Uh-huh.
To recap, the Villanova trustees were supposed to vote on moving to 1-A football and becoming the 10th Big East football team. It all looked like a go. This despite Pitt raising some concerns about the size of the stadium where the Wildcats would play.
Well, as the day of the vote is only one day away, more of the Big East football members seem to be getting a little nervous about the stadium issue. So the vote has been delayed.
The chief sticking point, according to the source, is Villanova’s plan to use PPL Park in Chester, the 18,500-seat home of the Philadelphia Union, as its primary venue.
PPL Park would be the smallest stadium in the league. Potential plans to increase the seating capacity to roughly 30,000 have not convinced all the Big East schools to support the move. However, some Big East football members are in favor, and it still could be approved, the source said.
Aside from the financial issues of such a small stadium — all expansion of the stadium to even 30,000 is — is at the mercy of the soccer team ownership. That means no set timeline that Villanova can lay out for that issue. So the Big East might want Villanova to explore the possibility of other venues (Lincoln Financial is out of play until 2017). So things are back on hold.
What I don’t like is the open ended timeframe for this “delay”. What more is there to study? At this point they should know whether or not they can play the games at Franklin Field or Citizens Park. Nothing about PPL Park is going to change in the next week/month/year.
Pitt is riding a 6-0 record going into Nova who looks like a pushover from the size of their stadium. No television crew bothers to cover the game. Pitt jumps out to an early lead and slowly squanders this into a goaline stand that falls short in the waning seconds of the game. This is all, of course, viewed by play-by-play updates on espn.com.
This starts the 2nd half of the season skid that we all have grown to know and love from our panthers.
Sorry, I still haven’t climbed out of my post-NCAA tourney depression. It hit me a little longer and harder than I expected this year.
HTscriptP
Seriously, the BE will be even more of a joke if they’re allowed to field a fb team.
Among the funnier claims…first, that Pitt and WVU are afraid of Villanova, particularly because they will lose all of their recruits to Nova. Second, that they will average 20,000 fans per game, which not only ignores the fact that their proposed stadium only seats 19,000, not to mention the fact that 20k per game is no great shakes.
They either refuse to see, or can’t see, that this is all about MONEY!
Until Nova can come up with a better stadium plan, Pitt is absolutely in the right to try to block this.
1. Invite ECU, UCF and SMU (yes SMU – they have June Jones running the offense and are a crosstown rival to TCU. This is a no-brainer) 2. Kick DePaul, Providence and Seton Hall to the curb
3. Realign football into two divisions
North Divison:
Pitt
WVU
Syracuse
Rutgers
UConn
Cincinatti
South Division:
Lousiville
South Florida
UCF
ECU
TCU
SMU
4. Schedule a conference championship that alternates between New York and Orlando
5. Found the Big East Network
6. Get a new logo
Jusus folks, this isn’t brain surgery…
