WVU Mountaineer Sports: Basketball | Football | News |Luck Talks With WVi About Big East Settlement, Move to Big 12

West Virginia University Athletic Director Oliver Luck granted wvillustrated.com an exclusive interview following WVU's settlement with the Big East. The interview was used on this week's Bob Huggins Show.

WVU officially settled its dispute with the Big East out of court. Reports indicate the settlement is for a total of $20 Million. That clears the way for WVU to join the conference on July 1 and begin competing in Big 12 later this year.

Luck was confident WVU would begin competing in the Big 12 from the moment it invited West Virginia to join its conference last October.

"Fortune favors the bold to a certain degree," Luck stated. "We never flinched, we never wavered. We said we are playing in the Big 12 in the 2012-2013 academic year, no ifs, no ands, no buts. We're going and that message was relayed in multiple ways and multiple formats and they eventually got it."

WVU put its settlement offer in front of the Big East more than two weeks before it was ultimately accepted. According to Luck, nothing changed to that settlement from the moment it was given to the Big East.

"We felt as though we put a very fair settlement on the table and we never budged from that settlement either. It shows that if you really believe in a position, which we did, that we felt that is what we wanted to do and we were not going to be deterred."

WVU fans that criticize the move to the Big 12 typically point to travel as being their number one concern. However, the Big East is no longer limited to just the eastern third or even eastern half of the country. It will soon include schools in all four time zones of the contiguous United States.

"We didn't leave the Big East, it left us," Luck said. "The Big East is fundamentally different than it was when joined with Pitt and Syracuse and Virginia Tech and Boston College. If there is one criticism that I think is somewhat legitimate, it is the criticism that it is going to be hard to get to an away game. The fact of the matter is that with the new configuration of the Big East we would likely be in the western zone of the Big East and playing in Dallas, Houston, San Diego and Boise."

Realignment is clearly playing a big role in the future of college athletics. Every one of the BCS conferences have seen changes to their membership in recent years. Rivalries are becoming collateral damage. The backyard brawl appears to be one of those rivalries that will at the very least, take a break.

"It takes two to tango obviously," Luck stated. "I would certainly like to figure out a way we can keep Pitt on the schedule every now and then. We will only have three non-conference games and they soon will also only have three non-conference games once they move to the ACC. We'll see what we can do with Pitt, but there are no guarantees."

Luck indicated he hopes to fill the non-conference schedule for football with games in this part of the country. Maryland is on the schedule for the next several years. Pitt could be put back on the schedule. Perhaps Penn State and Virginia Tech will reappear on the docket.

"They [Pitt] have started once again a series with Penn State, I would love to do that as well."

Mountaineer Field currently sits in the middle of the pack in terms of stadium size in the Big 12. It is less than 500 seats shy of third largest in the conference.

"We don't anticipate right now adding any capacity to Mountaineer Field," Luck stated. "We want to go through a year or two in the Big 12 and see what the fan response is. We don't want to build a church for Easter Sunday, so we have to be smart there. We do have some plans of improving the footprint of the stadium and opening up some of the East and West concourses. It is crammed. You can't walk across the concourse at halftime without spilling your soda pop."

Major changes will be coming to Hawley Field, home of the WVU baseball team.

"Hawley Field looks like a junior high stadium compared to what we have in the Big 12," Luck said. "We have to figure out how to massively improve our baseball stadium, whether it is at the same site or a different site perhaps."

The baseball program has struggled at times and is one of the many programs Luck is keeping a close eye on moving forward.

"Quite honestly, our baseball performance has relatively modest over the past couple of decades. We need to figure out what we need to do with baseball. We want to be, in all of the sports, competitive in the Big 12. We don't want to be anybody's doormat."

West Virginia University made it clear the settlement with the Big East will not involve any public funds or tuition money. The first year of beer sales at Mountaineer Field yielded more than one million dollars of added funds for the University.

"The Big 12 has no rules or regulations about their member institutions selling beer," Luck said. "We think it has worked very well. We did make money, but more importantly the number of binge drinking cases went down and the number of arrests went down. I think the board will see those numbers and allow us to continue to do that."

Luck will be making a presentation to the WVU Board of Governors later this month about the success of beer sales at the stadium last season. He fully expects the Board of Governors to continue that policy this fall.

Luck remains excited about the future and stability of West Virginia University athletics, which has a little more than four months remaining in the Big East before its move to the Big 12.