Big Ten and other Conference Expansion

[zincfinger]

I know it's just me, but I would consider the addition of Maryland to be a failure of epic proportions. Before Ralph, they were nothing, and they're already back to being nothing. Even at their zenith they weren't in any danger of winning a championship of any kind.

This is about football to me. Yes, I know that's just my standard of value; and it's obvious that no one shares it. That said, for my part, I do not want MD in the Big Ten.

You're not the only one. Expansion Fever's been going around, but expansion still has its drawbacks, and requires high-impact additions to make it worthwhile. To me, as to you, Maryland doesn't reach the bar, and I'm not sure anyone is presently available who does.

 

[muffler dragon]

That said, for my part, I do not want MD in the Big Ten.

Well... I hate you too.

 

[Emperor Brutus]

Lets say that mega conferences are coming. I have no idea what Texas wants to do, but lets also presume that they have a desire to stay in a conference that makes geographic sense for them. They are a good anchor to a conference, Oklahoma is a good running mate but what do they have right now beyond that? Texas A&M and Tech are fine, Okie State is ok, you have nothing in either Kansas school or Missouri to write home about (football not basketball Kansas fan) and even though we are Big Ten fans it is objective to say Iowa State isn't even close to Iowa which marks them as a team that pales in comparison to the best in their own state.
Ok, so to my point; if Texas really doesn't want to go to the SEC due to academics then there is no good geographic fit for them, they will have their hand forced and will have to join the PAC __ or the Big ten, if they really don't want that to happen then they need to go to war and do it soon. Arkansas is nice but if you are going to provoke the SEC, which lets be fair possibly fired the first shot at Texas with the A&M business don't you have to go for a little more? If I were Texas/the Big XII I would be looking at chopping off the entire western boarder of the SEC don't just try for Arkansas go after LSU too.
The Big XII lost six recognized national championships in the two teams they lost adding Arkansas and LSU gets them five back. The ACC could get plundered so I will leave them out of the next part. Now that the Big Ten, PAC, and the SEC are all at 12 teams and on equal footing I doubt any of them are going to be outdone, if one moves to 16 they all move to 16. If Texas and Oklahoma were to sit at ten teams they would lose ground in money and prestige to the other conferences, at some point they will need to make a move to keep up. In my opinion that move needs to come soon or they will lose all power to control their own destiny forever. If the other conferences steal more of their teams and they stand pat their only option will be "well it happened which far flung conference do we land in?" and I really don't think that's what they want.
To get to 16 Texas and Oklahoma can't just add any schools, they need to replace at lest some of the prestige they lost in Nebraska and to a lesser extent Colorado. LSU and Arkansas give them prestige back, then they can go out and get some low rent institutions to fill out their mega conference. They can take LA tech and Arkansas State, then they can look west and take New Mexico and New Mexico State. I realize the last four have no prestige and don't give Texas anything to pride themselves on academically but if they are happy being the king of the molehill they have now why wouldn't this suit them just fine as their future super conference? If the Big Ten decided to take Missouri and Kansas they could still add TCU and Tulsa and call it a day.


Think about it this way, if the power structure had worked out differently and the Big Ten was a weak conference not a strong conference wouldn't you be lamenting the possibility of going to the ACC or Big XII if those conferences were coming after Ohio State and none of our geographic long time rivals? wouldn't you have a feeling of, well sure Texas and Oklahoma are great programs and it's fun to play them once in a while but they don't really matter that much to me year in year out? Not to mention the fact that we would probably get put in a different division than them so we'd really be playing Missouri and Kansas every year, sure Nebraska is a decent game, but lets give up Penn State and Michigan for them and Iowa State really? I can't take anyone seriously that would say that would be acceptable to them. [SIZE=-3][/SIZE]

 

[jlb1705]

Think about it this way, if the power structure had worked out differently and the Big Ten was a weak conference not a strong conference wouldn't you be lamenting the possibility of going to the ACC or Big XII if those conferences were coming after Ohio State and none of our geographic long time rivals? wouldn't you have a feeling of, well sure Texas and Oklahoma are great programs and it's fun to play them once in a while but they don't really matter that much to me year in year out? Not to mention the fact that we would probably get put in a different division than them so we'd really be playing Missouri and Kansas every year, sure Nebraska is a decent game, but lets give up Penn State and Michigan for them and Iowa State really? I can't take anyone seriously that would say that would be acceptable to them.

First of all, you just can't compare Ohio State and Texas in this case. Ohio State has been in the same conference for 98 years and counting. Texas almost of what would have been their third different conference in 20 years. That makes it pretty clear that one of those institutions holds its traditional rivalries and associations more dearly than the other.

Secondly, the power structure that you refer to is not just a matter of circumstance, so there's really no point in playing the "what if?" game. The Big Ten is a powerful conference because culturally, the member institutions take those traditional associations seriously. The Big XII is a weak conference because its members do not.

 

[ORD_Buckeye]

It's going to be hard for the Bevo Conference to get to 16. While they might be able to lure Arkansas, I see no chance in hell that LSU would leave their historical SEC home and equal treatment in order to be one of Texas' vassels.

I guess they could take Houston, TCU, Colorado State, BYU and New Mexico and someone else if Arkansas doesn't come. Given the geography, available schools and Texas' behavior, I just don't see how the Bevo conference could ever evolve into one of the 16 team superconferences.

Pac 10 doesn't have it much easier. Ideally, Texas would come down off the mountain and bring A&M and the Oklahoma schools along. Lacking that, I guess picking up Nevada, UNLV, New Mexico and Colorado State all make some sense. Still, it's a pretty drastic dilution of the conference's quality.

