As this all has snowballed, I'm getting confused. What's the advantage of going to more than 12 teams? I though the whole point was that 12 was the sweet spot where they could add a championship game, but not have to split the total money between too many teams. Wouldn't teams 13 and 14 be unable to bring in enough to warrant the cut they'll take?

I think the advnatage is the added television money: More TV markets = more ad revenue = more cash. The Big10 being able to sell ad time on their network with Rutgers, Syracuse, and UConn means a whole shit-ton more ad revenue.

Discussion over at ESPN about the basketball end of the Big Ten expansion........

Big Ten expansion: Making college hoops weird - College Basketball Nation Blog - ESPN

There's also this:

Don't know if this has been explained in the thread before, and I don't read too much on college sports, but I'm wondering if anyone really knows why a conference would care about academics so much. I've heard several people online and on ESPN mention how much the Big Ten cares about academics. What benefit does the Big Ten get from having teams with high academics? Is it mainly for PR and recruiting?

First five are all definite possibilities, but those last three shouldn't even be in the discussion. Mizzou or Nebraska would be pulled in before any of those last three schools.

Edit: Nevermind. Just noticed that's Big East only. My bad.

The article was about how Big Ten expansion affects Big East teams.

I mentioned earlier in the thread how Mizzou's main motivation to join the Big Ten has nothing to do with athletics. Mizzou would see significant increases in research money to the university by joining the Big Ten. We're talking as much as tens of millions in funding. It's a big deal.

Yeah, the article isn't about who would be taken, but which Big East schools should be most worried if the Big Ten does expand.

In the Big Ten, revenue from research grant money still trumps athletic revenue by a huge margin. For example, Ohio State athletics generate about $120 million or so per year in revenue, but Ohio State's research entities generate about $650 million.

This is not to say that the Big Ten is the primary reason for Ohio State's research revenue success. However, the academic cooperation among the member schools certainly plays a part--the systems in place that promote resource sharing and other forms of cooperation often puts the Big Ten schools at an advantage when competing for grant money.

Yep. It's a similar story with the Pac-10 - the research cooperation and grant money is significant.

Just c/p this from another site:

----
Tom Dienhart of a certain other site 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

If Mizzou and Nebraska leave the Big-12, I guess that ushers Texas to the PAC-10

or TCU and a MWC/CUSA team coming to the Big 12.

If you have 4 divisions, you pretty much have to have a 4-team conference playoff, right?

Would (or does) the NCAA allow teams to add that potential extra "semifinal conference championship game" to their schedules? Isn't there some rule that you can only have 13 total games before bowls?

Why do they need 4 divisions? They're not allowed to do a conference championship tournament, I don't think. And while it would make sense for scheduling purposes to try to preserve rivalries (you'd play everyone in your division every year), you wouldn't seperate Michigan and Ohio St.

This expansion plan makes a lot of sense. By adding Nebraska and Mizzou, they really nail down the STL and KC markets. They also really help the NY-area markets with the Rutgers/Syracuse additions. And of course, they add two very good regional rivalries to the mix with MU/Ill. and Pitt/PSU. Definitely the best layout thus far.

Ya, I could see that happening as well, but you would also lose Colorado in a PAC-10 expansion so that's three teams to replace. Maybe add TCU, UNM, and Rice/Houston? Tulane?

That is what I don't get. Seems all very strange.

Or Colorado State. Not sure if they would add another Texas team outside of TCU. But who knows.

Boise St? BYU? Probably just talk at this point, unless the PAC-10 turned into a huge West Conference and added Texas and Oklahoma as well :)

Who does the SEC take to get to 16 (assuming it follows suit)?

South Florida? WVU? Louisville?

If they're guaranteed to play each other during the regular season, I'm sure they'd be happy not to be in the same division - assuming the division winners advance to a conference playoff. Why would they want to guarantee only one of them could play for the conference title and an automatic BCS berth? It'd be pretty much like the deal FSU and Miami set up in the ACC.

Florida State & Clemson would be my guess.

