Tulsa joins the Big East (name change pending) Conference in 2014.
The conference currently known as the Big East made its latest membership move official on Tuesday, welcoming Tulsa to the fold beginning in 2014. The move will give the league 11 full-time members and 12 football-playing members come 2015, when the Navy Midshipmen join the fray on the gridiron.
Naming problems aside, the league finally could be done with school-shifting — 12 teams is the minimum required to play a football title game (working title: The [Sponsor Pending] [Conference Name Pending] Championship) and it allows for an easy-to-manage six-team-division setup. Plus, as other leagues set their future TV deals and schedules, the odds of Connecticut, Cincinnati and other more desirable Big East members bolting for greener pastures decrease. That means Navy’s future rivals could be set; click through to read what the Mids have done against the “current Big East” in football seasons past, courtesy of the school’s media guide:
Tulane
Record: 7-11-1
Last game: Won, 49-21, in 2005.
Note: A homecoming win for the Mids in ’05. Navy also bested Connecticut at homecoming in 1979.
Southern Methodist
Record: 9-7
Last game: Won, 38-25, in 2011.
Note: SMU downed the Mids 20-7 in their first-ever meeting — in 1930, at Baltimore’s Municipal Stadium.
Temple
Record: 5-5
Last game: Lost, 27-24, in 2009.
Note: The Owls and Mids are slated to meet in Philadelphia in 2014.
Connecticut
Record: 6-1
Last game: Won, 41-17, in 2006.
Note: Navy lost to UConn in 2002; the rest of the meetings came before the Huskies joined college football’s top division.
East Carolina
Record: 3-1
Last game: Won, 56-28, in 2012.
Note: The conference landscape shifted so quickly that the Mids didn’t know ECU would be joining their new conference when the schools squared off last year.
Cincinnati
Record: 2-0
Last game: Won, 13-7, in 1956
Note: Navy went 6-1-2 that season. The Mids’ only loss came the week before the Cincinnati game, 21-6 at Tulane, another future league-mate.
Tulsa
Record: 1-1
Last game: Lost, 24-23, in 2006.
Note: The ’06 loss was Navy’s first-ever overtime football game.
Houston
Record: 0-1
Last game: Lost, 35-0, in 1980.
Note: Houston’s never been on a Navy schedule — the ’80 game was the Garden State Bowl, played at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. The bowl ran from 1978 to 1981.
Central Florida, South Florida, Memphis
Record: 0-0
Note: These rivalries have a bit of work to do.
