I didn’t think Rutgers would land in the B1G, and there they are - and I don’t think they’ve won a conference title in anything since showing up and they generally suck in most sports save women’s basketball and for the last couple of seasons, men’s basketball.
Rutgers was added for one thing - the NYC cable subscription fees for the Big Ten Network. Adding ISU does nothing for that.
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But then who else goes in for a geographic fit that also upholds the academic standards the B1G espouses?
Baylor? LOL, the B1G isn’t taking on that stink.
OSU? Probably not, it won’t draw outside of Stillman.
K-State? Also probably not, the Jayhawks will cover the state for the winter months and has a national draw which the Wildcats will never have.
TCU? Maybe, if they want a foothold in the Dallas area - but the academic part might be an issue.
Texas Tech? No, even if they cover academically they’re in Lubbock.
BYU? That’s probably too far west. Besides, they’d be better off in the Pac-12.
So if they’re going to 16 and skipping ISU, they’d have to poach someone from another conference or find some way to get Notre Dame to come in - which, the Fighting Irish aren’t about to have to deal with a tough conference for football when they can beat up on 2/3rds of the ACC without breaking much of a sweat.
Iowa State doesn’t expand geography, but they could hold their own in most sports. And, … AAU - which, as much as the B1G will claim it’s not a thing, it really is a thing.
This guy says the SEC is angling for a 20 team super conference, and has been in contact with Ohio State, Michigan, Clemson, and FL State. https://twitter.com/JackMacCFB/status/1418678701135384579?s=19
Good luck with that. I don’t see tOSU and Michigan leaving unless they’re going into a national super-conference of the top-16 athletic colleges in the country, which I think could yet happen in the next 20 years.
New steam is the B1G raiding the Pac12, some combination (or all) of the USC/UCLA, Stanford/Cal, and Washington/Oregon. This is being driven by Fox Sports since they are the main partner of the B1G (similar to how ESPN is backroom dealing on Texas/OU to SEC).
If they go to 20 they could set up 4 pods of 5 or 5 pods of 4 for football scheduling.
I’m still trying to figure out why football conferences want to have so many members? I don’t really see it as increasing competition. Seems all it is going to do is increase money. OK, I did see that coming.
But are they going to expand their own conference championship now to 4 teams or maybe 6 or 8? If they now play 8 or 9 or 10 conference games during a 12 game ‘regular’ season then have a 2 game conference championship tournament, do they still play in a 2 or 3 game National Championship tournament? Or do they reduce to a 10 game season with everyone going to the post season tournament but only the top 6 or 8 in the Championship tournament with everyone else given 2 playoff games in some way so that they get their 12 games?
Here’s one guy’s idea: Merge Big10 with ACC and Notre Dame.
Too lazy to make the meme, but:
BigXII astronaut, looking at the SEC/earth: so it’s about making more money?
UT/OU astronaut, behind them with a gun: always has been
This guy seems to believe that ESPN is behind the whole thing, while they’re also covering as if they don’t.
He got his info from here:
Who got it from here:
I assumed this was obvious. The money had to be there first and ESPN is writing the checks. They are basically playing kingmaker. I assume that Fox will work with the PAC 12 and make them their feature league and put together a West coast super-conference.
I am interested in the other overtures the SEC seems to have made in attempting to poach OSU and Michigan from the Big 10 or Clemson and FSU from the ACC. That would basically leave everyone else SOL except the PAC 12.
So the Big 12 sent a letter to ESPN saying “hey you, get your damn hands off”.
ESPN: “nuh-uh!”
Sorry, I didn’t get the quote quite right. I’ve fixed it.
“Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty cable network!!”
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It would be interesting if it came out that ESPN really was behind this. Would it surprise me? Not at all.
In a normal world, it’s probably grounds for investigation and possibly raises anti-trust issues, and it’s a great time to be a lawyer with experience in this area. In the U.S. since 2008 (and quite arguably well before that), it’s just business as usual.
IA St and WVU add approximately 0 cable TV watchers. There are some other schools just getting carried along as numbers by the conferences when they add almost nothing from a “paid by TV/streaming companies” sort of way. While some have said 4 x 16 team conferences for football, there aren’t really 64 teams worthy of being on that level. The others justify themselves with a mix of some academic ranking and some TV/media interest based on location and population.
So while the winners will be obvious (the rich will always get richer), I am interested to find the losers of this and see what happens.
I expect we’ll cut the field to 64 so we end up with 4x16 and it “feels right” for a little while, and from that we’ll eventually have 16 or 24 that leave everyone else behind.
The interesting thing to me is whether or not we end up seeing one conference for football, another for basketball, and so on. Kansas, Kentucky and Duke are non-starters for football, but shoo-ins for basketball. Would the football powers really turn aside those three schools and the money they could pull in? Or, would we see super-conferecnes align by sport to try and maximize dollars, and if someone happens to land in more than one then good for them?
Yeah, guessing there will be a separate super conference for each sport.
But, I think the top teams like those “weeks off” during the season, and the money those games generate.