The NCAA has certified four new bowls for next season, and two of them have agreements with the Big East Conference. That means the eight-team league will have at least five -- and could have as many as six -- bowl tie-ins starting next season.

The two new bowls in the Big East lineup are the International Bowl, which will be played Jan. 6 in the Rogers Centre in Toronto and pit the Big East against the Mid-American Conference, and the Birmingham Bowl, which will be played Dec. 23 at Legion Field and matches the Big East against Conference USA.

Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt said the addition of the new bowls are yet another sign that the Big East is on the rise.

"Bowls can choose whatever conferences they want to be affiliated with, and everyone wants to be associated with a winner," Wannstedt said.

"So this is all a very positive sign about how the Big East is perceived. It also speaks well of our commissioner and his staff and the job they have done in selling the conference based on its merits.

"The bottom line is these bowls are run by businessmen and every conference had a chance to sell their product to them. The Big East obviously has a lot to offer and it is only going to get better."

With the addition of the two bowls, the Big East's bowl lineup for next year will include spots in a Bowl Championship Series game, either the Gator Bowl (Jacksonville, Fla.) or the Sun Bowl (El Paso, Texas), the Car Care Bowl (Charlotte, N.C.) followed by the two new bowls.

The Big East also has an agreement with the Houston Bowl (which includes Notre Dame, Conference USA and the Big 12), but the bowl is in financial trouble and has not yet been certified by the NCAA. The bowl, which still owes a portion of its payout to the Big 12 and Mountain West Conferences for last season's game, is in search of a new sponsor.

"We're very excited to be associated with these two new bowls and extremely pleased with the bowl opportunities that we have for this season and beyond," Big East commissioner Michael Tranghese said. "Big East football fans now have even more attractive postseason destinations."

It would seem as if the Big East could struggle to fill all six spots in most years (last year only four teams were bowl-eligible), but the changing landscape and rules in college football make it much more likely that the conference will have little trouble filling most of them.

For one thing, most of the Big East's bowl tie-ins have a provision that can be filled by Notre Dame, and the NCAA considers 6-6 teams bowl-eligible because the 12-game schedule is now the norm.