I know I’m biased (see username), but I cannot conceive of Michigan being kicked out. They are annually in the top 5 of the Director’s Cup (#1 in Big Ten) and the 2nd best academically in the Big Ten (only behind Northwestern). Nobody else in the Big Ten can touch that. The Detroit area is a top 11 metro area (used to be as high as 5 a long time ago) and as people are leaving the area taking their love across the country.
The media rich category was added as a tie breaker between schools and to give a small bump to schools that are excellent in one category but merely great in another (Texas, Florida). There are almost no Northeast schools that are great athletically though many of them are excellent academically. Princeton is the closest one to fitting the criteria (I would call them good athletically). I could make an exception to Rule 1 and allow 13 teams but I need 12 Division 1 (or FBS whatever it is) football teams to get a conference championship anyways. So even if we take Princeton, we need 12 other FBS schools.
Penn State is the most popular college football program in Philadelphia. It was the most popular in much of New Jersey before Rutgers’ recent resurgance. They are more popular with more people than Illinois. They are, all-around, better athletically than Duke.
The Northeast just doesn’t care about college sports as a rule. Occasionally College BB bubbles up when UConn or St. Johns is really good but those schools fail miserably in just abotu every other test. Syracuse and Rutgers are middle of the pack in all aspects and they frankly don’t have much of a hold in the NYC market at all. I see no reason to include the Northeast when the Northeast has little use for college sports.
Illinois is much more popular in the Chicagoland area than Notre Dame is. ND football beats the Illini, but by a much narrower margin than you realize, and Illinois basketball is mammoth. U of I enrolls about 45,000 while ND has only 10,000. That disparity compounded year-over-year means that there is an order of magnitude disparity in alumni and alumni families in the Chicago region from Illinois than Notre Dame. Illinois is a state school that offers state discounts meaning a greater proportion of students at Illinois are local as opposed to NDs Private school (in Indiana) base. This is a long way of saying that Illinois offers about 10 times the draw to the Chicago market than ND does.
ND is a nationally known school. ND football is the adopted NCAA program for the Northeast and thus has gotten disparate media attention. It’s closer to Chicago than Illinois but it’s greatly overshadowed locally by the state school and the Big Ten on the whole. A better argument to include ND is to lure in Northeast viewers, but that’s only true for football
This discussion is about all sports. Penn State is big in football, but Illinois is no slouch. Illinois is huge in basketball and Penn State is a tremendous slouch there. They are neck and neck in the rest of the sports. Factor in the scale of the media markets in Chicago versus Philly and the fact that Midwestern fans simply care about and spend more money on college sports than the Tri-state area I’d be hard pressed to bring in Penn State over Illinois if push came to shove. If the Tri-state area is that crucial to the conference ND would probably be a bigger draw there than Penn State and they are more well rounded in athletics and much better academically.
Here’s an idea, how about a 15 team, 3 division system? You could have a West Coast division with Cal, Stanford, UCLA, USC and Washington. A Midwestern division with Michigan, Illinois, Notre Dame, Penn State and Ohio State. And a Southern division with Duke, UNC, Virginia, Florida and Texas.
You’d have to compromise a touch on academics with OSU, but at 53rd they aren’t that far behind Texas and Florida. Alternatively you could swap them for Boston College which helps raise the academic scores overall and exposes a completely new market while falling short at 75th in the Directors Cup. BC is 43rd in the 2010 standings though so that 75th might be a fluke. Princeton is probably an even better bet as they are an academic stud and a traditional top 40 Directors Cup school. Their weakness in the revenue sports is a bit of an issue, depends how much of a purist you want to be I suppose.
I really like the idea of Princeton being in the conference. They’d never do it, of course - but it adds an element that no other school out there could. They’re relatively competitive in athletics (though the football team would hilariously overmatched every week), but strong everywhere else. Additionally, they somewhat add every Ivy League alum across the country to the media market.
I think we could make an exception for Princeton football to still play in the Ivy League (and FCS) while all their other sports are located in the new conference. We still would need 12 FBS schools to have a conference football championship game though.
Omniscient, how would the 3 divisions work for football? When the WAC tried 16 teams, it fell apart after a couple of years. Granted, the schools in our new conference are much richer and can afford to travel, but the WAC also struggled with the logistics handling all the schools.
Let’s try a different strategy. We’ll try to determine the “locks” and then argue over the last few members.
Locks (in order of perceived strength): Stanford, USC, Michigan, Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, Florida, Notre Dame
Locks except for too much geographical similarity: Cal, UCLA, Duke
Possible additional teams: Illinois, Washington, Penn State, Ohio State, Georgia, Denver, UConn, OU, Boston College, Missouri (did I forget anyone else mentioned?)
Wild Card: Princeton
Can we at least agree on the Locks? If we do agree, then it should be easier argue over the number and identity of the other teams.
The idea about 3 divisions was to try and limit the travel and to preserve some traditional rivalries. By having 3 geographically restricted divisions where teams played the bulk of their conference games you limit the likelihood of a team on a geographic island getting killed by travel. Virginia for example could have a schedule where they fly out to the West Coast 4+ times and never have a road game closer than the Texas if a balanced schedule were used. The divisions insure that at least 4 of the games (in football) will be against regional rivals and geographically close.
In the case of the West Coast it preserves the Pac-10 rivalries. In the Midwest it saves the Big Ten + Notre Dame rivalries and in the South it saves the Duke - UNC - Virginia ACC competition while adding some exciting football games between Texas and Florida. Depending on how you decided to balance the schedule you could even have a home-and-home matchup within the divisions and still have room for 4 more inter-divisional games and 1 or 2 non-conference games.
As for the playoffs, I’d guess that you’d just have a Wild Card team involved every year. The 3 division winners get in and then one Wildcard gets in for the football playoff. Each division has 2 traditional major football powers meaning there would probably be an exciting battle between say Michigan, Texas and UCLA to gain that Wildcard spot. If you wanted to go crazy you would have a 2-team play in game or a 6 team mini-tournament with the top 2 teams getting byes.
One absolutely wild idea is that we could use a relegation system for football. Lets bring in Princeton, Stanford, Duke and the weaker football schools and have a major and minor division for football. Texas, Florida, Ohio State and USC would be the perennials and there’d be a constant battle between the middle tiers to avoid being sent down to the minor division.
Incidentally, if Princeton were brought into the conference they’d probably dump their no-scholarship model meaning they could be competitive in football and basketball like Standford and Northwestern are these days. Going even bigger and including more marginal teams might be fun, you could have academic studs like Standford, Northwestern, Princeton and Duke in there spanning the country and having their own mini-rivalry going complete with a goofy trophy being awarded. You could have the football powers of Texas, Florida, USC and OSU fighting it out for bragging rights and the same situation in hoops with Duke, UNC, Illinois and Ohio State.
Going up to say 16 teams would allow for any variety of tiered divisions in the revenue sports eliminating the need for a special circumstance for Princeton being a non-football member.