Big East Announces Divsions For 2013-14

Earlier this week, the Big East announced the division alignment it will utilize in the 2013 and 2014 seasons, as it welcomes six new members to the conference and awaits the arival of Navy and the Big East's 14th member in 2015. The divisions will change again in two years, maybe to a zipper format, but in the mean time the divisions will look like this:

East- Rutgers, Central Florida, Cincinnati, Connecticut, Louisville, South Florida
West- Boise State, Houston, Memphis, San Diego State, SMU, Temple

The East features 5 of the reaming 6 Big East teams, and seems to be much tougher than the west. I thought that either Cincinnati or Louisville should have been placed in the west because it made more sense for balance (Cincy, Louisville, Rutgers and Boise are pretty clearly the top 4 programs in the New Big East right now) and geographical purposes, but Temple will be in the West instead. I guess they must have agreed to this when they joined the conference this year. Regardless, it looks like Boise will have a relatively easy path to the conference championship game, while the teams in the East will have quite a battle.

For Rutgers, this isn't a drastic change. They will still be playing half of their conference games against teams they have grown accustom to playing every year, with the only difference being they will play UCF and three of the teams on the western front instead of Pitt, Syracuse and West Virginia. They will still likely be competing against the teams they are competing against this year for a spot in the conference title game. With any luck, Boise State will play Rutgers twice in this period to boost strength of schedule, draw fan interest and get on TV, etc.

This is just a small step to making the new Big East a success, but it seems like a step in the right direction.