No guarantees for the new Big East or America 12

There are two pitfalls to naming a college athletic conference these days: Including any mention of a geographic region, and adding a set number of member institutions.

The modern alliances are too flimsy to warrant ordering letterhead for a name that will be either outdated or incorrect by the time it arrives. Conferences would be better off naming themselves after colors or animals, like elementary school classes. Everyone would still know which is Group 1 and which is Group 2, but you don't have to come out and say it.

The remnants of the Big East Conference, which officially gave up that name to the Catholic Cagers last week, has the feel of a Group 2 league, if you know what I mean. Maybe that's unfair, and a little premature, but when nine of your schools are claim-jumping arrivistes from Conference USA, that's just how it feels.

The new/old league has reportedly chosen to rebrand itself the America 12 Conference, although that has not yet been announced. According to other reports, the name Great America 12 was narrowly defeated. If they had to choose one of those, they got it right. Otherwise, people would have been calling the league office asking the show times for Argo.

The "America" part is fine (better than "Canada," for instance), but the "12" is optimistic. Getting to and staying at exactly that number will be a challenge. It wouldn't be surprising if Connecticut and Cincinnati departed sometime soon, and there have been questions about the commitment level of Houston and Southern Methodist. This is a conference, after all, that had three members - Boise State, Texas Christian, and San Diego State - that signed up and then changed their minds before ever playing a single Big East game. All it takes is a checkbook to break a promise in college athletics, and, heaven knows, every school that has a BCS-division football team also has a checkbook.

Locally, the question is where this leaves Temple, which finds itself in the position of having moved into a once-desirable neighborhood only to find that someone opened a smelting plant on the edge of town. The timing has not been great for the Owls, but they are definitely in a solid football conference, even if their list of opponents will not include any schools that people in Philadelphia give a rat's rump about. Temple does arrive, however (actually did so last season), at the moment in which this league has lost its BCS clout and - especially upon the inauguration of the four-team national playoff in 2014 - has little hope to recover it. Still, a good football league as it stands now.

With the impending departure of Louisville and, to a lesser extent, Rutgers, and the suspicion that Cincy and UConn aren't devoted to the America 12, it is anyone's guess how good the basketball league will be. Of the other schools, only Temple and Memphis have decent programs. Through Thursday, these were ESPN's daily RPI rankings for the rest of the league: East Carolina (92), Central Florida (100), South Florida (127), Tulane (179), Houston (206) and SMU (211). And that's before the America 12 adds Tulsa (149) somewhere down the line to cover a defection and keep the letterhead accurate for as long as possible. Think the Owls will get any love from the NCAA tournament committee by playing that schedule?

So, to generalize, Temple might have positioned itself in a good football and bad basketball conference even though its traditional strengths are exactly the reverse. That might not be a recipe for disaster, but it isn't German chocolate cake, either.

Not that the Owls really had a choice. The Big Ten and ACC weren't knocking down their door, and the America 12 is a reasonable spot to land. There is no guarantee things will go better for the nonfootball schools that splintered off, taking the Big East name and the Madison Square Garden hoops tournament with them.

Those schools, including Villanova, are betting that television revenue from basketball can keep their athletic programs afloat into the future, but there are a few weak links in the chain. The test will be recruiting, and the Big East coaches will all be fishing in essentially the same pond. If the seven Catholic schools are able to add Butler, Xavier, Creighton, Dayton, and St. Louis, as is rumored, which would be good for the level of competition and the television deal, then the pond will get very crowded indeed.

These are all things to be considered down the road for the two leagues, and, considering the state of modern college athletics, someone will probably reconfigure all the intersections before they get there, anyway. Schools aren't really partners any longer. They are just passengers stuck in the same elevator, looking to be the first one off when the door opens at a higher floor.