On June 1, 2012, the Big East will welcome its newest member: Texas Christian University.
According to reports on ESPN.com, TCU recently accepted the bid to the Big East and a news conference will be held at 1 p.m. today to announce the changes.
The move from the Mountain West Conference will make them the 17th member of the Big East as all of their athletic teams are affected.
Big East commissioner John Marinatto flew to Dallas on Sunday in order to be present at the news conference that will also be attended by TCU's athletic director Chris Del Conte.
The Big East will be the fourth conference of which TCU has been a member. The Horned Frogs were originally part of the Southwest Conference that folded after the 1995 season, and then joined the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) for four years.
Following their time in the WAC, TCU spent the next four years in Conference USA before joining the Mountain West Conference in 2005.
The change enables the Frogs to play in an automatic BCS-qualifying league starting in the 2012-13 academic year. They will become the conference's ninth football team with Villanova to possibly become the tenth if the Wildcats accept the invitation that has already been offered.
Currently, the Big East has an 18-game basketball schedule for the regular season that allows for three repeat games by contracts with ESPN and CBS based on a 16-team membership.
ESPN.com's Andy Katz received reports that in the new 17-team basketball conference, each school would face every team once and play in only two home-and-home series to satisfy the 18-game schedule.
Gabrielle Kiger can be reached at gabrielle.kiger@student.shu.edu.
