Around the Big Ten

[THE_WIZARD_]

NYC is a pro sports town. The Jersey area doesn't give a shit about Rutgers either. The D.C. area does care about college basketball...but not sure enough to make Maryland a slam dunk addition. This stinks.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Rutgers may be premature. There are a lot of rumors out there right now. Only safe bet looks like Maryland will be #13. Potentially as early as tomorrow. Unless for some insane reason they turn us down.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Good Lord.

[Hannibal]

God what an incredibly dumb fucking idea.

[Hannibal]

According to a television executive familiar with the Northeast corridor, the move could ultimately be worth as much as $200 million annually for the Big Ten in cable subscription fees.

LMAO Jesus Fucking Christ

Sad thing is, our AD is such an airheaded, shit-for-brains, moronic retard that he probably believes a hyperinflated bullshit figure like that without question.

[Whitley]

Maryland is a very nice fit academically. It also gives the Big Ten a chance to get into the Washington DC/Baltimore markets. Maryland is a huge research university as well, and should have no problem being a CIC member.

There is no way that Maryland (or any ACC team) is going to be paying a $50 million exit fee. That will be reduced behind closed doors. Maryland will not be paying that either rather the Big Ten will probably take a percentage of shared revenue from Maryland to pay the exit fee over the course of several years.

It brings the Big Ten into areas where their exposure has not been as great.It can't stay just a Midwest league. Adding Nebraska was a step in that direction. Adding Maryland will be another and Rutgers probably comes along for the ride.

The end game will be 16 teams though.

[iam416]

I stand with Hannibal on this one. I could, potentially, eat the Turtle sandwich as part of a grander scheme. But there is no fucking way I can wash it down with Rutgers. Ridiculous.

[lineygoblue]

I think the "footprint" is getting too wide. Just how are fans from Nebraska supposed to take in a road game at Rutgers or Maryland, and vice versa? You have to travel half way across the country to do so. When you keep the conference more geographically friendly, visiting fans at least have a fairly reasonable opportunity to take in a road game. I'm wondering if appeasing Penn State isn't a bit of a consideration here as well. I mean, if the conference decides to go with a true east/west configuration, that would give them more natural rivals in their area.

I mean, how would the divisions be set up then? Something like this?

East
Maryland
Penn State
Rutgers
OlieO
Indiana
Purdue
Wisconsin

West
Michigan
MSU
Minnesota
Nebraska
Northwestern
Illinois
Iowa

After all, they don't want Michigan and OlieO in the same division ...

Any guesses?

[THE_WIZARD_]

Adding Maryland and Rutgers after landing Nebraska is like going to a great steak restaurant and eating the best steak in your life...then washing it down with a shitty cigar and a tasteless glass of cheap cognac.

This is fucking ridiculous. If these teams were added along with say...a Notre Dame and/or another football rich U then it could be justified. Maryland and Rutgers? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

[lineygoblue]

That's pretty much my reaction. Rutgers and Maryland can boost basketball a bit, but in football, I think they actually make the conference weaker.

This is 100% about money. More TV sets in large population areas. Nothing more.

[Hannibal]

Maryland is a very nice fit academically. It also gives the Big Ten a chance to get into the Washington DC/Baltimore markets. Maryland is a huge research university as well, and should have no problem being a CIC member.

The Big Ten is already in those markets. At least two, and maybe three, games are available nationally every single week. On top of that, the BTN is available to satellite subscribers, and I think that it is on most digital cable pay packages too. The only increased audience that you get from adding Maryland are die hards in that program's footprint who can't live without getting to see Maryland play James Madison, Indiana, or Rutgers. If this is so lucrative, then why hasn't the ACC started its own network so that they can extort cable fees out of everyone in Georgia, Massachusetts, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, New York, New Jersey, and South Carolina? This is arrogance at its worst.

What people tend to forget is that by getting access to this new market, it also means that Maryland now has access to all of the money generated by the Big Ten's lucrative markets. Does anyone think that a shit football program like Maryland or Rutgers would come anywhere close to generating the revenue of an average Big Ten team? The financial value for a program like Maryland is already reflected in the TV package for the ACC. Ditto for pretty much any other team in any other conference.

And who cares about Maryland's academics or research? Conferences are sports associations. There is nobody who gives a crap about conference academics except when trying to fabricate reasons to expand.

[iam416]

There are no particularly good alignments, Liney. Incidentally, you left off Wisconsin. The Badgers should, obviously, be in the west. But then a west team has to jump to the east. It can't be either Michigan school, so it has to be Illinois or NW.

At that point, you've basically put OSU in the CCG every year.

Logically -- and that preface immediately rules this out as a possibility:

East: Rutgers, Maryland, PSU, OSU, MSU, M, Indiana (or Purdue)
West: UNL, Goofers, Wisky, Iowa, Illinois, NW, Indiana (or Purdue)

Competitively, I think it's ok. The East is a bit more top heavy, but the West is deeper. I also think it's preferable to keep your two best programs in the same division (see, e.g., LSU-Alabama).

The problem with that is that half the league is cut off from the traditional huge draws. That said, I think there is a real natural rivalry that you could tap into with UNL-Iowa-Wisky-Goofers and maybe even Illinois. NW is NW no matter where they land. And fuck the Indiana schools.

So, I think that's logical -- if the B10 is going to eat this shit sandwich. So, I fully expect it to not even come up and, instead, for Delaney to pile more shit on top of the shit sandwich he's already serving up.

[Hannibal]

I think that this might be the tipping point where the fans say "no more". It's time for a fan revolt in college football. The big donors need to start writing to their athletic directors and tell them that if they vote for this, they will cut off donations to the university, and they will do everything in their power to get that AD fired. This bullshit has now gone too far. Conferences are non-profit entities that ultimately exist for the fans, and money is a means to an end, not the other way around. And, as I have made clear, I think that the money aspects of these shitty expansions have been wildly oversold. Maryland and Rutgers would be dilutive additions.

[WM Wolverine]

At 14 programs, its nearly two 'conferences' connected by a championship game at 16 programs it certainly is. Road games against the opposite division (long drives) would be relatively rare. In the SEC, you get one of those a season as they play 6 vs their division, 1 rival & 1 cross division...

Maybe my biggest complaint against the B10 splitting into the divisions they did is the cross division rivalry game, you don't need to do that if you put almost all your rivals in your own division. Yeah, it's very likely you'll lose some rivalry games; as a M fan I'm going to miss playing PSU, Illini & Wisky so often. Those games are quite rare and potentially even rarer with a 14-team B10...

-

Expansion is mostly about the B10 and its athletic departments getting richer. There is a lot of cable/satellite sets in NYC, NJ, Maryland, DC & even the Philly market isn't fully penetrated by PSU. The B10 becoming the college football conference in the northeast, suddenly it can compete with the SEC for popularity (even if not really on the field) and the BTN becomes nearly a national network with a third of the nations population.

This helps the B10 and its universities like M, OSU, Nebraska, Wisky, etc receive media attention on the very populous Atlantic Coast where a lot of its alums reside and opens up good recruiting grounds in New Jersey, NYC, Maryland, DC for both revenue sports. Landing the BTN on standard cable in NYC, NJ, DC, Maryland is a gold mine in potential revenue.

[hack]

Adding Maryland and Rutgers after landing Nebraska is like going to a great steak restaurant and eating the best steak in your life...then washing it down with a shitty cigar and a tasteless glass of cheap cognac.

Actually it's like eating a runza and getting indigestion. You wish you could puke it out of your system but you're in a restaurant. Now you are so desperate to get that taste out of your mouth that you start chewing on a napkin.