Let me offer the executive summary on what all the stories and updates really mean:

If you want the details, they’re after the jump.

The Big East held meetings in Florida this week. Big East expansion and TV deals were the big topics everyone wanted to discuss — well fans and media anyways.

The hot topic was how much should the Big East expand? I’ve mentioned that maybe the best thing is to stop at 9 for the moment. Since none of the candidates really bring much to the table in terms of immediate impact economically or competitively. That doesn’t seem realistic, as there seems to be a determination that the conference must get to 10 teams or is it 12? Oddly enough, Skip Holtz the USF football coach got that out there just before the meetings.

There’s been a lot of talk about do you go from nine to 10, which I don’t know how much sense that really makes, when the Big Ten left the model of 10, the Pac-10 has left the model of 10. Both of them more or less said ‘This model doesn’t work. Let’s go to 12.’ I think we have to look hard at it. Having TCU come into the league will add an awful lot of instant energy when you look at the success they’ve had right now as a program. It gives you a balanced schedule with four (home) and four (road). I think we need to look hard at going to 12.

That actually gained some traction as Brett McMurphy — who did a fantastic job of covering the meetings — did a poll of the Big East football coaches and a majority of the coaches preferred the idea of getting to 12. And ADs like Ollie Luck (and it has been intimated that Rutgers AD Tim Perenetti) seem to favor 12 to be able to have more inventory of games for TV rights. Something that suggests a strong push to make sure that the rights get to the open market.

“One of the things I really found interesting, if you followed the Pac-10 or 12 and the recent TV negotiation – and what happened was pretty eye-opening, pretty spectacular – was something (Commissioner) Larry Scott was asked,” Luck said.

“When he was asked if bringing in Utah and Colorado in expanding the conference assisted them in getting a blockbuster deal, he said, ‘Absolutely.’ I remember back when (expansion) happened, some people said it wouldn’t matter that much.

“But Larry said it brought them into another time zone (Mountain), added markets, two states. He thought adding those two schools had a major effect on what they were able to do.”

Last June, as the Pac-10 was moving on the Utes and Buffaloes, one Chicago marketing firm that works with college athletic programs was estimating that the two schools would add to the Pac-10 potential, but not significantly to a conference that already had Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, Seattle and Portland, Ore.

…

“What happened there struck a chord with me,” Luck said. “There’s a lesson in that for us in the Big East. What’s the lesson? Well, if you do get the right teams, the right schools, it can be a real plus. It can provide a real bump, and we need that.

“I’m not saying Villanova is that or isn’t that, or can be that. I don’t know. That’s up to the commissioner and other people in the conference office to decide in talking with the TV people. But it does tell us what might be possible if you do get the right teams.”

Is that spin from the Pac-12 to justify the new members by way of the TV contract, or would they have gotten similar value regardless? I’m not sure, but in terms of future Pac-12 inventory with their planned channel, it was probably necessary and will help.

Yes, the Villanova issue is still unresolved. Villanova partisans are increasingly stressing the issue of needing inventory to get a good media deal — and how Villanova’s media market impacts that — reflects their increasing terror and frustration over their future. Villanova fans have increasingly realized how much of the possible athletic success in the future is tied to becoming a full member of the Big East rather than remaining a basketball school. The realization probably came at least two years late, but it is there now.

Honestly, I’m not unsympathetic to them. I remember the angst of 2003 after the ACC raid and the future of Pitt. Heck, just the last couple years of the Big 10/11/12 expansion and last summer’s potential mega-conference dominoes was such a crazy situation where it seemed that Pitt’s future could go one of many different directions. But as Voodoo5 put it, “this is bigger than whether Villanova joins the league for football…”

Their point:

Then came the news today from the Big East meetings in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, where several people admitted that the league had a verbal agreement to extend its TV contract with ESPN and were apparently pretty close to signing it, but backed off in the end.

It turns out the decision to wait until next year to begin contract negotiations happened before the Pac-12 signed their massive contract with Fox and ESPN. So you can’t even chalk that up as Marinatto being smart enough to recognize what just happened in front of him. It’s quite possible he was forced into saying no by people like Luck and Rutgers athletic director Tim Pernetti, a former executive with CBS College Sports, who want to take the TV rights to the open market. And so now he’s kind of stumbled into this “smart” move, as the Big East is now the only BCS conference left for the taking by a host of TV suitors.

If that’s in fact what happened, that says very little about the faith some of the ADs have in John Marinatto. It could be the first step towards either Marinatto being moved out of the way by the football athletic directors (as On the Banks suggests), or the first step towards the league splitting apart and the football schools going their own way.

Marinatto has not shown himself to be a strong commissioner to this point. To some degree he never had a chance to grow his influence, because he is only a year or so into it. At the same time, it is quite clear that while he had the support of the basketball schools to get him chosen to the spot, the football side was less than supportive and are not going to let him get in a position to strong-arm them.

He’s doing his best to talk up the potential for the new contract and how he is ready to take this to the open market — now.

“There’s a distinct advantage in going last and with the marketplace continually resetting … the Pac 12 has reset the marketplace once again,” Marinatto said. “It’s setting the stage for us providing we’re deliberate and aggressive in order to monetize our rights in a fashion that’s as similar to what they’ve done.”