 

[Huskerrat]

One thing about their walk-on program: in Nebaraska's glory days, a large number of those "walk-ons" would mysteriously be given their county's academic scholarship to NU. I never bought into the St. Tom image of Osbourne. It made a great morality play for outsiders vis-a-vis Switzer, but I think Osbourne had a pretty shady side himself: partial qualifiers along with the county scholarship scam, not to mention his embrace of some of college football's most notorious scumbags of the 1990s. Those great Nebraska teams of the nineties weren't much better than Switzer's Oklahoma teams when it came to off field issues.

I certainly hope that their move to the Big Ten is not being viewed in Lincoln as a way to get out from under the UT dictated recruiting policies in the B12, and I hope the B10 has made clear what recruiting policies and standards need to be maintained for them to move beyond the probationary window of conference membership.

Really...this is news to me and I graduated from NU in 1992. By the way for future use...it is Osborne, not Osbourne.....that would be Ozzy. As for these mysterious academic scholarships, that is the first I have ever heard about it. As a matter of fact if a kid is on academic scholarship and steps on the field for football, I'm pretty sure that goes to the total number of scholarships and the 85 limit. As for partial qualifiers, one kid I knew back in school had a learning disability and without that he would never have gotten to play and play in the NFL....Jared Tomich.

We had a bad apple on the 95 team in Lawrence Phillips, no one is every going to defend that POS, but to say Tom was recruiting thugs and scumbags is wrong. I can tell you that recruiting factored zero percent into the reason Nebraska moved to the Big 10.

 

[Buckeyeskickbuttocks]

I can tell you that recruiting factored zero percent into the reason Nebraska moved to the Big 10.

Yeah, considering how Tejas is now positioned, the reason you guys wanted to get out of the B12 seems pretty obvious to me.

 

[zincfinger]

Pac 10 doesn't have it much easier. Ideally, Texas would come down off the mountain and bring A&M and the Oklahoma schools along. Lacking that, I guess picking up Nevada, UNLV, New Mexico and Colorado State all make some sense. Still, it's a pretty drastic dilution of the conference's quality.

I don't see the upside to it that would offset the drastic dilution to have it make any sense. At least not at this time. If it comes about at some point in the future that a 16 member conference is a de facto requirement for national championship contention, you'd have to assume some way will be found to include the west coast teams. Even if that means diluting them with a bunch of former mid-majors. It wouldn't make much sense to pull the trigger on that now, for a merely possible future development, in my opinion.

 

[RugbyBuck]

I'm not sure at this point that anyone can get to 16 without diluting their conference. We're now at a solid 12. We could get to 14 with ND and the best of what's left. After that it's just about geographic/population expansion.

 

[zincfinger]

I'm not sure at this point that anyone can get to 16 without diluting their conference. We're now at a solid 12. We could get to 14 with ND and the best of what's left. After that it's just about geographic/population expansion.

Probably not, which begs the question: why would any conference make reaching 16 a goal absent some high-impact additions? You can make a demographic argument for the BigTen, as Delany sort of has done. For the Pac-10, you can argue the value of getting into earlier time zones to improve their national tv appeal, but unless they're doing so through at least some teams that have a degree of national appeal, it would seem pointless.

 

[kn1f3party]

Really...this is news to me and I graduated from NU in 1992. By the way for future use...it is Osborne, not Osbourne.....that would be Ozzy. As for these mysterious academic scholarships, that is the first I have ever heard about it. As a matter of fact if a kid is on academic scholarship and steps on the field for football, I'm pretty sure that goes to the total number of scholarships and the 85 limit. As for partial qualifiers, one kid I knew back in school had a learning disability and without that he would never have gotten to play and play in the NFL....Jared Tomich.

We had a bad apple on the 95 team in Lawrence Phillips, no one is every going to defend that POS, but to say Tom was recruiting thugs and scumbags is wrong. I can tell you that recruiting factored zero percent into the reason Nebraska moved to the Big 10.

There has been so much misinformation about PQ's and NQ's surrounding Nebraska and what the actual policies are that I find it useless to even talk about. Nobody seems to really know what the official word is. The NCAA manual defines and describes it well but in terms of limiting the number there is nothing in there. It also doesn't say what the rules were back then.

 

[RugbyBuck]

History shows that big for the sake of being big doesn't work. 14 with ND is solid. I don't like the reach east or south for marginal candidates (Maryland...) just to get to 16.

 

[OHSportsFan]

16 is also too much in that what's the point of playing teams from the other division once every, what, 6 years?

I don't know. The Super Conferences sounded cool at first, but it's pretty much just two small conferences that set up a "Challenge" (ACC/Big Ten) each year.

 

[zincfinger]

16 is also too much in that what's the point of playing teams from the other division once every, what, 6 years?

One of the several drawbacks of expansion, which makes it essential to get only high-quality additions (or a mediocre addition as part of an effective package deal) to be worthwhile.

 

[ORD_Buckeye]

I'm not sure at this point that anyone can get to 16 without diluting their conference. We're now at a solid 12. We could get to 14 with ND and the best of what's left. After that it's just about geographic/population expansion.

Actually, I think we're in a pretty good position: Assuming Missouri is locked into Bevo, we take Notre Dame along with Pitt, Syracuse and Rutgers. Three of those programs have won national championships. All but Notre Dame are AAU members, and all rank higher than the lowest pre-Nebraska B10 school and way higher than NU in USN&WR. Athletics, or otherwise, I don't see much dilution. Certainly not anything approaching what the Pac 10 would need to do.

Assuming they poach the ACC (and maybe WVU), I think the SEC could go to 16 with little or no dilution, particularly since the academic side of the equation means less than nothing in their thinking.

The combined ACC and Big East leftovers would definitely be a dilution, as would any attempts by the Bevo Conference to get to 16.