Big East Will Add Football

The Big East Conference, long known as a basketball powerhouse, said Thursday it would add football next fall and was courting four eastern schools to join the four already playing at the major-college level.

Meetings will be held next month with Rutgers, Temple, Virginia Tech and West Virginia “to discuss potential membership in the Big East only in the sport of football,” the conference said in a statement.

The Big East’s current four Division I-A football schools--Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Boston College and new member Miami--agreed in an eight-hour meeting Wednesday in Providence, R.I., to add football to the conference’s 17 sports.

The Big East needs only two of the four for an NCAA-regulation conference.