Louisville coach Rick Pitino threw his support behind admitting Temple to the Big East as the conference scrambles to replace the departing Syracuse, Pitt and likely West Virginia. Pitino claims that there are factions within the conference that were threatened by how powerful basketball had gotten and that has been part of the impetus for the departures. He also lays out a few solutions for the Big East, one of which is to admit Temple in basketball and football.
Admit Temple immediately. They have a highly competitive football program with outstanding basketball tradition. They are a past BIG EAST member and an excellent school academically. And as all my friends say in Philadelphia, they are located in BIG EAST territory.
Temple's football program has been on an upswing in recent years and hasn't seemed to take a step back now that Al Golden is gone. They not only played Penn State very tight, but they went down to Maryland and destroyed the Terps last weekend. Being in the Big East would only further help their recruiting efforts.
The basketball program would no doubt find it a lot tougher to get into the NCAA tournament in the Big East than they do in the Atlantic 10, but again recruiting would be helped by the bigger conference affiliation.
Pitino also mentioned Villanova among the possible solutions to save the conference saying, "Sit down with Villanova and ask them to make a major commitment to football."
h/t Nova Blog