It’s official: TCU is moving out of the Mountain West and into the Big East Conference.

After months of speculation about changing conference, rumors were finally confirmed yesterday during a press conference where it was announced that TCU would officially be moving to the Big East in 2012. This is giant news. However, the benefits of making the move might be fewer than one would think.

There is the benefit of having an automatic qualifier in the BCS selection and the prestige that is associated with the Big East. On the other side though, the Big East as a conference was one of the worst in college football this year, currently having only one ranked team. In addition, the Mountain West is gaining two highly-ranked football teams in Nevada and Boise State that will boost it’s reputation and national standing.

Only thinking of football is extremely narrow-minded. We must consider the other sports that stand to benefit. The Big East had one of the strongest showings in last year’s NCAA Basketball tournament.

Our basketball program hasn’t been particularly strong recently and easily stands to benefit from the boost to recruiting that would result from joining a basketball power conference.

The move to the Big East overall is still a good thing. It helps garner more national attention and will be a big boost not only to the athletics program, but the school as a whole.

Multimedia editor Matt Coffelt for the editorial board.