Overexpansion is what killed the old Big East. Why not stay at 10 basketball only schools? If the teams are good enough, 6 or even 7 might make the tourney in any given year. It is important that some of our teams make deep runs in this year's tourney. Do that, and the bids will follow next year.
The home and home format is great -- get too big, go to two divisions, and you lose that.
I think it's highly unlikely that you're going to have 6 or 7 Big East Schools make it when you're going to have at least 6 make it from the Big Ten, probably 6 from Big 12, 5 or 6 from SEC and Pac-12. That's already 21 teams.
In 1985 we sent 6 teams at our height. But there's more conferences now. Not only that but expansion helps with recruiting.
I love the current Big East format. And I'm not for expanding right now. Programs are growing and developing rivalries. St. John's-Seton Hall looks like it's going to be very competitive. But I think eventually we are going to see the Power 5 Conferences breakaway and form an amateur league. And college sports will be an afterthought. Schools like St. John's, Georgetown, Villanova, Seton Hall, Providence will all be forgotten about and left to play in College Sports which will be about as popular as D-3 sports are now.
I think that in order for those schools to survive, expanding into a legit 6th Power Conference is going to be necessary. Unless the Conference really develops into the undeniable best Basketball Conference which I'm just not sure it's capable of being. Again, I love the format and want to give it 5 good years before we really start digging into this area. But it's something we might and I think probably will have to deal with, so why not discuss it now?