By WoadBlue
SouthernPigskin.com

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If the Big East added Navy for football to make Notre Dame happy, it added Memphis out of desperation to prop up both its basketball quality and bowl ties.

Memphis is a city that invariably is Top 10 nationally, usually Top 5, in every violent crime category. Its city government and public school system are definitive examples of incompetence and corruption racing to see which wins. The University of Memphis isn’t remotely close to being a semi-elite state university, and its sports teams have a history of corruption. Two of its three basketball Final Four trips have been vacated.

If the Big East added Navy for football to make Notre Dame happy, it added Memphis out of desperation to prop up both its basketball quality and bowl ties.

How long can Notre Dame be content in a conference for basketball and non-revenue sports that has the likes of Memphis, Central Florida, South Florida, and Cincinnati? How long can Notre Dame be content to partner with Big East football for bowls and scheduling when the Big East is no longer a Big Time conference?

Big Time status for conferences is determined by football status. Right now that means that being a Bowl Championship Series automatic qualifier conference equals being Big Time. Indications increasingly are that automatic qualifiers will go the way of dinosaurs, with the four major bowls instead allying on their own with conferences. What we will see is the Rose taking the Pac and Big Ten, the Fiesta taking the Big XII, the Sugar taking the SEC, and the Orange taking the ACC. The Big East will be left high and dry, becoming in effect the new and bigger CUSA.

And that is the other reason that Rick Pitino won his long argument for the BE to add Memphis. Yes, the Memphis basketball competitiveness and fan base size will help a league bleeding badly from the defections of Syracuse, Pitt, and WVU. But the plum is that FedEX founder Fred Smith is both a Memphis Tiger booster and the most important mover and shaker behind the Liberty Bowl. If Memphis is in the BE, the Liberty Bowl will have the BE as host conference. And that means that the BE being demoted from BCS AQ status, because AQ will no longer exist, means that the BE hosting a bowl like the Liberty, against the SEC, is invaluable.

But Memphis is not going to make Notre Dame happy to sign up for the BE forever.

When I first proposed that the ACC add Navy for football as a central move to entice ND to join, most responded that the idea was crazy, because Navy would never risk trying to compete in a Big Time conference and Navy could not possibly mean as much to ND as I said. Navy does mean that much to ND and ND means that much to Navy, as the various sources for both schools have indicated since Navy agreed to join the BE. The Irish-Midshipmen rivalry is going to continue annually, regardless of any conference affiliations. That will remain an annual game even if Navy-Air Force is not.

Various Navy officials, including football coach Ken Niumatalolo, have noted that the academy’s decision to join the BE for football will mean many changes and require more aggressive recruiting. Navy is already moving full speed ahead to play Big Time football. Now is the time for the ACC to wave Memphis, and Central Florida, at both ND and Navy and tell both that the door is open to a league appropriate for such prestigious universities.

As I have explained before, Navy cannot hope to play ACC basketball, but it can compete in both ACC lacrosse and baseball. If the ACC were to add Navy for football and the league’s two most important non-revenue sports, it would need to add another school for its 16th member in basketball. The best choice probably would be Saint Johns, to have a school located in New York City. The Johnnies have as much basketball history as Syracuse, and with them in the ACC, the ACC tournament in Madison Square Garden every second or third year would make the nation, and most of the northeast, forget that BE basketball ever mattered. And Saint Johns, which has the best baseball history of any school located in the northeast, would give the ACC 16 baseball members (Syracuse does not play baseball) and eight lacrosse members.