Despite numerous tweets/reports last night that the Big 12 was planning to meet on Monday to discuss the possibility of inviting both West Virginia and Louisville, it appears this morning that only the 'Eers are going to have the door opened for them.
CBS' Brett McMurphy is the one breaking the bad news.
West Virginia has been invited to join the Big 12 Conference, college football industry sources told CBSSports.com Friday.
The Mountaineers will accept the invitation, sources said. The Big 12 is expected to officially announce the invitation later today.
The Big 12's board of directors voted Friday morning and chose West Virginia over Louisville. They will stay at 10 schools, a source said.
...
With the Big 12 only taking West Virginia, the Big East’s chances of retaining its BCS automatic qualifying status in 2014 is greatly improved.
The Big East wants to get to a 12-team football league and is expected to issue invitations to Boise State, Air Force, Navy, Houston, SMU and Central Florida. That would increase the membership to 11 teams.
Big East commissioner John Marinatto and associate commissioner Nick Carparelli visited Air Force officials on Wednesday and Boise State officials on Thursday.
With the loss of West Virginia, the Big East would need a 12th member. Sources have told CBSSports.com that the Big East’s potential Western schools are in favor of adding BYU. It’s unknown if the Cougars would be interested.
There have been about a dozen false "done deal" reports up to this point, but McMurphy's too reliable to be anything other than freaked out by this.
It just seems odd that this news would break so soon after so many recent conflicting reports. Also, how early was this meeting? Right now it's still before 9 a.m. out there.
I'm not having a meltdown yet, but I'm not happy either.
UPDATE: This sucks.
Don't let anyone tell you it's too early to start drinking.