Serious Question About Nebraska

ssckelley

Well-Known Member
Does the Big Ten regret inviting them? Outside of Omaha they don't have much of a TV market and their national following is all shot to hell since they now suck in football. Taking the present state of their athletic department if they had to do it all over again would Nebraska get an invitation?

Personally I enjoy having Nebraska in the Big Ten, I like border wars and kicking their ass every year. But if they were still in the B12 sucking like this I don't think anyone would want them.
 
Does the Big Ten regret inviting them? Outside of Omaha they don't have much of a TV market and their national following is all shot to hell since they now suck in football. Taking the present state of their athletic department if they had to do it all over again would Nebraska get an invitation?

Personally I enjoy having Nebraska in the Big Ten, I like border wars and kicking their ass every year. But if they were still in the B12 sucking like this I don't think anyone would want them.
Rutgers and Maryland would be in line ahead of them.
 
Let's be honest, they are only here because of the New York City, Washington DC, and Baltimore markets. Otherwise no way in hell do either of those 2 schools get into the Big Ten. Nebraska was brought here due to their football prestige and now that's gone.
And I doubt those cities give a rip about the BIG unless someone is an "expat".
 
Let's be honest, they are only here because of the New York City, Washington DC, and Baltimore markets. Otherwise no way in hell do either of those 2 schools get into the Big Ten. Nebraska was brought here due to their football prestige and now that's gone.

Correct. I think Delany wanted four "traditional powers" to try to up the prestige of the conference. It was a bad move.
 
They don't, especially NYC, but it's the schools "local market" so the BTN gets to charge their premium rates to the cable companies which added millions to their revenues.
... for now. That model is going to implode and we're gonna be stuck with shit. My nightmare scenario is the cable model fully implodes, Rutgers hires a great wrestling coach, and then we're stuck with Rutgers siphoning money out of the conference AND kicking our ass in wrestling.
 
... for now. That model is going to implode and we're gonna be stuck with shit. My nightmare scenario is the cable model fully implodes, Rutgers hires a great wrestling coach, and then we're stuck with Rutgers siphoning money out of the conference AND kicking our ass in wrestling.

That is going to happen at some point. BTN still may profit since they will own streaming rights into those markets but I don't know how that's going to look. Right now a big money maker for them is they get to charge for each subscriber regardless if they watch the BTN or not.
 
I can't see why the conference regrets inviting Nebraska. The football team has sucked for sure, but sports is cyclical. They seem to have a relatively clean athletic department and academics are ok. They don't do much for TV, but Omaha is a city. What does Purdue bring to the table? Nebraska is pretty good at non-revenue sports such as volleyball, WBB, baseball and softball. They also wrestle ok. Finally, Nebraska has developed good rivalries with Minny, Iowa, and Wisky. We all enjoy beating Nebraska more than most. Nebbie is a good overall fit with this conference. I would vote out 3-4 other teams before Nebbie.
 
I can't see why the conference regrets inviting Nebraska. The football team has sucked for sure, but sports is cyclical. They seem to have a relatively clean athletic department and academics are ok. They don't do much for TV, but Omaha is a city. What does Purdue bring to the table? Nebraska is pretty good at non-revenue sports such as volleyball, WBB, baseball and softball. They also wrestle ok. Finally, Nebraska has developed good rivalries with Minny, Iowa, and Wisky. We all enjoy beating Nebraska more than most. Nebbie is a good overall fit with this conference. I would vote out 3-4 other teams before Nebbie.

Purdue brings decades of history, an AAU membership, a national fan base, and a top flight engineering program. Hell, they prolly bring slightly more than Iowa if we're being honest.
 
I can't see why the conference regrets inviting Nebraska. The football team has sucked for sure, but sports is cyclical. They seem to have a relatively clean athletic department and academics are ok. They don't do much for TV, but Omaha is a city. What does Purdue bring to the table? Nebraska is pretty good at non-revenue sports such as volleyball, WBB, baseball and softball. They also wrestle ok. Finally, Nebraska has developed good rivalries with Minny, Iowa, and Wisky. We all enjoy beating Nebraska more than most. Nebbie is a good overall fit with this conference. I would vote out 3-4 other teams before Nebbie.

I'm not saying to vote anyone out, the Big Ten would never do that unless there was a huge scandal.....errr wait....I guess Pedo State is still in the conferece....so there's really nothing a university could do to get voted out of the Big Ten.

My question is if Nebraska was still in the B12 would the Big Ten bring them in now? I don't think they would.
 

I get there is some coalition between how large a fan base is to how attractive they are on the national level. But the size of the fanbase impacts the local school revenues more than the conference revenues from TV revenues. I'm guessing that Rutgers with a fan base 1/2 the size of Iowa's generates more revenue for the conference because of the huge TV market they are in. That's more money for the conference than tickets or merchandise being sold.
 
I'm not saying to vote anyone out, the Big Ten would never do that unless there was a huge scandal.....errr wait....I guess Pedo State is still in the conferece....so there's really nothing a university could do to get voted out of the Big Ten.

My question is if Nebraska was still in the B12 would the Big Ten bring them in now? I don't think they would.

It is all hindsight. At the time of the invite, Nebraska was still averaging 8,9,10 wins a year. Nobody saw the program cratering like this.
 
I listened to a number of their podcasts following the Wisconsin game. One was hillarious. The common threads are dispair and resignation. Turns out their O-Line is the most talked about concern.

A few stats

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The Big Ten needed a 12th and the other choice at the time probably would have been Missouri. In hindsight would have that been any better?

The only better choices at the time would have been Texas, Oklahoma and /or Notrre Dame.

Notre Dame probably was never going to happen. So in hindsight, I just wish the Big Ten would have added Texas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska.
 
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