There’s a lot of stories from Big East Media Day. I’m still sifting through them to skip the repeats or saying the same thing (to some degree they all do, but at what angle). Just get this out there, though, Pitt and UCF have worked out their contract issues with the games.

The problem came about when the UCF-Marshall game was moved to Oct. 4, a Wednesday night, to become an ESPN2 broadcast. That meant the Golden Knights will have eight days off before playing host to Pitt.

The Panthers, who play at Syracuse on Oct. 7, will have less time to prepare. In a letter to UCF officials, Long noted the terms of the contract called for each team to have the same number of days.

The Pitt-UCF game was moved to Friday, October 13, 8pm so ESPN2 can air it. Apparently that clause of the same number of days was put in there by former Pitt AD Steve Pederson. While the actual terms of the deal weren’t specified here’s what has been reported: Big East refs will end up calling the final game of the series at Heinz Field and the buyout clause has been upped to make it more difficult for UCF to bail on either of the games.

That buyout issue is significant. UCF was overbooked on road games for 2007 (in part because they had switched this year’s game with Pitt from a home to road). It’s hard enough to get decent games years in advance especially with the need for 5 non-con games. Patsy teams are going for the big paydays with that increased pressure, bailing on one deal to take a better. UCF just announced they are paying the buyout and bailing on their trip to Tennessee in 2007.

The Golden Knights paid $10,000 to get out of the football game, which was scheduled for Sept. 29 and contracted to bring a $500,000 payday.

Tennessee is replacing UCF with Louisiana-Lafayette. Presumably a weaker opponent and requiring a bigger cash guarantee from Tennessee.