Bull-ogosphere: Big East Divisions Announced, Heath Gets Commit #6 For 2013

Quite a bit to catch you up on, so let's get started.

-- We know now who will be in the two football divisions that the Big East will form next season. Instead of a "zipper" layout which would have balanced out the far-reaching league, the Big East is more or less lined up geographically. USF will land in the East division, along with Cincinnati, Connecticut, Louisville, and Rutgers (the four other "old" members), plus UCF. That puts Temple in the West division, along with all the other new members -- Boise State, Houston, Memphis, San Diego State, and SMU. (Don't feel too terribly for Temple, though, because it only works out to one additional major road trip over two years, and then the conference is going to shuffle again when Navy and Mystery Team #14 join the league.)

Also announced on Tuesday: There will be a conference championship game beginning next year, hosted by the team with the best Big East record. And we'll find out who the 2013 conference opponents are, along with where those games will be played, on December 3. C'mon, Boise! Or at least San Diego (Collin's preference) or SMU (mine).

-- The early college basketball signing period begins today, and it looks like Stan Heath now has a whopping six commits for his 2013 class. Yesterday Heath continued to bolster his future frontcourt with the commitment of Dre Clayton from Orlando's Evans High School, according to Clayton's coach, the great Chucky Atkins.

Clayton is a solid 6'6", 250 pounds, and can line up at either forward position, although he figures to be more of a small forward. If all of USF's commits sign during this period, there will be a total of four bigs joining the Bulls next season, all rated three stars or higher.

-- While we're on the topic of recruiting, Asiantii Woulard broke his ankle in his final high school game last Friday night. (Because really, there weren't enough awful things happening to USF football this season.) He underwent successful surgery on Tuesday and expects to be back at full strength in a couple of months. There's a lot of message-board panic about Woulard going forward with an official visit to NC State over the weekend, but I don't see much reason to freak out. It's NC State, for one, and Tom O'Brien is one of the few coaches in America with even less charisma than Skip Holtz. Two, it's a basketball school and always will be, even if they did produce Laserface. And three, when have you ever heard a recruit tell everyone he had a terrible time on an official visit?

-- The volleyball team made the Big East tournament at 8-6 following a three-set sweep of Georgetown in the Corral on Sunday. USF will be the #6 seed in the eight-team draw in Milwaukee, and begins the tournament on Friday against third-seeded Notre Dame.

-- Good story from Andrea Adelson about B.J. Daniels and his post-college ambitions. We may have to start calling him Agent Daniels in the future.

-- Finally, I saved this for last because it still makes my head hurt to keep hearing Holtz talk about Bobby Eveld playing on Saturday. It still doesn't make any sense, and you can't even say it's to make Miami prepare for two different quarterbacks because a) Eveld and Matt Floyd have similar skill sets and b) Miami already saw Eveld play against them the last two seasons, so it's not like he's a mystery to them. Oh, and also c) you're going to burn someone's redshirt 10 games into a near-busted season? There is something to the "protect Floyd from the media" angle that Bulls247 tweeted about, but you can't shield him forever, especially if he starts some games next year. You even had a bye week to ease him into it. Might as well see what happens.