A Brief Rundown of the numbers in the BIG EAST so far.  The first number is national ranking in points for, the second is points against.

Rutgers:  45th 11th 

WVU: 12th   37th

Pitt: 70th  51st

Cincy:  9th 15th

Louisville:  112th 13th

USF:  15th 42nd

‘Cuse: 76th 68th

UConn: 88th 44th

Now, here are the teams we have played so far this season, and their rankings so far.  In the brackets are the points we scored in the games we played against them.

FIU: 64th 34th (17)

UK:  118th 84th (24)

Marshall: 117th 61st (13)

North Carolina: 59th 19th (7)

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Okay, I know last year we were a running team with Bilal pounding it, but I think we need to change it up this year.

We're at around 50/50 passing to run if you pull out sacks from the run game:

Passing: 129 attempts

Running: 131 (147 - 16 sacks on TB and Sunny)

When we pass, we're averaging 7.41 yards per attempt against 3.3 yards per run, and if you take out Chris Philpott's 2 runs for a total of 48 yards... we're averaging 3 yards per run.  So if we run 15 times at our average, we're making it 45 yards.  If we throw fifteen times and miss 5 of them we're going to hit 74 yards.

I know that there's only three things that can happen when you throw the ball, and two of them are bad. And that we've had 8 interceptions this season to 4 fumbles.

I also know that you run the ball to open up the passing game.  Well, the passing game is wide open right now, we need to pass to open up the running game, and that's not going to happen if they know that when Dominique comes into the game he's going to run or that we're almost always going to run on first down.

The Other Thing:

We should also start rolling with the Hurry Up when TB is in the game.  Stein is good in the slow mo huddle style, but TB seems to do better when they've got him rolling right along.  He's steadier at a fast pace, and I think we've all noticed that about him.  I don't know why it is, but if the shoe fits, wear it.   Get some of those cool flip boards Oregon uses that have pictures on them to represent the plays and start flinging that ol' pigskin right along...

One other thing:

Can we please nickname Teddy Bridgewater "Tuberculosis"?  He's going to make you cough up blood!  It's ominous, but not too scary for the kids.

1)  Let's go English Premier League style on it.  Bring in a lower tier conference, establish relegation.  The top two teams in the lower conference move up to the higher conference for the next year and get paid out the same amount of money as the rest of the higher league conference.  The lowest two teams in the higher league move down and get paid the amount of money the lower conference gets.  I'm talking' bout relegation, baby!.

2)  The Big East Invitational Basketball Tournament:  we offer 24 schools the chance to join the Big East based upon their winning percentages in football over the last five years.  However, they have to participate in a basketball playoff to be admitted, the highest 6 teams get in -- contingent on beating St. Johns and DePaul.

3)  Call in to win:  We start a radio channel online and ask for business cards from the head coach of every team that wants to join.  We put them in a fishbowl, and draw them out at random after playing Lady Gaga's Poker Face, and say the name of the coach.  He has 6 minutes to call in or he doesn't get into the conference.

4)  American Football Idol:  Pretty self explanatory.  I say we use Bobby Knight, Lee Corso, and Bill Simmons as our judges.  Bobby Knight'll definitely be the Simon Cowell.

5)  Raid a FCS conference so we can claim for the next 5 years we're waiting for our teams to build up.  Except for Appalachian State which will probably be competitive from the beginning.

6) Over the Top:  An arm wrestling tournament judged by Sylvester Stallone.

7)  Magic 8 Ball:  We call together every program that wants in and have their coach ask "Do I get to join the Big East?"

But what happens with Damarcus Smith since he didn't qualify?  Does he lose a year of eligibility or his redshirt year or does he come in with a full 5 years ahead of him?

Also, to talk random smack, I think UCF would be a really bad choice for the BIG EAST,  I don't like the idea of adding a school that is currently embroiled in a recruiting controversy. 

Four more words needed.

I have no clue what's going to happen, I refuse to conjecture on it anymore, but I needed something to do instead of writing my paper that's due tomorrow, so here ya go.  

I screwed up and didn't move Texas A&M out of the Big 12 and into the SEC, but this is the distance from Louisville to our varied non Big East possibilities.  Big 12 is broken up based upon assumed divisions, but I'm sure there'll be something weird like East/West which will really screw the travel times.

