House-Hunting Navy Picks Fixer-Upper In Big East
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By DERON SNYDER
Now that Navy has signed on to join the Big East as a football-only member beginning in 2015, conference commissioner John Marinatto needs just one more school to fulfill his desire of 12 teams broken into East and West divisions.
But before he continues that quest, he should reopen negotiations for incoming members Houston, Southern Methodist and Central Florida; the deal is off unless they pry away their current league’s name and bring it with them.
Because Conference USA is a much more appropriate moniker for the amalgamation that Marinatto is constructing.
Navy has cast its lot with a conference that, if nothing else, refuses to go down without a fight. If adding schools in Texas, California (San Diego State) and Idaho (Boise State) smacks of desperation, it’s in response to college football’s shifting landscape and growing crevices that might reduce the Big East to rubble and irrelevance.
Those rumbling forces convinced Navy to relinquish the football independence it relished for 133 years, though coach Ken Niumatalolo’s metaphor isn’t based on tectonic plates and fault lines.
“There’s a storm getting ready to come, a hurricane,” he told reporters after Tuesday’s announcement. “Those that are in homes don’t worry about it. It’s the people outside looking in that need a place for refuge. … We had to find a home, and we feel like we found a great home in the Big East.”
