It’s a 6-man group of college presidents — 3 from football schools and 3 from basketball schools. The co-chairs are Georgetown President John J. DeGioia and Pitt President Mark Nordenberg. The other 4 presidents are from USF, Rutgers, Marquette and Notre Dame.

[Time for a tangent. Notre-frickin’-Dame was put on the search committee? Are you kidding me? How can either side be supportive of that? On the basketball side, you put a president from a school where football rules — albeit remaining independent of the Big East — and they are a big budget athletic department. They may have interests that are aligned with the basketball schools, but it is not the same thing. Most of the basketball only schools have modest athletic department budgets and so costs are a major concern for them.

As for the football schools, you are talking a school that is so clearly a flight/flirt risk from the conference when it suits them. Every school has their own interests, but Notre Dame’s is very obvious and very much opposite of the football schools. The football schools have an ongoing issue of needing at least a 9th member. To help with stability, scheduling and costs. Notre Dame is the big remaining prize among independents and non-BCS conference schools. Now I don’t believe ND would join the BE in full, but to give ND the position to help directly influence the hiring of the commissioner makes it more likely they would look to make the hire someone who wouldn’t push them or force the issue.]

Outgoing Commissioner Mike Tranghese of course is saying that the search will be fine and that there is full cooperation.

“The good thing is I don’t sense any turf (wars) in this thing. They want a good person who can handle this whole thing with an appreciation for what we are and how we’ve gotten here,” Tranghese said.

Tranghese is clearly a proponent of seeing an administrator with Big East roots succeed him. A leading candidate could be the Big East’s senior associate commissioner, ex-Providence College athletic director John Marinatto, or perhaps a key athletic director like UConn’s Jeff Hathaway or Louisville’s Tom Jurich. Asked if it might be better for a person to be hired from outside the league, Tranghese said, “That person is going to have to convince our presidents of that.”

That Tranghese would like to hire from within the conference ranks is not a shock. That’s how he got the job. There are plenty of Providence College tied  candidates in the BE office. I would also expect that the basketball schools are interested in keeping it from within the Big East offices.

I like the idea of Jurich or Hathaway, or to look outside the conference at people in the other BCS Conference offices. Obviously, the basketball schools would be wary of someone from say the SEC or Big 12 as football is such an important component. I really like Jurich, because he has shown to be a strong leader for Louisville and aggressive in making things happen. He’s not afraid to shake things up.

Nordenberg isn’t giving anything away right now.

He called it a “critical hire” because of all the hard work Tranghese had done to position the Big East among the B.C.S. conferences after the defections to the A.C.C. Nordenberg played down the notion of whether the candidate would be a football or basketball guy; the league has eight football-playing members and 16 in basketball.

“In terms of the general functioning of the conference today, I don’t really sense that tension as a constant part of life,” Nordenberg said. “Clearly both sports are very important to us. It would be hard to imagine that we would recommend someone not committed to both and a capable leader in terms of pushing both sports forward.”

Football is generally given priority in college sports because it generates more television and ticket revenue.

Nordenberg didn’t give a whole lot of hints as to what type of candidate the Big East would be looking for.

I expect that there won’t be anything close to a decision until at least April.