WVU Mountaineer Sports: Basketball | Football | News |Big East Adds Memphis, Concludes Expansion

The Big East is continuing to formally announce its intentions for the future of the conference and on Wednesday, it welcomed Memphis as an all-sports member.

The Tigers would join the league on July 1, 2013 and begin competing in all sports as part of a plan to ultimately have a roster of 17 "basketball schools" and 12 "football schools" in 2015.

Of the eight current football schools in the Big East, just five will be a part of this new model as well as 13 of the 16 current basketball schools.

Commissioner John Marinatto continues to emphasize the conference's desire to expand its footprint across the nation and have a presence in multiple time zones as well as pulling in a multitude of television markets.

A release from the Big East states that its television reach would exceed 31 million homes, which is nearly 28 percent of all U.S. television households.

Missing from the conference in these future plans are of course West Virginia, Pittsburgh and Syracuse.

The Mountaineers are expected to join the Big 12 conference effective July 1, 2012, but remain in a legal battle with the Big East to officially remove them from that league.

The Panthers and the Orange are headed to the ACC, but the exact schedule of those moves is also still to be determined.

Because of the uncertainty regarding the timelines of those schools' departures, there have been talks of the possibilities of adding one of the new members in the 2012 season.

Marinatto, however, declined to comment on that matter or anything that would call into question details of the case against WVU, but did say his intention is to keep the Mountaineers in the conference through July 1, 2014.

According to a release from Conference USA, in which Memphis currently competes, the Big East has completed its expansion plans with the addition of the Tigers.

Marinatto says the league has reached its primary objective of 12 schools, but will continue to stay vigilant and evaluate opportunities as time goes on.