Conference Expansion: East Carolina Seeking Big East Membership

With Pitt and Syracuse heading to the ACC, the Big East now has to turn their focus to keeping the rest of the league together, while also looking for schools to replace them.

One such school might be East Carolina, who has reportedly applied for membership in the conference.

Now obviously, both in football and basketball circles, East Carolina isn’t going to completely fill the hole left by those two schools. At this point though, the Big East has to take what it can get if the conference is going to be able to survive.

It seems like any possibility of a Big East/Big 12 merger was squashed when the Pac 12 decided that they were going to stay put for the time being, and would not bring in the likes of Texas or Oklahoma. And it sounds like commissioner John Marinatto is doing everything that he can to make sure that all current Big East schools are on the same page.

As mentioned in the story, the service academies could be possibilities for the Big East as well. But there’s probably a good chance that they would be involved in a football-only capacity.

So adding East Carolina would at least give them a basketball program to work with.

No, I’m not saying they’ll reach the level of Pitt or Syracuse. But Jeff Lebo did lead the Pirates to their first winning season since the ’96-97 campaign, so at least they’re heading in the right direction.

Of course, they’d struggle to keep a consistent winning season streak going if they moved to the Big East, since that’s a different animal than Conference USA.

But once again, the Big East does have limited options. Which is why adding East Carolina might be a move that they have to make.

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