FanPost

Big East notified of pending legal action by West Virginia University

That's correct, the Mountaineers are attempting to exercise some form of legal recourse to remove from them the terms applied in the bylaws of their Big East contract.  Brett McMurphy, on his p's and q's, reports.

http://brett-mcmurphy.blogs.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/29532522/33054284

With the recent attention being paid to the absurdity that is this football program's fanbase, and somehow being beaten out by this.. Noah's Ark of Indigents.. it seems too easy to hate the Mountaineers.  This should make it just that much easier.

From what I understand, the lawsuit alleges that West Virginia should be exempt from the 27-month notification period required by Big East contract bylaws, because their exit fee entitles them to leave as they please.  The legal basis to such a suit is bupkis, and the language within the suit itself must be pretty entertaining.

However, what I find most interesting about all of this is that while everyone seems to have been chasing that 10th Big 12 spot (goodness, that sounds odd), it seems rather likely that the Big 12 has been merely using that open spot to wield a level of power over the conference that yield less revenue, and more specifically the Big East, in order to provide future stability.  Assuming that Missouri is playing in the SEC next season, there are only a few viable options for the Big 12..  Fail to meet the requirements of their current ESPN contract and therefore lose an extremely large portion of their 2012 revenue, force West Virginia to eat whatever the cost may be of foregoing the 27 month notification period, or eat that cost themselves.

No matter how you look at it, money is going to be lost, a great deal of it, by WVU, the Big XII, or both, during this conference shakeup.  All that's truly come of it is the SEC has re-asserted itself as the most powerful football conference in the nation.  With Texas likely to do.. whatever Texas wants.. at the end of the current Big 12 TV contract.. I'm more or less hoping for an ACC invite.. or a sandwich.  Basically, I just don't care about the whole conference situation as much as the rest of you, I don't think high school kids care about it as much as you'd think, and I basically just want a damn sandwich.