No, but I bet if the PAC-10 could do it over again, they’d dump one from Washington, one from Arizona and pick up Boise St. and Utah.
At this point, adding a 12th team is to increase your market share. A big chunk of that is accomplished just by getting a football conference championship game. But the other is being able to start selling your gear in new markets. Of the BigXII, Missouri’s really the only one that fits. There are certainly arguments to be made for some Big East or Conf USA schools.
Iowa State doesn’t add eyeballs or prestige, doesn’t fit academically, plus Iowa would almost certainly veto them (not that they get a veto, per se, but I’m sure they would be very opposed to another Big 10 school in a small state).
Cincinnati, Memphis and Louisville (seen them mentioned elsewhere) don’t fit the profile of a Big Ten school and don’t fit academically.
Texas would be the ideal fit, except for geography and the fact that they won’t come. Apparently Big 12 revenue sharing is weaker than the Big Ten and Texas is a major beneficiary of that situation. It’s been speculated that Mizzou will probably at least flirt with the idea of moving if only to try to get the Big 12 revenue sharing situation rectified.
ND is still probably the second best fit after Texas, their faculty would presumably still love to join the CIC (I believe their faculty senate vote was a unanimous yes the last time this came up), but the athletic department and (subway) alums value their independence too much. Interestingly, I’ve read they would get more from their share of the Big Ten’s TV deals than they do from their NBC deal. Don’t know if that’s true.
Pitt’s probably the third best fit, given the school’s profile and it would fit right about in the middle academically, but I’m not sure it adds much in terms of new TV eyeballs.
I think the three major factors here are going to be what new eyeballs they bring to the table, how good they are in football (to a lesser extent basketball, but I think football is the driving force), and how the school would fit into the CIC.
Any discussion of Big Ten expansion withough mentioning the CIC implications is missing a major component.
Just as an FYI, conference teams may be making more than ND going forward. Each team in the SEC, including Vanderbilt, brings in more money from the SEC TV contracts than Notre Dame gets from NBC.
Re: TV contracts. According to Stewart Mandel, ND’s contract is worth $9 mill per year. Each Big Ten school receives $19.3mm per year from the Big Ten’s TV deals.
One secondary factor that a vocal minority would love to see is adding a school that has a hockey program. Right now the Big Ten schools that play hockey do so in other conferences (the WCHA and…I’m blanking on the other one). It would be nice to have enough programs to have true Big Ten hockey.
The Big 10 has two schools in Illinois, two in Indiana, and two in Michigan. I don’t think they’d mind having two in Iowa or Pennsylvania. Notre Dame would be the third school in Indiana, which only has one major television market (although ND has regional and national appeal).
I think all this is probably true.
Does CIC membership have to be linked to Big 10 membership? According to your link, the University of Chicago is still a member of the CIC, but it hasn’t been a part of the Big 10 for over 50 years.
It’s my understanding that the two go hand-in-hand: that an invitation to the athletic arm (the Big 10) includes one to the academic arm (the CIC). That was the case when Penn State joined (and MSU before them, and OSU before them, etc.)
That would be the CCHA. Wisconsin and Minnesota play in the WCHA. Michigan, Michigan State, and Ohio State are in the CCHA. The other six teams do not field a hockey team.
The CCHA has Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State, and …Notre Dame. The WCHA has Wisconsin and Minnesota, and oddly the Ohio State women’s hockey team. No way does the Big Ten form a hockey conference, no matter who is brought in for other sports. The WCHA is arguably the best or second best collegiate conference, and the CCHA seems to work well for its teams even though they are widely separated.
Notre Dame may want to consider joining the Big Ten for football. They would make more in TV revenues, get revenue sharing for those years in which they don’t even make a bowl game, and the NBC contract could be reworked to benefit everybody involved.
They do already make money when they don’t make a bowl game - it was when the BCS contracts were reworked. ND opted out of the “all or nothing” contract in favor of the “single team share every year” contract.
On thing is I think the Big Ten would like a team that is not Geographically similar. Not that it going to happen, but they would like to stick the Big Ten network into a big virgin area of new eyes.