And I used 60mph because it's hard to average more than that with bathroom breaks and food.  Also, removing Texas A&M out of the equation would not have a major impact on the Big 12 nor majorly increase the SEC West distances/times.

*update*

Added our current commute times to the teams that are staying.

Added the candidates for membership people are talking about, decided not to bother with guessing which ones will make it so I didn't calculate their effect on times, but all of them except Air Force and UCF should have minimal impact.

I've been looking through the mass of comments on the post where I've tracked developments since yesterday, and I just wanted to cover a couple of my personal thoughts before I go to sleep.  Because I'm tired and don't want to worry about coherent sentence structure, let us go to bullet points.

SEC:

1. The SEC does not need media markets.  It's true, they've become a giant conference murdering version of Notre Dame.  They have a very strong lock on the South and on the national championship game and that puts them in the catbird seat for their next TV contract which will come sooner than later.
2. The only way the SEC can hurt themselves through expansion is moving to a Yankee or Northern state. I can see them taking Mizzou, but definitely cannot see them taking Kansas.  It's just too far of a reach for their fan base... despite the agrarian nature the major SEC supporters like to see in themselves, I doubt many identify with Kansas.
3. The SEC does not need a stronger football conference.  Their biggest concern is beating up on themselves too much through the season, and they need to avoid having every team at two losses by the end. 
4. The SEC could benefit from improving their basketball, though.  
5. Tickets do matter. Rivalries do matter.
6. Alcohol matters... to me.

ACC:

1. Not happening.
2. They want to range up and down the East Coast and the only thing they need to do to be the strongest basketball conference is kill the Big East, which is pretty much done.

Big 10:

1. Slightly more likely than the Pac-12, less likely than the ACC or SEC.
2. The only reason it's more likely than the Pac-12 is around 2090 miles.  That's the distance from UofL to Los Angeles.
3. Even if Notre Dame goes we're not.
4. It's all about the academics.  The Big 10 is the only conference in the AQ that actually cares about that, and it's a big selling point for their schools.

Big Tweast:

1. Might, no probably, will happen.
2. Not a great idea, but better than any of the other options that'd be below this.
3. We'd have to eat some lower teams up and play some really odd days.  I'm talking Tuesdays, Wednesdays, 10 A.M. the day after Thanksgiving, at three A.M. after the World Poker Invitational is off, whatever, if we wanted to have a chance of keeping a bid.

Football Independent:

1. We depend on our ravenous nationwide fan base to secure us a contract that'll get us paid real good.
2. Actually, that's not a bad idea, we get what, $3 million/year from the Big East?  A $40 million/10 year contract would be good enough to tide us over until we can make some bigger strides, plus we could improve our scheduling.
3. Plus if we kept the Big East together to keep our basketball in, they'd probably still be able to get a decent contract.
4. Okay, yes, it is a bad idea unless we all agree to move out of Louisville and establish insular diehard communities of Cardinal fans throughout the nation.

Joining a lower rated conference/not having an auto bid.:

1.  Please god no.
2. I can't believe I still used sentences when I'm rolling with bullet points.
3. Thanks to anyone who posted links that I added into the Pitt/'Cuse to ACC post as time went on.

I'm sitting here, now, thinking one last thought:
The only thing that auto bids matter for is money.  AQ conferences get the cash, it's true.  If we're concerned about money then yes, we should freak out about where we go.

If we're concerned about success, we should be looking at where we are as a fan base and as a team, not to others. 

Pitt and 'Cuse are in talks with the ACC according to ESPN and the NY Times.

****EDIT****

Pitt and 'Cuse have applied to the ACC , according to ESPN's Heather Dinich.

The new news is that Pitt and 'Cuse have officially applied and that the ACC has unanimously approved increasing the cost to buyout from 10-13 million to 20 million which means... the current ACC teams ain't going no where.

Update:

Yep, it is done.

This would almost freak me out but we beat UK last night!!!!

***Update***

I missed this (probably because I don't like basketball) and triviageek caught it:

The ACC's pillaging may continue with Rutgers and UConn... great.

And the new new news is that UConn is desperately seeking the ACC according to ESPN. 