The scary thing in the article was the part about how close the Big East was to actually taking that early ESPN offer. There is no doubt that if that occurred, Marinatto would be on his way out the door right now — or the football members might have simply snapped.

Now there is something of a real deadline for the Big East to figure out its expansion plans. September 2012. That is when the Big East can start exclusive negotiations with ESPN for 60 days before the media rights can go to open bidding and negotiations. But, at that point, the Big East needs to know who will be the members and when. TCU will be in the conference starting that season. Who else?

The saddest thing after most of the week was dominated by the optimistic talk of a big new contract, and then Jim Calhoun opining that the conference would split along football-basketball lines in 4-5 years (something I said back in 2003, and I’m now 3 years off and counting so I’m done with those predictions). That the pushback spin coming today from what I can only assume are the Big East offices and basketball-only schools.

How about the always discussed compromise of getting Army and Navy to join as football only members? It’s back.

The Big East is now officially on the clock. The league has until September 2012 to determine its football membership because that’s when ESPN’s 60-day exclusive media rights renegotiating window with the league begins.

So what schools will the Big East add? Numerous candidates have been mentioned including Villanova, Central Florida, East Carolina and Houston. However, college industry sources told CBSSports.com the league is also considering the possibility of pursuing Army and Navy as football members to get to 12 teams.

“I believe the league will approach the academies first and if they turn the Big East down, then they’ll approach the other candidates,” a college football industry source said. “There are a lot of hurdles to overcome. The Big East would have to convince them that’s where they want to be.”

It simply makes no sense for the Big East football schools to support this. They won’t go back to that unstable 90s-era football-only situation. Troy Nunes IAM has more on this silliness. And if there is any doubt that this is a bit of garbage thrown out by old interests, former BE Commish Tranghese remembers the talks and discussions with Army and Navy from fifteen years prior.

That, however, pales to this piece from the Boston Globe.

The power struggle is football-driven, led by athletic directors at West Virginia, Pittsburgh, and Rutgers, and the presidents at West Virginia and Pittsburgh. The three schools flexed their muscles when Villanova was being considered as the 10th team in football last month. To get approval, Villanova needed six of the eight Big East votes. The vote was 5-3.

The internal bickering and bargaining has been intense, with Pittsburgh AD Steve Peterson and Rutgers AD Tim Pernetti having the loudest voices in the room but different agendas. Pernetti has argued the hardest for the bigger formula, i.e. 12 teams in football, 19 or 20 in basketball.

Outwardly, the Big East has tried to put on a “we are family’’ face. It’s not working.

Who is to blame? Maybe everyone.

The latest issue came this week when the Big East, with its contract for football and men’s basketball with ESPN running out after the 2012-13 season, turned down an offer from the network that insiders say would have paid Big East schools in the neighborhood of $11 million each.

ESPN told the Big East that was its best offer, considering that marquee such schools as Penn State, Maryland, Notre Dame, and Boston College were not coming through the door as the No. 10 team in football. ESPN was content to take a chance on TCU and perhaps Central Florida with a fair-market offer.

The Big East power base said, “No. We can wait and get a better offer.’’

That is not likely to happen. In fact, less money might be on the table when the Big East does get around to finalizing its television contract.

How does that scenario unfold when everyone else has agreed that with the new deals that the Pac-12, Big 12 and ACC in the past years have clearly raised the money stakes?

Neal Pilson, former president of CBS Sports, said the league should benefit by waiting to finalize a new media rights deal.

“In a marketplace that seems to be growing, college football and college basketball is a growth market,” said Pilson, president of Pilson Communication. “Now since there are several markets for Big East football I don’t think they lose anything by waiting.

“I don’t see that as a risk. The only major sports deal [coming up] is the [2014 and 2016] Olympics and I don’t see that having much influence on Big East football, whether [the value] goes up or down.”

Pilson said first the league must decide its expansion question.

“The Big East has to get their ducks lined up — and I don’t mean the Oregon Ducks — and get their teams and membership [figured out], but they want to be careful who they bring into the conference,” Pilson said. “I don’t think delaying six months or a year will hurt them. ESPN will always be there.”

By waiting, the Big East potentially could have ESPN, Fox and NBC/Comcast bidding for its rights. This, of course, would be financially beneficial to the league.

So, how could the money go down instead of up from the early ESPN offer? Well, by raising conference instability possibilities once more.

There may be more trouble coming for the Big East if the Big Ten decides to move forward again in a few years; already there are rumblings that it might go to 14 teams, with an eye on Georgia Tech and Maryland, which would significantly increase its television footprint.

If that happens, the ACC will be forced to react (UConn? Syracuse? Rutgers?) with what surely would be a fatal blow to Big East football.

Really? That’s the fear? That the ponderous pace of the Big 10 would abruptly change course on expansion now that it has Nebraska, not wait to see how the new order works and jump back in within the next 16 months? The dominoes would tumble again?

Even in that bit of speculative fiction, the specter of new expansion is still a few years away. The Big East’s next deal will be negotiated before then.

Lots of stuff, but in the end — nothing. As usual.