When you're the brand new Big East commissioner, you're going to get asked a lot of questions.  Some of them, I thought we discussed, we weren't going to ask about.  But in the interest of fairness and covering our basis, let's hear what the new guy has to say about some of the conference's biggest topics, courtesy of the Tampa Tribune's Brett McMurphy:

Will the Big East add a 9th member? Not anytime soon.

"Only if they brought something to the table...A lot of schools could solve the scheduling [issue], but they would have to bring full value as an associate or full member."

If the Gator Bowl wants to keep us, they gotta go all-in.  Currently, the Gator Bowl packages the Big East with Notre Dame as part of it's selection criteria.  Obviously, ND is much more attractive than the Big East schools so they're more likely to be chosen if available.  Marinatto is going to play hardball to either force the Gator Bowl to take us on fulltime or not at all.

We believe [the Big East] has earned that, we don't want the hybrid [model]...If we have to go somewhere else, so be it."

The truth is, the Big East has a couple bowl partners that suck. The Sun Bowl is on record has saying they will always choose Notre Dame over the Big East as part of their affiliation.  If the Big East dropped its affiliation with the Gator Bowl (and with it might go the Sun), the Alamo, Cotton and Champs games are all looking into new affiliations.  Then again, if this plays out poorly, we'll get stuck with one less "2nd-tier" bowl and have another Motor City Bowl-like guarantee instead. Yippee?

I know it's Big East Football Media Day, but how bout the Big East basketball Tournament format?  Well, it might be very well be changing.

"We're looking at the format that's best for the 16 teams...I'm not sure the double-bye [format] does that."

When the commish says he's "not sure" something works, it always ends up getting changed.  Expect to see the BET get revamps soon, if not this upcoming season.