The Big East has moved slowly on their expansion plans, but it appears the day has finally arrived. At a press conference at 5:00pm EST today, the Big East is expected to announce that they have added five new schools to the conference: Boise State, San Diego State, Houston, SMU, and UCF.
Boise State and San San Diego State are coming from the Mountain West Conference and will both be football-only schools, while the remaining three schools are coming from C-USA and will be full members. These schools will give the Big East 10 football schools, and they are still in talks with Air Force and Navy about bringing them on as football-only schools.
This move shores up the Big East's depleted ranks, and it gives them enough talent that they can still be taken seriously as a conference. In particular, adding Boise State should definitely help the Big East when their automatic BCS berth comes up for negotiation again. They are also expanding into major markets, which should help their odds are obtaining a large television deal in the near future.
For more on how this news affects the local UCF Knights, check out Jason Collete's column on the subject.