One Football League, Two Basketball Leagues

Looking at the teams the Big East has invited (SMU, Houston, Boise St, Air Force, UCF, Navy), with WVU leaving, the Big East's goal of getting to 12 teams is one team short. But is 12 really a realistic number? If they have 6 eastern teams, and 6 western teams, and play an eight-game conference schedule, then three teams in each division will have one cross-country trip, while the other three teams will have two cross-country trips. That isn't very fair, especially with the weeknight games the Big East often has. If they have a nine-game conference schedule, every team would have two cross-country trips. That's a lot of travel, which increases expenses and impacts student in the classroom. 

Two more things to think about. First, Boise has made it known it wants more western schools. Second, Boise and Air Force, and any other western schools will have to find new homes for other sports. So thinking about this, how about going to 14 schools instead, with seven eastern schools and seven western schools? Since the NCAA minimum for schools in a conference is seven, the western schools can form a new conference (call it the Western Conference) for non-football sports.

Eastern Division - UConn, Rutgers, USF, Cinci, Louisville, UCF, Navy, 

Western Division - Boise St, Air Force, BYU, San Diego St, Nevada, SMU, Houston,

SMU and Houston would join the Eastern-Division schools, except for Navy,  for non-football sports. The Big East would still have 16 teams for basketball. Basically, UCF, SMU and Houston would replace Syracuse, Pitt and WVU.

The five other Western-Division schools find two non-football schools (say, Denver and Seattle) to form The Western Conference for basketball and other sports.

With two seven-team divisions, and an eight-game conference schedule, each team would only play two teams from the other division, necessitating only one cross-country away game per season.

(They could even add two more schools to each division, and have only intra-division games, then have a conference championship between the winners. Perhaps So. Miss, ECU to the eastern division and UNLV and UTEP to the western division.)