The National, 6/15/12: OMG Realignment!

The News You've All Been Waiting For: Yes, today, a major announcement involving realignment happened, shaking the very foundations of college athletics. Boston University is leaving America East for the Patriot League, thereby ensuring that both leagues will probably continue to be one-bid conferences in the NCAA tournament.

Note a minor inaccuracy in Mike Rutherford's report; he states that BU has been a member of America East for the past seven seasons. That is true; they have. They were also a member the 25 seasons before that, ever since they were a charter member of the ECAC North, which changed names a couple of times in the way to becoming the America East. In short, this is not the loss of a Johnny-Come-Lately team to the America East; it's the loss of one of its four remaining anchor institutions. Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont will remain as founding members.

The West Coast Conference Grows Up: With the addition of Pacific next year, the WCC will reorganize their conference tournament into a standard 10-team bracket with first-round byes for the top six schools, rather than the abominable "protect the top seed" double-bye format they've been using. Obviously, this is because the WCC has built enough respect that they're almost never going to be a one-bid conference, and the regular-season champ is almost always going to have enough oomph to get in as an at-large should disaster strike.

Justice Delayed Is LOL Miami: The NCAA still hasn't handed down a Notice of Allegations to Miami, and aren't expected to resolve Shapirogate until after signing day 2013... which puts the Hurricanes in a bit of a pickle. They're going to lose a recruit here or there even if the penalties are insignificant; some recruits they do manage to land are going to hightail it out of there if the penalties are severe.

Diablerie: Dear Dan Mullen: nothing empowers the little guy (Louisiana Tech) more than you responding to his (Sonny Dykes) smack talk. In fact, even responding to it sort of proves the other guy's point. ... Honestly, any time your statement to police includes the words "God told me to", you've likely got problems. ... Tate Forcier couldn't even make a CFL team, apparently. ... TCU's Freshman Orientation video makes me want to rethink letting them join the Big 12, but then I remember EcoKat and pipe down. On the other hand, here's North Carolina State with a commercial for Strickland Propane.