Tulane, ECU to Join Big East in '14, Leaving C-USA The Big East moved quickly to replace Rutgers and braced for more possible departures, getting Tulane and East Carolina to agree to join the re-invented conference in 2014. "I would go as far to say as this is a historic day for Tulane University ... the Big East is coming to the Big Easy," school President Scott Cowen said Tuesday. Tulane, in New Orleans, and East Carolina, in Greenville, N.C., will make it six Conference USA schools to join the Big East in the last two years. Rutgers announced one week ago that it would leave the Big East for the Big Ten. Cowen and athletic director Rick Dickson said serious talks with the Big East began about a week ago. "This is an unprecedented opportunity to join a national conference," Dickson said. With Maryland leaving the ACC, there has been strong speculation that Connecticut or Louisville will be the next to leave the Big East as the Terps' replacement. If either does, the conference is still on target to have 12 football members in 2014, just not the same ones it will have in 2013 when the new Big East debuts. "We're not finished," Big East Commissioner Mike Aresco said. We obviously have some other plans for expansion. Navy has committed to join the Big East for football in 2015. Aresco said that the Big East could even expand to 16 members, depending on what schools are available. "We have to let that play out," he said. "They absolutely are extremely committed to the Big East," Aresco said. We absolutely will be looking at some western schools. The Big East's membership also includes seven schools, including Georgetown and St. John's, that either do not have football teams or don't compete at the FBS level, but have helped it become a premier basketball conference. It hasn't always been this way for Tulane. Cowen said in the decade before Hurricane Katrina devastated the school in 2005, forcing it to shut down for a semester, Tulane won more sports championships than any program in C-USA. Cowen said it took three years for the university to fully recover.