"Somebody else is going to get hit now," Tranghese, who retired from the Big East in 2009, told USA Today.
ACC members Florida State and Clemson have been mentioned as possible future members.
"I couldn't feel any better about the future of this league," ACC Commissioner John Swofford said after adding Louisville.
The Big Ten, after adding Penn State in 1993, stood numerically challenged at 11 schools for almost 20 years before Commissioner Jim Delany recruited Nebraska two years ago.
Delany said the paradigm had shifted. "We were maybe slow to take it up."
But did his league really need Maryland and Rutgers?
"The Big Ten is really where Rutgers belongs," said Delany, a New Jersey native.
It has been speculated that taking Maryland was payback for Notre Dame spurning the Big Ten for a special football alliance with the ACC.
Delany acknowledged it isn't easy making moves that might jeopardize the livelihoods of colleagues.
"It's not the nicest side of what we're dealing with," Delany said.
Commissioners sometimes behave as if inspired by Sun Tzu's "The Art of War."
This free-for-all free market has created, in essence, two divisions of major-college football. In 2014, when the four-team playoff begins, the sport will be left with five major conferences: Pac-12, SEC, ACC, Big Ten and Big 12.
Five "other" leagues — Big East, Sun Belt, Mid-American, Conference USA, Mountain West — will fight for the table scraps.
The Big East, if it survives, needs another name. How about the Sun Rise/Sun Set League?
College football is experiencing the inevitable, if unintended, consequences of the Supreme Court's ruling.
The lesser leagues, as they become monetarily weakened, eventually will be less able to compete on the field.
"The economic gap has become astronomical," Benson, the Sun Belt's commissioner, said of the divide.
Some might suggest the weeding-out process is what the free-market power commissioners wanted all along.
"I don't know if it was intended," Benson said. "But it certainly has occurred."