Don’t get me started. The CCHA is the redheaded stepchild of college hockey when it comes time for NCAA seedings. Sure we get some #1 seeds once in a while but it sure seems like the NCAA doesn’t do the CCHA any favors.
Temple’s football team already was part of the Big East until a few years ago, when they got kicked out of the league for insufficient achievement in the field of excellence.
Why talk of Texas? That makes no sense at all. The Big Ten is an upper midwest league. They’re not Conference USA, who has to spread out into whatever states they can. The big teams are on television enough to get a recruiting presence outside of the midwest, they don’t need a team in a particular state. Hell, Ohio State grabs 1 or 2 kids from Florida every year.
Notre Dame would make the most sense, but Missouri or Pitt would make sense as well. The Missouri and Nebraska talk actually surprised me.
Money, not recruiting, is driving this possibility of expansion. The Big Ten has a very lucrative business with their own cable network. By expanding into a new market, they would have a new base of eyeballs to watch the network and drive up subscribers and advertising. Moving east allows them to catch the attention of a denser population like with Rutgers in the New Jersey/New York area. In the west, Missouri is geographically friendly and has two large metropolitan areas in St. Louis and Kansas City.
Of course Notre Dame would be the best possible fit. They are geographically, academically, and athletically similar to the Big Ten and carry a more nation-wide audience to drive people the the Big Ten Network. Too bad they care more for their independence than making money.
Assuming the Big 10 adds a team, and breaks up into two 6 team divisions. I hope they don’t go down the same road as the Big XII did. Which is break up into geographical divisions and play teams from the other division only 2 times every six years. We don;t see the Oklahoma - Nebraska game every year which was one of the blockbuster games back in the 80’s.
When the SEC broke up into divisions, each team kept an inter-division game that they play every year. Bama plays Tenn, Florida plays LSU, and Auburn plays UGA every year.
suppose Piit joins the conference, this is the division I would like to see. Teams play a round robin within their division and the team next to them. And rotate the other 5 teams.
OSU Mich
Pitt Penn St
Wisc MSU
Pur NU
Iowa Minn
Ind Illinois
ND may have more interest if they can’t get the same money they’re used to getting from NBC in their next contract talks. They’d make the most sense, certainly, but they’d have to be the first to ask. Which could happen.
The Big 12 is roughly on a par with the Big 10 financially. It would be hard to convince any of its members to jump ship. So the Big 10 has its own network? The Big 12 can set one up too, if that’s what it comes to.
So any expansion, if it isn’t ND, would pretty much have to be by poaching from the Big East, namely Pitt or WVU. The Big East would then promote somebody from C-USA, which would then fill its hole from the Sun Belt, which would be screwed. Right down the financial food chain, just like when the ACC took BC, Miami, and VT.
It’s really a shame that a few Eastern AD’s resisted forming a conference for so long that Penn State decided they couldn’t wait any longer. The old “East Indies” semiorganization had some wonderful rivalries that are now gone forever.
ETA: The Big 10’s main rivalries would still exist in an east-west division split.
And UConn did go from 1-AA to serious competitiveness in the BCS in a very few years.
I think it is just fashionable to mention Boise St and Utah with the PAC-10. Despite all the Boise success, they still only bring in about 35,000 for a football game. I just don’t what Utah and Boise would bring to the PAC-10 besides a successful football program. Conference affiliation is more than just football. There is B-Ball, Womens B-ball, Baseball and all of the other smaller sports.
I think BYU is better fit for the PAC-10 than either Utah or Boise, especially Boise.
You didn’t specify a particular team in Washington or Arizona, but all four teams have had their football moments in the no so recent past. It is easy to put down Wash State because they have been so horrible the last few years, but they have been to the Rose Bowl as recently as the 2002 CFB season, and twice in the last 12 years.
Assuming your hypothesis of OSU/Mich playing twice every year is correct, that is the best scenario for the conference financially. If they truly are the best teams in the conference, then that give the conference the best chance of getting two BCS bids.