I would assume some competition from the SEC. Why wouldn't the SEC want to go try to take a bite out of the Big 12 and go for some combo of Texas, Texas A&M, and Oklahoma?

SI

I actually think it's pretty clear cut with 4 divisions for basketball. In basketball, you'd play each of the teams in your division twice (6 games) and then all the other teams once (12 games) for 18 games total.

In football, not quite as sure how that would work.

I agree with this. I think the most likely result is that the B12 would be dissolved with the big schools getting picked off by the Big 10, Pac-10, and SEC.

I guess that's possible, but if you believe the stuff about there eventually being 4 16-team super-conferences, then who are the 4 conferences going to be?

Definite:

SEC
Big Ten
Pac 10

The fourth would either be the Big Twelve or the ACC, I'd say, with the either one of those conferences and the SEC fighting it out for the leftover teams from the east coast and midwestern states, and the Pac 10 swallowing up the best of the plains/western teams, right? So I guess it's possible that FSU/Clemson and maybe Miami/VT jump ship and the ACC folds, but it's equally likely the Big Twelve gets torn apart between the Big Ten, SEC and Pac 10.

I would have to guess the SEC makes the big move and gets FSU, Miami, USF and either GT or Clemson.

I think the ACC would take on WVU and USF for sure if they lost FSU/Clemson. They'd need to add one more team though to even things out and at that point I assume Notre Dame would be in the fold because otherwise they are totally phased out of the game.

That would leave the "new" ACC with Miami, Va Tech, Georgia Tech, West Virginia, North Carolina, Notre Dame. Definitely formidable.

I could see a scenario where the ACC blows up, and the Big 12 survives. The ACC is geographically more vulnerable than the Big 12, with a lot of overlap with the Big 10 and SEC. The southern ACC powers would join the SEC, and LSU and Arkansas would peel off to join the Big 12.

I don't see why Texas would go to the SEC or Pac 10 if it rebuffs overtures from the Big Ten. Particularly the SEC, since Texas seems to be a school that, if it would leave the Big 12, would be interested in being in an academic-minded sports conference.

I'm pretty sure that both Texas and Notre Dame realize that they don't have to be involved in this game of musical chairs if they choose not to be. Neither are going to be strong-armed into a conference. Notre Dame can obviously survive and do well on its own and Texas (w/ its other in-state allies) has enough pull that they can anchor a conference and it will be involved in the BCS.

I don't think the Big Ten goes to 16 schools without Texas and/or Notre Dame. I think the value of the Big Ten Network was obviously underrated when folks first started talking about expansion, but I still don't think that it will produce enough to feed five more non-Texas or Notre Dame mouths without taking money away from the existing schools.

The more I think about it, the more I think they move to twelve with either Missouri or Rutgers (either of whom can deliver a big enough in-state market + the title game to make the money work) or go to 14 with those two plus Nebraska or Pitt.

Living in the heart of ACC country, I can also say that there's a decent number of people who miss the days of a small conference dominated by basketball and the North Carolina schools.

That approach, clearly, seems like suicide in the current era of football motivated mega-expansion, but it might stay the ACC's hand a bit, causing it to miss out on the feeding frenzy.

This is what I've been hearing. TCU would be at the top of the list as a replacement.

I'm just a bit shocked the Big Ten is expanding this quickly. I assumed they'd add one to three teams now and then more later to eventually get to 16.

I see no reason to expect the Big Ten to add more than one right now. They have the advantage of being able to react after the other major conferences, should they decide 14 or 16 is better.

The interesting side-story this week is the Big East may issue an ultimatum to Notre Dame - join in football, or else leave. It's designed to force Notre Dame to consider the Big Ten, so that the Big East doesn't lose Pitt.

For my purposes, I want Connecticut to be one of the new Big Ten teams. That'd give me a lot more chances to see Indiana play in person.

The Big Ten is actually an academic group that coincides with the athletic conference, unlike some of the other sports conferences that are sports only. So the fits then have more to do with just sports, but about making sure the schools priorities are the same. So it's important to have schools participating in the league that have those same sorts of academic values.

