Big Ten expansion update

BSpringsteen said:
Better Divisions:

Iowa
Nebraska
Wisconsin
Mineesota

Missouri
Illinois
N'Western
Purdue

Indiana
Michigan State
Michigan
Ohio State

Penn State
Pitt
Rutgers
Syracuse
Click to expand...

I'd be ok with this division lineup. I think Iowa's division offers competitive games plus great rivalry opportunities.
 
SteveDeace said:
Bruce Feldman of ESPN on KOMC has said that Missouri to the B10 is pretty much done.

Tom Dienhart of Rivals.com Tweeted the following:

"Big Ten expansion buzz has league adding Mizzou, Nebraska, Pitt, Rutgers and Syracuse and splitting into four, four-team divisions. "

Then tweeted the break down:

1 Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, Penn State
2 Michigan, Wisconsin, Michigan State, Minnesota
3 Ohio State, Purdue, Indiana, Illinois/Northwestern
4 Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois/Northwestern
Click to expand...

You should probably check your sources Steve, unless you're considering ESPN podcasts as legit sources these days.
 
If it goes to 16 and you add the schools this article listed, which BTW is what they are saying down here in SEC country, you have a big 4 of UM, OSU, PSU, and Nebby. These are national interest programs. Each would need to anchor a division. After that, you have programs like Iowa, Wisky, Illinios, MSU, Pitt, etc. who could put together a nice run.
 
BSpringsteen said:
Better Divisions:

Iowa
Nebraska
Wisconsin
Mineesota

Missouri
Illinois
N'Western
Purdue

Indiana
Michigan State
Michigan
Ohio State

Penn State
Pitt
Rutgers
Syracuse
Click to expand...

This I like. However I'd prefer to go with two 8-team divisions. And Texas.

And for those of you complaining about expansion, it's going to happen. In fact it's going to be a nationwide thing. The B10 is helping itself by leading the way in it. Tradition has already gone out the window, there's no point in complaining about it. If the B10 can get their choice of who joins instead of taking what's left when other conferences start doing it, all the better.
 
If the Big 10 goes to 16 teams, I think you have to go to 4 divisions. 3 games would be against other teams in your division. With 9 division games, you could play 2 teams in each of the other divisions. That would rotate every two years. That way, you keep playing the other teams in your division.

If you have two divisions with eight teams each, you will hardly ever play the teams in the other division.
 
Keep in mind that only a few weeks ago it was a "done deal" that the NCAA basketball tournament was going to 715 schools. Then we find out that...oh yeah we're just going to add 3 teams and call it good.

It makes for a little conversation but there is no way that they're going to take something as storied, prestigious and profitable as the Big Ten conference and completely overhaul it.

If there is one thing in collegiate sports that is more powerful than the NCAA basketball tournament it is Big Ten football.
 
I was thinking about it today, and I believe that at the end of all the conference realignments, there is a real chance Iowa State could get left out in the cold. I'm not saying I want this to happen, but because of Iowa State's awkward geography (especially if Mizzou and Nebraska join the Big 10), they could get the shaft. Here's my scenario:

The Big Ten adds teams first—Rutgers, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Nebraska, and Missourri. This leaves five teams in the Big East and ten in the Big 12. The SEC would immediately respond with four teams. Those four would probably be Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, and either Louisville, South Florida, or Oklahoma State. If they take Louisville or South Florida, there are four teams left in the Big East and seven left in the Big 12. The ACC would jump at the chance to add the four remaining Big East teams—Cincinnatti, West Virginia, UConn, and Louisville/South Florida. The Pac-10 could then add six teams to become the fourth sixteen team monster. If they wanted two divisions, one division of all the Pacific schools and another of Arizona, Arizona State, Texas Tech, Baylor, Oklahoma State, Colorado, Kansas, and Kansas State could be an ideal situation. This leaves Iowa State out in the cold. Now, if the SEC took Oklahoma State or an ACC school, it could jumble things up even more, but I could really see Iowa State getting left out in the cold.


Thoughts?
 
I am not biting that this is anywhere near a done deal. And this 16 team league makes me want to puke.
 
I think this is a horrible idea - 16 teams is too many. The schools they want to add make no sense either, do they really add that much to the league?
 
SteveDeace said:
Bruce Feldman of ESPN on KOMC has said that Missouri to the B10 is pretty much done.

