Well its official. Brett McMurphy of CBSSports.com was the first to report that West Virginia was accepted to the Big 12 this morning at a 7 AM conference call. West Virginia will have to pay a $5 million dollar buyout fee to the Big East and will have to wait until the 2014-2015 season before moving to the Big 12.
With the Mountaineers leaving, the Big East is down to 5 football members, but it looks like reinforcements are on the way. Both Houston and UCF have given permission to their presidents to look for a new conference to join, and Big East officials have met with both Air Force and Boise State this week in efforts for them to join the conference.
Dick Weiss from the New York Daily News is reporting that the Big East will meet on Tuesday to issue invitations. Most have known about the football-only invites to Navy, Air Force, and Boise State and full membership invitations to UCF, SMU, and Houston, but I wonder who will be the 12th team now that West Virginia is gone.
Temple would be the obvious choice to come in as #12, but according to McMurphy the western schools would like BYU to join as a football-only member. BYU would be a national brand for the league, but who knows if the Cougars would want to end its football independence for the possibility of having a BCS bid?
We will keep you guys posted if anything else happens.