball schools not only split, but expand nationally, all the way to Spokane, Washington, to add Gonzaga (over 2,000 miles from a few of the members he proposed for a “Catholic West” division). That model would include almost all of the best Catholic school basketball programs in the country — and it could possibly bankrupt each and every one of them.

Big East basketball has some great brands among the non-football schools and brings plenty of value, but that value is multiplied tremendously by being joined at the hip with the football schools. Alone, a basketball-only league would likely generate much-lower television revenues (perhaps better than the Atlantic 10, but not significantly) and certainly not enough to support the nationwide travel required to build a conference that included schools on both coasts.

Success in college sport is directly tied to money-spent and small private schools can’t afford to offer a robust and well-funded athletics program without money coming in to cover the costs. There are exceptions, Butler got to the NCAA title game twice on a budget dwarfed by the likes of Marquette. They also had some very good under-the-radar prospects on those teams, including an NBA Draft lottery pick. They missed the NCAA tournament in 2012 after 7 conference losses and a fourth-place finish in the one-bid Horizon League.

Big East basketball-only schools may all be running to the National Championship game annually, but they are able to produce consistent success because they are big spenders. Most of the programs also turn a profit on the sport and are able to put money back  into their other athletic programs.

The average revenue per Big East basketball program is $9,632,644, while Atlantic 10 schools generate just $3,898,769 from men’s basketball. Schools like Xavier have strong enough local support that allow them to generate significantly more revenue than most in the league, but if they spent at the same level as Marquette or Georgetown, they’d likely break even or lose money on basketball.

When you hear conference realignment rumors, it is best to keep two things in mind: (1) College presidents aren’t widely known as risk-takers and (2) with rising costs of competing, guaranteed revenue is the most important factor in all athletics decisions.

In the case of the Big East Catholic schools, the formation of a new basketball-only league would be a tremendous risk. Nobody can tell you exactly what the television value of that league would be, but few believe it would be better than what the current Big East offers. Furthermore, most people expect that the Big East, even with the departures of Syracuse, Pittsburgh and West Virginia, and the import of five new full members (and three football-only members), will get a significant increase in television revenue soon.

Why? There are more hours of sports television to fill on cable networks than ever before. ESPN runs multiple channels including the ABC Network’s sports programming and CBS, NBC and Fox are all entering the all-sports cable network marketplace. Then there are regional networks and conference-specific networks and a myriad of digital outlets hungry for programming.

Demand is high, and supply is still limited. The NBC Sports Network is so hungry for college sports programming that they have guaranteed FCS leagues nationally-broadcast games — the CAA will have 5 of them, while the Ivy League will have 6. The reconstructed Big East will be the 6th-best football conference in the country and will remain among the best basketball brands and products — that package has to be enticing for a network with airtime to fill, and the more bidders, the higher the price tag.

Media consultant and former CBS Sports president Neal Pilson told the NY Times that the Big East could surpass the approximately $155 million-per-year deal it turned down last spring.

“I think if they stay together and negotiate as a single unit, I think they can come away with a reasonably favorable result,” Pilson told the Times. “Even more than what ESPN offered a year and a half ago. I think the competition will drive it.”

College presidents will always choose to take the least-risky path to the most money possible. Splitting would be contrary to those tendencies.

Big East commissioner John Marinatto speaks to reporters (AP Photo/Stew Milne)

Conference realignment cost Dan Beebe his job with the Big 12 and now it has cost John Marinatto his as well.  The Big East commissioner tendered his resignation, according to a press release put out this morning. He was just the third person to hold that position since the league was founded.

“After a great deal of thought and prayer, I have decided to step down as Commissioner of the BIG EAST Conference and formally advised our Board of Directors,” said Marinatto’s statement.  “I have been associated with this league for my entire adult life and have had the tremendous honor of serving as its Commissioner since 2009.   Our recent expansion efforts have stabilized the Conference for the long term, and we are likewise well positioned for our very important upcoming television negotiations.  As a result, I felt this was the right time to step aside and to let someone else lead us through the next chapter of our evolution.  I am proud of what we have been able to accomplish and would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank both our membership and my staff for their unwavering encouragement, support and loyalty — especially during this past year.  I am extremely confident about the future of this league that I love very much.”

