NEW YORK — Memphis athletic director
R.C. Johnson was happily enjoying the food and festivities at the Conference USA Men’s Basketball Media Day in downtown Manhattan Tuesday, but that didn’t stop him from imagining life in a BCS conference.
“I don’t want to lie to you,” Johnson said. “In the ideal world, the SEC would call and we’d go tomorrow.
“But in the meantime we’re going to do everything we can to make this thing [Conference USA] get stronger and stronger.”
While Johnson has long maintained that the SEC would be his first choice, Memphis is often linked to the Big East.
Yet the Big East has recently
reached out to Texas Christian and Villanova about becoming the league’s ninth football team, thereby balancing the league schedule.
“From the football standpoint, it’s a little awkward on their scheduling because they have seven conference games and ideally you’d like to have a minimum of eight,” Johnson said last year. “So that’s one of the things that we would hope would be in our favor.”
Memphis has been a member of Conference USA since the mid-1990s.
Joining a BCS conference enables greater payouts from TV and bowl games, as well as enhanced recruiting opportunities.
“Money, money, money,” Johnson said when asked his main reasons for wanting to join the BCS.
Last year, Johnson hired former Big East Commissioner
Mike Tranghese as an adviser “just to evaluate our program.”
“I wanted him to come in and just evaluate our program,” said Johnson, who knew Tranghese from Johnson’s days at Temple. “It got misconstrued that he was coming in just to get us into the BCS, and that really wasn’t it. It was for him to evaluate.”
On the basketball front, Johnson has noticed that former Memphis coach
John Calipari has made news by recruiting players to Kentucky like
Eric Bledsoe and
Enes Kanter, both of whom have been investigated by the NCAA.
“In the Bledsoe case, it got such big play and as it turned out, there was nothing to it,” Johnson said. “I never have a problem with that.
“What I do have a problem with — and John never did it and
Josh [Pastner] isn’t doing it — blatant, flagrant violations. We just don’t tolerate that.”
RELATED CONTENT
**
Herrion adjusting to life at Marshall
**
Memphis ready to roll; C-USA All-Conference Teams
Follow Adam Zagoria on Twitter
