Temple head football coach Steve Addazio was among those in attendance at Madison Square Garden to announce Temple's inclusion in the Big East. Addazio's football program will be the first sport to make the jump to the Big East, with all other sports following in 2013.
"I've been in the BIG EAST Conference before as a football coach in the late '90s, and I'm looking forward to coming into the conference again," Addazio said. "There's great rivalries, geographic rivalries, and now with the national scope of the conference, it's really exciting right now what's going on in the BIG EAST."
"For us as a football program and as a University, as an all‑sports athletic program, we know how well respected the BIG EAST is and how powerful the BIG EAST is and what the BIG EAST value and name and brand is throughout the whole country, and now the whole country really gets to experience it. I can't wait to have an opportunity to fly and go play the teams across like Boise and play San Diego and Houston. It's exciting. It's a whole‑‑ college football is expanding in a whole new way right now, and there's a lot of great times and a lot of great new rivalries to be forged as we move forward here."
"We're excited. Bill mentioned, Lewis mentioned, obviously Philadelphia is the greatest sports city in the country, and with Villanova and Temple in the same city, it's just really a tremendous place. What a place to go watch college basketball, college football, and Philadelphia has changed. Like Temple has evolved, Philadelphia has evolved. Our facilities right now at our University, I just want to make this point, where we are right now, we're not trying to fumble around and see if we can find our way into major college football. This is a plan that's been going on for quite some time. With our non‑conference schedule that we've played, we've played several non‑BIG EAST opponents with our facilities ongoing and our basketball facility is a brand new multimillion dollar facility, our football facility will be finished on July 1st. I mean, it's unbelievable what's happening. It's a new state‑of‑the‑art dormitory on Broad Street. I could go on and on and on. But I know this: It's an exciting time for Temple. It's an exciting time for the BIG EAST. John, we're so happy to be a part of this BIG EAST family. It's a special, special day. It's a landmark day. And we'll make you proud, I promise you that. And we're going to run a classy, first‑class program, everything done the right way, and exciting times ahead. So thank you so much for coming, and we really appreciate it, and looking forward to the future."
For more on Temple, visit our team pages for football and basketball. For more on Villanova, visit our team page or our blog The Nova Blog. For more on the Big East, visit Big East Coast Bias, or visit our page for conference realignment news.