A view of the new league landscape. (College Football).

Mike Tranghese was standing in the lobby of a posh beachside resort in northeast Florida last week, grandstanding like a man with one last request while waiting for the red phone to ring. The Big East has a proud history. The Big East has won national titles. The Big East cannot be so callously purged from the college football landscape.

But there will be no last-minute reprieve. The ACC will take Miami, Syracuse and Boston College from the Big East and expand to a 12-team superconference. And there's nothing Tranghese, the Big East's feisty yet overwhelmed commissioner, can do about it.

"We're not inviting them if we don't already know the answer," says one ACC official.

So that's settled. Now, the hard part: What happens from here?

Can the Big East survive as a football conference? Yes, but BCS honchos must exert some muscle. These guys sold us on a specific plan not so long ago. Now, all of a sudden, the package goes from six leagues to five, and those five leagues still will keep a majority of the cash? Something tells me some judge somewhere won't like the sound of that.

That leaves officials with two options: Force Notre Dame into the Big East by threatening to take away the school's automatic at-large bid, or come up with a playoff. The playoff, folks, isn't going to happen. Instead, the Big East will allow Notre Dame to keep the revenue it earns as an independent and throw in more cash--i.e. shares of the league's television and bowl payouts--in return for the Irish's never-ending love.

The Big East also could make a run at Penn State. That would give the the Lions, who never really have felt comfortable in the Big Ten, an opportunity to get back to East Coast-focused recruiting and to play regional rivals annually.