TCU makes big leap, accepts invite to Big East

BY STEFAN STEVENSON
sstevenson@star-telegram.com
TCU, located "Where The West Begins," is joining the East. The Big East Conference, to be exact.
The school announced Monday it has accepted an invitation to join the 32-year-old conference. TCU has competed in the Mountain West Conference since 2005 but will officially join the Big East on July 1, 2012. The Big East will be the sixth conference in TCU's history, and fourth since the Southwest Conference dissolved in 1995.
TCU will be the 17th member of the Big East and will compete there in all of its sports. The conference has actively pursued Villanova, already a member of the Big East's 16-team basketball conference, to increase its total of football participants to 10 when TCU joins. Villanova competes in the lower-tier Football Championship Subdivision and has been weighing its options for months.
The move to the Big East, one of six football conferences with automatic qualification status to the BCS, gives TCU a more direct path in competing for a national championship. The Horned Frogs (12-0) have won the MWC title the last two seasons and are No. 3 in the BCS standings. The MWC does not have automatic-qualifying status, which has made it harder for its teams, even when undefeated, to earn invitations to one of the five big-money BCS bowl games. The MWC is two years through a four-year cycle in which it's trying to earn automatic-qualifying status, but the announced departures of Utah (Pac-10) and BYU (independent), two of the league's cornerstones since its inception in 1999, made the league less desirable for TCU.
"Losing BYU and Utah was a significant blow to the conference," TCU athletic director Chris Del Conte said. "It was not the same league that we joined."
Until Boise State lost last week, it was likely that TCU would have been snubbed from playing in a BCS bowl. In the eight-team Big East, the Frogs would have been guaranteed a BCS bowl berth. Still, TCU is likely headed to the BCS' Rose Bowl on Jan. 1.
"I already felt like we could play with any of those schools," TCU football coach Gary Patterson said. "We were already 15-3 against automatic-qualifying schools. I don't think we'll change any. I've never done that in any league we've been a part of. We're going to have to win games whether we're in the Big East or the Mountain West."
Rumors of the move have been circulating since September, but TCU wasn't officially asked to join the conference until Sunday evening. Father John Jenkins, president of Notre Dame and chairman of the Big East CEO Executive Committee, made the offer to Del Conte by phone.
TCU's board of trustees held an emergency meeting Monday morning and voted unanimously to accept.
"In this moment in time, this was the best decision for TCU," board chairman Luther King said. "The subject was probably more exciting than tuition. It was a pretty long [meeting] for one subject. There were a lot of questions."
King, a member of the board for 18 years and the chairman for the last six years, said he can't recall a more heavily attended meeting. About 40 of the board's 49 members were present, either in person or by phone.
"I think it says something about the importance of today and what we're getting ready to do and the excitement around here," King said. "[The Big East] is certainly an enhanced platform. We appreciate being a part of the Mountain West. They've been very good to us. But it's time in this moment in history to move."
All of TCU's major sports coaches were on hand for the announcement. Two coaches -- men's basketball coach Jim Christian and baseball coach Jim Schlossnagle -- grew up on the East Coast. All were ecstatic about the prospect of joining the Big East. But the main and mutually beneficial ingredient between TCU and the Big East was the success of the TCU football team. The Big East's highest-ranked football team is No. 23 West Virginia.
"When the Big East looked to expand, we sought to add a member that would bring significant value to our current 16 outstanding member institutions," Big East commissioner John Marinatto said Monday. "A member that would make us not only bigger, but stronger and more competitive. Our focus was to add a quality institution to our football membership. Clearly, the tremendous success of the TCU football team adds enormous strength to the Big East roster."
The idea of TCU moving to the Big East was first broached Sept. 18 during TCU's football game with Baylor. Former TCU basketball player Jamie Dixon, now the head coach at Pittsburgh, talked to Del Conte about the Frogs coming to the league. The two met in the early '90s, when Dixon was an assistant coach at UC-Santa Barbara and Del Conte was a student.
"From that conversation, it was a dream and from that dream came a reality," Del Conte said. "The opportunity to be on ESPN and national exposure for our program is phenomenal....We are very fortunate to be in this position. If you play basketball in the state of Texas and you want to play against the best basketball in the country, you don't have to leave the state, you can come right here. Bring all comers to Fort Worth, bring it on. Everyone is going to have to pick up their game. If you're afraid of competition this is not the place to be."

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