MORGANTOWN - I've got nothing against local market TV sports anchors. I've known a lot of them over the years in a lot of different places and I know a few now. Like most of 'em, too.

And as a general rule - it comes with the job description, actually - they're prettier than me and they don't talk funny.

Here's the thing, though: Seldom does one break a major story thanks to well-placed sources or some good digging.

Sure, there are exceptions. But I'm thinking that if one of these guys does come up with some really juicy stuff, he's not going to limit it to a brief mention in his newscast and then a few lines in his blog.

I bring this up not to trash tee wee guys or to permanently eliminate myself from consideration for a seat next to some darling weather babe behind an anchor desk, but to put in perspective a report that began circulating Thursday that Memphis was "in serious talks with the Big East about joining the conference.''

It came from the blog of a TV newsman in Memphis in the face of repeated denials from Big East officials in recent months that the league is considering expansion at all.

Could this be 2003 all over again, with Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese playing the part of John Swofford, ready to pounce on one of another conference's flag bearers? Not likely.

Could it be wishful thinking on the part of someone at Memphis? Perhaps.

Could it all come to pass anyway? Sure. You lived through 2003. Anything is possible.

But there are no ongoing negotiations between the Big East and Memphis to try and figure out a way for the Tigers to come aboard. At best, bringing another team in (be it Memphis or anyone else) is contingent upon someone else leaving, which doesn't seem on anyone's front burner at the moment.

Then again, who knew it was right at the top of Miami's to-do list until right before it actually happened?

If you haven't been paying attention, here's the basic deal with the Big East: The football side has eight members and would love to have nine to balance the schedule (four home and four road league games each year). The basketball side has 16 members, half of which don't play football. It's just maxed out.

There seem to be only two ways - short of convincing perhaps Villanova to do what Connecticut did and upgrade its football program to Division I-A - to solve the football problem without further complicating basketball. The league could add a football-only member or replace one of the basketball schools with one that plays football and basketball.

Tranghese is dead-set against adding a football-only school just to balance the schedule and repeated himself in no uncertain terms recently while talking about the possibility of East Carolina doing just that.

And as a general rule - it comes with the job description, actually - they're prettier than me and they don't talk funny.

Here's the thing, though: Seldom does one break a major story thanks to well-placed sources or some good digging.

Sure, there are exceptions. But I'm thinking that if one of these guys does come up with some really juicy stuff, he's not going to limit it to a brief mention in his newscast and then a few lines in his blog.

I bring this up not to trash tee wee guys or to permanently eliminate myself from consideration for a seat next to some darling weather babe behind an anchor desk, but to put in perspective a report that began circulating Thursday that Memphis was "in serious talks with the Big East about joining the conference.''

It came from the blog of a TV newsman in Memphis in the face of repeated denials from Big East officials in recent months that the league is considering expansion at all.

Could this be 2003 all over again, with Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese playing the part of John Swofford, ready to pounce on one of another conference's flag bearers? Not likely.

Could it be wishful thinking on the part of someone at Memphis? Perhaps.

Could it all come to pass anyway? Sure. You lived through 2003. Anything is possible.

But there are no ongoing negotiations between the Big East and Memphis to try and figure out a way for the Tigers to come aboard. At best, bringing another team in (be it Memphis or anyone else) is contingent upon someone else leaving, which doesn't seem on anyone's front burner at the moment.

Then again, who knew it was right at the top of Miami's to-do list until right before it actually happened?

If you haven't been paying attention, here's the basic deal with the Big East: The football side has eight members and would love to have nine to balance the schedule (four home and four road league games each year). The basketball side has 16 members, half of which don't play football. It's just maxed out.

There seem to be only two ways - short of convincing perhaps Villanova to do what Connecticut did and upgrade its football program to Division I-A - to solve the football problem without further complicating basketball. The league could add a football-only member or replace one of the basketball schools with one that plays football and basketball.

Tranghese is dead-set against adding a football-only school just to balance the schedule and repeated himself in no uncertain terms recently while talking about the possibility of East Carolina doing just that.

"We dealt with it before [with Temple]. It didn't work out,'' Tranghese told the Hartford Courant. "We've lived it and we're not going down that path again.''

Tranghese, of course, doesn't have the final say. The league's presidents could go over his head, but the mere notion of the football schools trying that and creating yet another rift in what has finally become a fairly calm period for the league doesn't make much sense. So, for now at least, assume Tranghese's position is that of the majority of his league.

What is interesting, however, is the possibility of replacing a school. There are no Temples in the mix right now - schools (in this case, on the basketball side) on the brink of getting the boot - but there is always the Notre Dame factor.

Fans, it seems, are always at the ready to jettison the Irish because of their refusal to join the football side of the league while enjoying the benefits of bowl partnerships and conference affiliation in most of their other sports. Sorry, but the league looks beyond that knee-jerk attitude and understands what Notre Dame brings to the table both as a member in those other sports and as a bowl partner.

Like it or not, the fact is that if Notre Dame hadn't been in the mix in 2003 as a potential participant in the Gator and several other bowls, the ACC raid of the Big East would have been even more devastating. Sure, West Virginia (and then Rutgers, Louisville, South Florida, etc.) ultimately propped up the league with its football success, but in the two or three years it took for that to happen the league could have lost any of its significant bowl contracts and made it even tougher to weather the calls for its ouster from an automatic qualifying spot in the BCS.

So forget kicking Notre Dame to the curb. It's not going to happen.

On the flip side, though, who knows what Notre Dame wants? It pretty much has a standing offer from any league in the country to sign up, and what happens if or when the Irish decide to take the Big Ten up on an offer? The Big East could survive that now with the bowls because of the aforementioned success of WVU and others, and although it would lose a little bit of prestige without Notre Dame in sports like basketball (men's and women's), soccer, cross country, etc., the blow wouldn't be that difficult to absorb.

Especially if there was a school out there that could replace Notre Dame and add a ninth football team in the process. A school that would do nothing to hurt the strength of the basketball side. A school that, while certainly not an even switch in a lot of the Olympic sports, might still fit in well and add at least a warm body in football and a Top 10 basketball team.

In other words, a school like Memphis.

Is that a consideration for the Big East? Probably. Any good manager is always looking at the what-ifs, and Tranghese is a good manager. He certainly learned in 2003 that it would have been good to have a contingency plan in place. He's not likely to be caught off guard again.

As far as serious talks between Memphis and the Big East are concerned, though, if there are some discussions going on, that's probably what they are limited to. Unless Notre Dame is in the process of changing its letterhead, all it is is talk.

Now if the Memphis TV guy has that story ...

To contact staff writer Dave Hickman, call 348-1734 or send e-mail to dphickm...@aol.com.