I mean, they're not the Ivy League or anything...but it works similarly. It's about having a shared set of core values and if a school comes in that doesn't have that, it's very hard to communicate in a common way.

In other words, it has everything to do with institutional politics and little to nothing to do with sports.

The PAC-10 is the same way. It's why BSU, Fresno State, SDSU don't get any offers to join the conference. (Besides lack of a relevant media market).

Four team divisions would keep the eighteen-game basketball schedule intact. Home and home vs. your division, plus one game against the other twelve teams.

For football it's somewhat confusing unless they are allowed to run a playoff. Or, they do it by essentially having a playoff and then scheduling a game during that week for every team (division winners play each other, then division runner-ups play each other, etc.).

For football, I'd imagine the conferences would be combined, and it'd be two 8-team conferences... that'd be the simplest solution.

I can't see this happening. The Big East non-football schools have an equal vote with the football schools (8 to 8) and the office is run out of Providence. The basketball schools would be shooting themselves in the foot if they booted Notre Dame. At worst now, they can break off and still have a pretty respectable basketball (and all-sports) conference (G-town, 'Nova, Notre Dame, Marquette are all routinely NCAA tourney teams w/ G-Town and 'Nova frequently in the top 20 and St. John's, Seton Hall, Providence, and DePaul have all been good in the past and help to seal up the Northeast market -- they can grab Xavier and St. Louis and have a pretty strong basketball conference). If they kick out Notre Dame and then the Big Ten still grabs some of Rutgers, Pitt, UConn, Syracuse, then they are pretty much in the same spot w/o Notre Dame.

The Big East issuing the ultimatitum is exactly what would cause the quick breakup of the conference...if ND feels the pressure to join the Big 10, they then take Mizzou, Rutgers, Cuse, and Pitt because there won't be the added pressure of securing a big fish like Texas or Nebraska.

Im curious about how the 4 team divisions work. Does that equate into a 4 team playoff system to find the Big10 champion?

Celeval has the most likely scenario. The 4 division setup is likely only for basketball. The football setup will join the divisions into two eight-team divisions.

I think the Big Ten and other schools/conferences are working much faster than most people realize judging from the local rumor mill overnight. There's no question at this point that the Big Ten will expand to 16. It's sounding like Mizzou is pretty much a done deal to the Big Ten. If Notre Dame doesn't bite, Nebraska will also go. Have also heard that if Mizzou and Nebraska leave the conference, Texas and Texas A&M are gone to the Pac-10. Absolutely zero chance they go to the SEC. Much like Mizzou, the Texas and A&M moves would be almost entirely financially motivated.

Agreed, I think everyone in the Big East already knows where they will land. When the conference hired Paul Tagliabue as a "consultant" and the first thing he did was bash Rutgers, that pretty much sealed the breakup to me.

Knowing virtually nothing of the finances involved (except some info about TV contracts and payouts), what makes the Pac 10 a slam dunk move over the SEC for UT and TAMU? Just curious.

The research and education grants that would come the way of these school amount to tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars. The Pac-10 and Big Ten offer huge financial incentives on the academic end of the spectrum. The Mizzou, Nebraska, Texas, and A&M are 90-95% academic decisions. Athletics has very little to do with these moves, even though the sports fans love to talk about the athletic ramifications of these moves.

Why wouldn't Texas and A&M just go to the Big Ten? That part doesn't add up to me, academically or athletically (not to mention the obvious fact that they would be in a different time zone from the rest of the conference).

The Big Ten doesn't need to reach that far to get good members. They have plenty of good options much closer to home.

They have decent options closer to home, but Texas (and A&M) would essentially deliver the second most populous state's market, one of the nation's elite football brands, and one of the most prestigious public universities in the country. Not to mention access to one of the best recruiting areas in the nation.

I don't doubt that the Big Ten is going to grab a few Big 12 North and Big East teams and call it a day (although it will not surprise me a bit if they just add one team now). I just doubt that their first option (or second, after Notre Dame) was not Texas and that Texas, if they turned down the Big Ten, would find the Pac 10 more desirable.