According to CBS Sports, the Big East presidents have asked John Marinatto to resign yesterday,  just two weeks before the conference’s annual meeting of presidents in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. ESPN’s report claims that the non-football members were upset about how they had no voice in the expansion process.

Marinatto lead the conference through a round of expansion that started with the aborted addition of TCU in fall 2010 and ended with the current plan to have 18 basketball schools and 13 football schools starting in 2013. The moves, or the need for them in the wake of three members leaving for the ACC and Big 12, did not inspire confidence in the commissioner, however.

He also wanted to accept a television contract offered by ESPN a year ago. Georgetown officials convinced the conference members to vote down the deal that they felt was a “low-ball” offer.

More changes are coming to the Big East and a strong leader is needed to guide the league through them. More importantly, however, the conference plans to bring its television rights to the negotiating table in the fall and hopes to secure a deal that will pay members enough money to buy their loyalty.

In the mean time, the Big East has hired Joseph A. Bailey III as interim commissioner, and he will stay in that position while the league searches for a permanent commissioner. Bailey has significant football experience, as CEO of the Miami Dolphins, COO of the World League/NFL, Vice President of the Dallas Cowboys and other positions. He has also served as Managing Director of RSR Partners, a recruiting firm.

“Joe is a proven leader who will do a terrific job guiding the conference through this time of transition,” said Genshaft.  “His experience as a manager and his knowledge of the sports industry make Joe uniquely qualified to serve as interim Commissioner.  He will move the Conference forward with a steady-hand as we explore new opportunities.”

The conference also announced that The Boston Consulting Group was hired to review the organizational design and structure of the Big East. They hope that the consulting firm will help the conference to maximize media rights and branding going forward.

Marinatto told the NY Times that he will take some time off to “recharge” before deciding on his next career move. He will have to determine whether to seek another college athletics position or to go into a private business.

Rutgers athletic director Tim Pernetti was a finalist for the Big East job the last time it was open, and it is possible that the conference will consider him as a candidate again. In addition to experience as an athletic director, Pernetti has experience as a television executive with a precursor to the CBS Sports Network. That may help him to get the attention of the Big East presidents, looking toward their own TV rights coming up for negotiation soon.

Other candidates suggested by CBS Sports’ Brett McMurphy are Nick Carparelli, Kevin Weiberg, Kit Morris, Greg Shaheen, and Tom Odjakjian.

Carparelli is currently a senior associate commissioner with the Big East conference, with football being his area of expertise. He had previously been the director of football operations at the New England Patriots and a football assistant or administrator at Notre Dame and Syracuse.

Odjakjian is an associate Big East commissioner who has been chiefly responsible for television negotiations and scheduling for football and basketball since 1995. Prior to the Big East, he worked as the Director of College Sports for ESPN and worked at ECAC and Princeton University prior to that.

Shaheen is the recently-ousted NCAA official who was responsible for overseeing the day-to-day operations of the hugely-popular basketball tournament as well as over $6 billion in contracts with ESPN and CBS. He was extremely popular with school officials, but the NCAA opted to replace him instead of promoting him.

Weiberg is the former commissioner of the Big 12 conference and has most recently served as the deputy commissioner of the Pac-12, since 2010. He has oversight responsibility for Pac-12 daily operations, including governance, enforcement, compliance, sport management, championships, football bowl relationships, officiating, and television administration.

Morris is the Director of College Sports Marketing at Nike and has extensive experience in the sports industry.

It isn’t clear that this list is a complete or final list of candidates, but certainly these names will be on the Big East presidents’ minds going forward. The next commissioner will likely have a background in football and/or television to allow the conference to position itself for a stronger television contract and more stability going forward.

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.