The seven win rule has not passed, while there is certainly a great deal of support for a seven win rule the issue of how to put people out of business has not been addressed nor the potential anti-trust issues. There is also concern about making sure every 7 win team is accommodated in some manner. Until those issues are resolved, we don't have a seven win rule.

As to the Liberty, the assumption that Liberty will go Big East is not just based on Memphis going to the Big East. In case you have forgotten, the Liberty changed its agreement with C-USA for 2010-13 to allow them to dump C-USA once in the cycle for a Big East and they opted to do that last year despite the availability of a ranked Southern Miss as champion. The SEC is in position to contract even more bowls since expanding, Liberty isn't going off the SEC roster.

Now the Independence. They lost Big XII v. SEC and would like to keep a top name league. They went with MWC vs. ACC. What made the MWC attractive was the chance to get BYU, TCU, or Air Force. Only AFA remains in the MWC and with the Big East going to 13 in football in 2015 and an apparent interest in AFA, don't rule out that AFA will announce by June 30, 2013 that they will join Big East in 2015. The ACC has been disappointing in their ticket sales and reports around the ACC have been that the league will try to find a more southeastern bowl opportunity to replace it in the 2014-17 cycle.

Little Rock. I was involved in some of the meetings when an established bowl promoter came to town to gauge interest and talked with people involved in some of the other meetings. At that point, no significant local sponsorship appeared likely because the game was going to be Sun Belt vs. MAC. This is not a new development. When the Independence was teetering on extinction back before they secured the SEC-BigXII deal (late 80's) the organizers approached Little Rock and Jackson, MS about rotating the game between Shreveport and one or both sites. Little Rock dismissed the idea as did Jackson.