Tulsa made public Tuesday morning the university’s decision to move its conference membership.
University of Tulsa president Stedman Upham met with the media with Director of Athletics Derrick Gragg for the formal announcement.
“I’d like to confirm this morning that the University of Tulsa has accepted an invitation to become a member of the Big East, effective July 1, 2014,” Upham said.
The Golden Hurricane will be moving to the new league from Conference USA in all sports. This was an important factor to the university officials.
Upham said also that he is pleased with the national media rights agreement that were negotiated for by the Big East commissioner Mike Aresco and the other conference university presidents. The agreement will entail national coverage on ESPN, ABC and CBS basketball.
This coverage should expand the reach and reputation of the university on a national scope.
It looks to be a big-time move on the part of the university. Now we’ll just wait to see what the league is actually going to be called. The word is that this needs to be determined by May 2 at the latest, because the NCAA Board of Directors is meeting then and the conference needs to be recognized as a full member conference. I guess it has to have a name for that to happen.
The words Metro and America are said to be front runners to be involved, but it is unlikely that there will be a number in the name.