**Watch the livestream of the press conference here.**
Texas Christian University will hold a 2 p.m. EST press conference Monday to announce that it will join the Big East Conference in all sports beginning in the 2012-13 season.
“I guess you gotta do what you gotta do with what’s out there,” former Syracuse athletic director Jake Crouthamel said by phone. “And what’s out there with TCU in football is certainly very attractive. It’s the other programs that I think just from a travel perspective, it’s going to be very expensive.”
“But having said that, TCU is showing its stuff as a football program. That adds a lot of credibility to the Big East, which it certainly needs.”
The TCU football team is currently 12-0 and ranked third in the BCS standings.
TCU spokesman Mark Cohen was not immediately available for comment.
The addition of TCU will bring the Big East to nine football teams and 17 basketball teams. The league recently said it was in favor of getting to 10 football teams.
Several Big East football coaches, including UConn’s Randy Edsall, have come out publicly in favor of adding a ninth football team to balance out the schedule.
Currently, teams play a seven-game, unbalanced schedule. Some teams play four home games and three away, while others play three home and four on the road.
During the annual Big East Media Day in Newport, R.I. in August, commissioner John Marinatto told the league’s football coaches not to discuss potential expansion, but he did address the topic.
“If it’s to our advantage to do something like that, everything’s on the table,” he said.
“We decided that we want to look at and study everything. And we try and do things in a quiet way behind the scenes.”
Villanova, a Big East member for basketball and other sports, has also been offered a spot for football, which would bring the conference to 10 teams.
“Villanova has been obviously a member of the conference for 30 years,” Big East Commissioner John Marinatto told AOL FanHouse, which initially broke the TCU news. “We’ve encouraged them for a number of years going back to 1997 to do whatever they feel is in their best interest. I think they’re in the process of evaluating that question and if they evaluate it in the affirmative, we’ll obviously have a conversation about membership.”
Villanova is expected to let the conference know by the end of the current school year, Fanhouse reported.
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