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Expansion: No Football Invites Today, Just a Vote on an Exit Fee Increase

By Patrick_the_Ruminator

This is a reminder post: there will be no Big East invitations handed out today. The purpose of tonight's conference call is to vote on increasing the exit fee from $5 million to $10 million. Since we first posted this news during the weekend, a New York Post article came out that said what some of you might have feared, basketball is holding up the invitation process.

As Big East basketball media day for men's basketball is Wednesday, the league does not want to issue invites ahead of that day. Their thinking is that doing so would lessen the basketball event. If this was say last year when TCU was being invited, I could understand this delay. However, it is way too late to pretend expansion isn't hanging over the Big East like a dark cloud. If anybody really thinks that basketball coaches and players won't be hounded by expansion questions at media day because invites weren't issued they are naïve in the extreme.

Despite what ESPN reported about "conditional invites" being sent out to Air Force, Boise State, Houston and SMU, the league maintains no invitations have been sent out. One thing the Post article reported that we had not seen anywhere else is that Navy and the Big East "had reached an agreement in principle." That agreement is what "brought Air Force and Boise State into the picture." That scenario seems to go against the very public hesitant posture of Navy athletic director Chet Gladchuk.

Now we wait and see if the Big East actually raises the exit fee or not.

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