For a while, the situation seemed tenuous, or at least the timing of it did. The West Virginia Mountaineers had signed up to join the Big 12 and leave the Big East in a bit of a situation. Scheduling issues posed a lot of problems for a lot of people, from cancelling a game at Florida State to forcing a conference to adjust its entire schedule the following year. But apparently there’s nothing money cannot handle and WVU will become an official member in the Big 12 in 2012.
Apparently Chuck Neinas, the interim commish of the Big 12, said he was never concerned that West Virginia might not be able to come through. In a recent interview, he explained, “We were never in doubt that West Virginia was coming. It was only a matter of how they wish to extricate themselves from the Big East. There were a couple of paths they could have followed and they selected the one that they did, but there was never a question in our mind that West Virginia was going to be with us.”
That’s a lot of confidence for a situation that was publicly turning uglier every day. Perhaps there was some hand-ringing for the sake of public perception. We’ll never know, of course, but it’s interesting to hear that the Big 12 knew things would be fine all along.
As the conference moves forward, Neinas did touch on future expansion saying that it was possible, but he also believes that it could be a little while until that’s the case. For now, they will settle in with new members WVU and TCU and see how things begin to develop there.