More proof that I was completely cut off this weekend was that I didn't even know that Virginia Tech accepted their invite to the ACC on Friday. I learned of this while reading of Miami's jump to the conference, announced today.

I should care more about this given that I live in Big East country, but I really don't care all that much. I care more from the perspective of how this may change the BCS than from how the area teams will deal.

The BCS thing is interesting, in that if ESPN.com's Ivan Maisel is right, there's no real guidelines on membership in the BCS system. This suggests that the Big East could be the tick on the BCS hide, sucking money out of the deal while their inadequate teams get pounded in BCS games. I can't see the other conference members of the BCS going for this, so I'm sure they'll find a way to jettison the Big East.

I assume that'll happen because the only way the Big East gets to stay is if they can con Notre Dame into giving up its Big East in all but football status. Outside of a Papal bull, I don't see this happening. Other schools that may come in to the Big East aren't going to help where football is concerned - the only one that's been mentioned that actually has a viable football program is Louisville. And in their case, viability is a sometimes thing.

But the Big East is really going to need two schools to keep an 8 team league going, and they face having to do this in time for the 2004 season. UConn is supposed to join in 2005, but I suppose the league could try to get them in a year early. That'd mean some serious schedule work and serious mea culpas to the MAC, as UConn is playing four of their members that year. The Big East would also have to get Louisville shaken loose from C-USA by then, too. It's not going to be pretty.

Where the BCS is concerned, one idea I was mulling was making the last BCS member position a "float" between the Big East, C-USA, and Mountain West, with the game spot going to the highest ranked conference champ of the three. The team that gets the spot gets to be in the BCS administrative cabal for the year (more if they keep gaining the spot).

There's also talk about adding another bowl, though I'm not sure if the BCS folks want to water down the product that much. I'd assume they'd rather add another at-large bid to get another team from, say, the Big XII or Pac-10.

The other interesting part of this is that the ACC is stuck at 11 teams, one away from getting to hold a title game. Seeing dollar signs, they're going to try to get that changed, and may very well succeed. Should they not, expect more poaching. C-USA only has 11 teams as well, so they're ripe for plunder. The ACC could make their own play for Louisville, or perhaps go for a weaker sister to balance things out. East Carolina or South Florida would make the most sense here. The other possibility would be taking Central Florida from the MAC, where they are a very odd fit. In the case of the Florida schools this would be a very abrupt promotion, and probably unrealistic. East Carolina could probably make it work, as they've been nationally ranked before, have a reasonably sized stadium (43000, and from the looks of things they could expand pretty easily), and play a pretty decent non-conference schedule which gives them some prep (for 2003, West Virginia, UNC, and Miami).

Actually, Navy is still an independent. Maybe the ACC can go for them. (And to think I typed that with a straight face)

Or the ACC could try to get South Carolina to jump from the SEC. That'd be ugly, though I suppose the SEC could then, say, poach Southern Miss from C-USA. Or something like that. The mind boggles.