Tom Dienhart of Rivals.com Tweeted the following:

"Big Ten expansion buzz has league adding Mizzou, Nebraska, Pitt, Rutgers and Syracuse and splitting into four, four-team divisions. "

Apparently these guys put an extraordinary faith in their ouija boards and tarot cards.

Just cannot imagine why anyone else would.

The Big Ten staff has not completed its fact-gathering & recommendations process to prepare its background report for the BT presidents to place possible expansion on their agenda in their June meeting. To my knowledge as of the present NO BT president has made a public statement as to his/her own views on the merits of expansion, let alone even hinting at any personal preference about one or more candidates for an eventual invitation to join the BT.

We need to keep in mind that these are (would-be) sports "journalists" who get their information (such as it is) from sources in athletic programs rather than from the higher echelons of BT university administrations who are kept informed (unlike coaches, ADs, etc) of the details of conference planning. We need as well to remember that coaches, ADs, even the BT Commissioner Delaney will not be included in the actual deliberations and decisions of the BT presidents once they begin real expansion consideration.

There simply is NO chance that "Missouri to the Big Ten is pretty much done" when the preliminary work preparing for a meeting six weeks from now is still going on.

In two of the three previous expansions of Big Ten membership (Michigan State, Penn State) the process took more than two years from the time the topic was placed on the agenda until the invitation to membership was extended). In the third instance, the readmission of Ohio State, it took more than a year--and that was almost a hundred years ago.

One possibility that is getting no discussion is that the BT deliberations may not lead to expansion of the BT at all, but instead may result in a further separation of athletic programs (the old Western Athletic Conference arrangements limited to intercollegiate athletic competition) from the BT as an academic & research consortium.

That would make discussion of schools like Syracuse, Mizzou, Nebraska more plausible. The most essential, fundamental priorities of the BT are centered on their shared research concerns: the BT is only interested in adding members to the consortium who are major research universities.
Which means there are only a few institutions that are realistically potential prospective targets of expansion--Rutgers, Pitt, Texas head the list of those that have Division 1 athletic programs (there are others like Case-Western, Carnegie-Mellon, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Washington of St Louis that would bring highly valued resources and research funding that the BT would like to have--comparable to the situation with the current 12th BT school, the University of Chicago).

I have no information supporting this conjecture; but it makes sense as a compromise offering by the BT to its member athletic programs: agree to BT athletics becoming part of a "super-conference" in one or more sports (notably football) while the BT remains as constituted for all its other activities, Such a compromise would not affect future expansion of the BT itself in order to position itself more favorable for the grants, research funding, contracts, patent-sharing etc that universities compete for (not just against each other, but against non-profits, high-tech industries).

One virtue of cutting BT athletics further separate from the major interests of the BT is that it would be a far less complicated & time-consuming process--meaning it could be done quickly enough to get a jump on other athletic conferences (the ACC, SEC, Big 12, Big East, etc are ONLY athletic conferences, not academic & research consortiums) in the race for extremely lucrative television etc revenues...moving to add the huge markets of New York, New Jersey, Baltimore & Washington, St Louis-Kansas City, maybe Texas, maybe Oklahoma, maybe Denver, maybe New England, while strengthening the presence in Pittsburgh, Philly, Omaha, St Louis.
Click to expand...
 
This would really reduce the enjoyability of the conference from a fan standpoint, in my opinion.
 
4x4 ?

Is this fantasy baseball?

4x4 is horrible. It isn't going to happen. I'd guess there wasn't anything else to write about.

Play 7 in your own division and rotate three in the other division every year so each student-athlete sees the other team at least one time and falls just short of a home/away every four. This keeps even number home-away in-conference games.

Or rotate 2 teams in the other division every year and keep that extra non-conference patsy.
 
P.S. I'm sick and tired of all the groveling for ND to join the Big10.

Makes the Big10 look like the 'I-will-be-a-wife-beater-shirt'-wearing-East-Sider 20 yr-old-high-school-senior (maybe) hangin' at the Iowa State Fair scouting on West Suburb Hotties convincing-themselves-living-on-the-edge-by-wearing-next-to-nothing-around (insert reference to east sider above to here) . . .

Ever notice it's called the Iowa State Fair and not the Iowa Fair? Things that make ya' go, "hmmmmm"
 
4x4 is the only way to play every team home and away in a 4 year period. This is why for a 16 team conference many people favor that type of setup. Anything else and you would completely miss teams over the course of a players time at the university.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Share this page

Top