Pitt basketball coach Jamie Dixon lobbied for TCU, his alma mater, to join the Big East in September with athletic director Chris Del Conte, a meeting that may have accelerated the school's interest in the conference.
On Monday, TCU's board of trustees unanimously approved an invitation to join the Big East in football and all other sports.
And Dixon is in line to get some of the credit for the move from the Mountain West Conference
Dixon, a former all-Southwest Conference guard at TCU, pitched the Big East to Del Conte during the Baylor-TCU football game on Sept 18. Dixon was in the Dallas area recruiting and visiting with a booster.
Del Conte was initially skeptical, Dixon said, but the coach kept telling him the conference was a good fit. The Big East and TCU opened talks shortly after that.
''I think it's a great thing,'' Dixon said. ''I'm a little biased, obviously, but it's a great institution with great academics. They have a complete, total commitment to athletics with what they do and what they put in their programs. I think it's a great area. We're going into one of the biggest TV markets in the country. That's a good thing for TV, recruiting, for the university's enrollment, applications, admissions.''
While moving to the Big East allows TCU to gain access to an automatic BCS bowl berth if it wins the conference football championship, Dixon also said TCU's admission aids all sports, including basketball.
''If our football gets stronger, the rest of our sports get stronger. There had been so much talk about adding another football team,'' Dixon said. ''I think if you're going to add one, you might as well add the best. They were the best available football team. Once you look at all the positives, you can see why we made this decision. The timing was right and the university is the perfect fit and the conference gives them the ideal fit.''
While the Big East will have 17 basketball-playing schools, TCU's addition will cause only a minor alteration in the schedule, Dixon said. Rather than playing three home-and-away games against selected opponents, Dixon speculates each school will play two. In football, Big East teams no longer have to schedule five non-conference games a season.
''Everyone said it was too big when it went to 16 and when it was 13 and 12,'' Dixon said. ''Sixteen worked fine and 17 doesn't bring too many changes. ... It's going to be fine. It's not going to change too many things. Talking to some people the last couple of days, I think with the conference tournament, there's a possibility of keeping everybody playing. There will be five games the first day. The 18-game schedule stays the same with the slight adjustment there will be two crossover games instead of three. TV will be able to still get the games they want.''
Dixon doesn't believe the Big East is in danger of becoming too big.
''Numbers in conferences and geography are out the window now. Every conference I've been in, as a player and coach, has gone through constant realignment and constant changes,'' he said. ''Names do not represent conferences, teams represent conferences. We have strengthened ourselves both football-wise and basketball-wise by the addition of TCU. That's a good thing in every way.''
Dixon doesn't think travel will be an issue because flights to Dallas aren't that much longer for many Big East members than they are to Tampa for games against South Florida. Dallas is approximately 1,060 miles from Pittsburgh, while Tampa is 870 miles away.
''It's just a two-and-a-half hour flight,'' Dixon said. ''It's just another half hour on the plane. People don't realize it's not that much further.''
Still, Dixon couldn't have envisioned this when he was a player two decades ago.
''Coaching against TCU in the Big East is pretty hard to believe,'' Dixon said, ''in a lot of ways.''