I've got to say... at this point I WANT things to keep moving at this pace.  I don't want to go through next week wondering what's going to happen, I'd like to have it all worked out this week.  Towards the entire knowing what's going on thing, it's important to know that Texas Tech, Texas, Oklahoma and OK State are almost definitely in at the Pac 12

***Update on ACC tv contract***

according to Yahoo! Sports:

Swofford said adding two schools allows the league to renegotiate its 12-year, $1.86 billion television contract that began this season, “and we’re confident that will have a positive impact.”

That answers the question of why the 20 million dollar buyout matters.

***and on Rutgers***

Glad everyone was very transparent about their wheeling and dealing before the death blow:

 

Rutgers has not been as visible as some schools have been nationally, but Pernetti insists that plenty has been going on behind the scenes.

“The bottom line is we have been and will continue to engage in these conversations with several parties and evaluate. In the end, the answer is going to be whatever is best for us is what we’re going to do.”

 

So...basically, ignore everything below, I'm pretty sure my conference thoughts are useless.

***The original post which is entirely pointless other than the farfetched hope that UofL lands in the SEC***

Well, this is interesting and distracting news on Battle for the Governor's Cup day but not anything I think we can put off unnecessarily freaking out about and speculating on until Monday.

There's basically four options that I see for UofL to end up in a BCS conference if (more like when with the way discussions seem to be resolving these days) :

One, UK finally admits that they need some basketball competition in the SEC so people stop talking about how lame the SEC is at basketball and we go there to balance Texas A&M, WVU, and someone else, maybe TCU since I doubt the ACC is going to start bleeding right after getting two more members.

Two, we go to the ACC as they morph into the new Basketball super conference.

Three, the Big East remainders (minus WVU) and the Big Twelve remainders after Texas, OK, OK State and whoever the other one is they're talking about jump to the Pac-10 merge.  This is the worst option: the conference is spread all over the midwest and northeast and comprised of the dregs of realignment.

Fourth, and even less likely, we join the Big Ten.  I just don't see it happening, I don't have a defense for my belief but it seems absolutely impossible.

Of the four, option three is by far the most likely, and I doubt we'd be an AQ conference for long.

The second most likely is the first,  I know that seems odd but geographically it's the best fit and more profitable for UK than they realize.... we sell out our allotment of tickets, we pack our home basketball games and we'll fill up our road games for BBall more often than not: Tennessee, Vandy, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama... plus I doubt we'd have that much trouble finding people who'd take Florida games as an excuse to escape winter.

The third is the ACC, but we aren't a great geographic fit: they range up and down the east coast. They might want us for basketball, but then again with Duke and UNC and ripping away Pitt and 'Cuse they've pretty much passed the Big East anyway.

The only way I see us going to the Big Ten is if Notre Dame decides to go in.  I don't think we'd be a package deal, but Notre Dame plays the Big Ten more than any other conference it seems and I don't think the Big Ten'll expand unless they get ND in first.  I'm not sure how they'd feel about us academically though, I know that that is a priority for them.

My depressing thoughts (and I'm generally overly optimistic, for example I foresee us winning out the football season):

We don't end up in a AQ conference.

Sorry, it's true. 

I know the hip thing nowadays (and, well, always) is to blame everything on quarterback play, but I just don't think it's fair especially after the game he put up tonight.

He completed 30 of 43 passes for 8.1 yards per attempt and 349 yards total. There was one interception, two touchdowns, and he was sacked 6 times. Take out the sacks and those are pretty close to Brohm's numbers in 2007.

Will Stein accounted for more yardage than FIU put up total. I'd like to see the ball in his hands more, not less, especially if we can't get the run game going.

We got what, three bad breaks all game? An interception returned for a touchdown, and two breakaways by TY? They weren't marching up and down the field, they had 9 first downs. They converted 5 of 13 3rd downs. 

If HCCS tightens up the team a little more, which we all know he will, I don't see a reason to think we won't return to a bowl game. 

I know everyone wants to see Bridgewater play, but I'm not ready to give up on our season after one loss. Next week we're playing against UK and what is arguably the worst quarterback in college football. 

I do have one question though: Why is it impossible to hear anything in PJCS? Are there no speakers other than the PA they set up by the Schnellenberger Complex? 

Let's talk, shall we? I know, I know... We've already got Austin's fanpost which is all the rage, but I have to be my own man, have to jump out there on a limb.

There's a lot of talk about Rick Pitino, and how he just hasn't got what it takes to win at the University of Louisville. To that, I would like to offer you the memory of some guy named John Wooden.

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