Quick Hits on Navy's Future Conference

With the current Big East confirmed to be breaking up on July 1st of this year there are plenty of items up in the air about the conference Navy will be joining in 2015. This is going to be a quick summary of what we know and, just as importantly what we do not know, at this point in time. Who is going?

It seems weird to ignore the Catholic Seven schools that instigated the final breakup of the conference as we knew it, but as Navy is to be a football only member of the new league set up they are irrelevant to the Mids. Of the eight Big East football schools in 2012 the Midshipmen will not see Louisville, Syracuse and Pitt (ACC) or Rutgers (Big 10) on an annual basis.

Who is staying?

Assuming there are no more defections, which is not easy to do at the rate the schools have been jumping the Big East ship, then Connecticut, Cincinnati, Temple, and South Florida will be all that is left of what we saw this year.

Who is coming?

Between now and 2015 the former Big East will seem like a revolving door of schools as some enter and some leave. By the time Navy is gearing up for conference play in 2015 they will be joined by Memphis, Central Florida, SMU, Houston, Tulane, and East Carolina.

Is there a name?

It seems that there has been plenty of talk behind the scenes on the conference future as news leaked late last week that the "America 12 Conference" is the leading choice to be the new name. One of the big clues is that Covington & Burling, the conference's law firm, purchased and registered the domain name America12.org on Tuesday. This could of course mean nothing, plenty of domain names get purchased and never used, but this is at least a clue into what the powers that be are thinking.

There are those, however, that are opposed to this name for a couple of reasons. Firstly some think it is too similar to Conference USA which is a lower tier name that the new conference doesn't want to be associated with (especially with so many CUSA teams making the switch). Secondly, there is an argument against a numerical conference name, especially with no twelfth teams yet set. That leads to.....

Will there be a twelfth (or more) team?

Signs point to yes. The push within league circles right now is to make Tulsa team number twelve and stick with that number. This would enable two divisions of six teams (hopefully not called Leaders and Legends) and a conference title game (spinning the dollars).

So that is where we are at right now. Whether or not things will look like this in a month is really anyone's guess.