I have no issue with any Big 10 fan who isn't excited about us joining. I don't blame them. It's a move that's heavily based on the potential for future revenues.

It's going to be really interesting to see the role of Fox's purchase of the YES Network in this whole thing. If they try bundling YES/BTN to providers as expected, this could get bloody...but also could be very lucrative.

Kudos to them. It would be nice if Rutgers could bring back some of the teams they cut a few years back as well.

I'm actually really happy that Rutgers is joining and am so-so on Maryland, and I'd hoped Rutgers was on any plans for expanding to 16. Neither school is a huge addition like some of the schools the Big Ten had been looking at in the last round of expansion rumors and if the plan for the conference is to not expand beyond 14 in the near future I don't quite understand the move of adding Maryland and Rutgers right now.

How are Rutgers and Maryland able to bring back teams onto their schedule? Do the ACC and Big East schedule more than 8 games?

If Rutgers is looking at adding sports we could use more hockey teams. :)

They're talking about how both schools (many more by Maryland) cut non-revenue sports from their AD to reduce costs.

Link to this?

and nothing says EXPANSION better than adding 2 athletic programs bleeding money.

@dennisdoddcbs: Maryland prez says B1G membership will allow it to reinstate cut teams. Bravo.

Serious question...why? What gets you to that connection?

Did they say if part of the agreement is that Maryland has to throw this years game in the Big Ten/ACC challenge?

TomahawkNation.com ‏@TomahawkNation

FSU president on $50M exit fee: “If Maryland challenges it, I’ll be watching closely to see if that works.” http://on.tdo.com/100AHhd

Why would the Big Ten need them to? Big Ten has won it the last 3 years.

Yeah. I would guess that the Big Ten is heavily favored in the Big Ten/ACC challenge this year.

It's been stated and proved bunches of times in this thread, but apparently bears repeating:

MOST SCHOOLS ARE LOSING MONEY ON THEIR ATHLETIC PROGRAM


Okay, hopefully it sinks in now!


(Caps are meant facetiously, not angrily)

I wonder if this is a shot across ND's bow at all.

Take away the paltry shared revenue payments from the BE and replace it with 12/14 of what the B10 has been paying, without even adding any subscriber fees from NY/PHL/DC, and both athletic departments become hugely profitable.

couple things i've been thinking about:

if acc can finish off the BE, helloooooooooooo ACC bball tourny being rotated into MSG

how will this affect ACC votes? i less originaly member + another former BE member

I can't wait to see who the big east comes up with as replacements. What better, Florida Atlantic or Florida International?

molson may yet get his wish...

Boise State Broncos, SDSU Aztecs, BYU Cougars talk with MWC about return, sources say - ESPN

Well, if $50 million can be negotiated down, perhaps $5 million can too.

I did read too today that the $5 million can be waived if the Big East's revenue drops by a certain % by June of next year, though I don't know how that would be measured prior to the start of the next football season. But clearly the idea there was that Boise St. could bail if the Big East imploded, and the Big East may be imploding.

This would be awesome. The conference would have relevance again.

Relevant compared to what? The military academies?

That conference is still going to be irrelevant to any other major conference.

The champion would have an automatic BCS spot most years.

Other than that, it wouldn't be "relevant" relative to the SEC or anything, but for entertainment value, I'd much rather have a Boise St/BYU/Nevada/SDSU/Air Force Conference than whatever the hell the Big East is now.

It is essentially going to look like a composite of CUSA teams from various points in time + Temple and maybe some of the newer programs that have recently moved up (Charlotte, UMass, Georgia Southern?).

Can't argue this one. The Big East has been a Big Flat Fart for years.

The MSG folks have said they are not open to hosting in a rotation. I'd guess that as long as St John's is involved with the Big East or in a newly formed/combined Big East/A10 combo, they'd probably prefer to have it every year rather than once ever 3 or 4 years from the ACC.

of course, that's one reason the ACC wants the BE to disappear completely.

Coach K concerned about ACC future in aftermath of Maryland move - Pete Thamel - SI.com

I agree. If Maryland gets it reduced, then FSU and Clemson go to the Big 12, IMO.

Maryland to the B1G makes sense financially and academically. But for sports? Whatever.

From what I'm reading, I think the next step is going to be the two Virginia schools finding soft landings (UVA to the Big Ten and VPI to SEC).

Then Delany rounds out the Eastern bloc with his alma mater: UNC. And the SEC gets NC State to fill out their region and add two more populated Southern states to their "footprint."

UNC message boards would erupt in utter hatred and pandemonium if we go to the Big Ten and N.C. State (of all teams) winds up in the SEC. The tide there is running at about 98% in favor of UNC going to the SEC. Of course the prevailing sentiment is also running at about 98% that State drop its athletic programs entirely and concede the everlasting superiority of UNC. So there's that.

At least we are not suggesting that Rutgers drop their worthless programs but simply go back to Division II since that has been the state of their teams, excepting a few fluke years. :lol:

Plank apparently claims he isn't paying a UMd exit fee. We'll see.

Under Armour's Plank not contributing to Maryland's ACC exit fee - Baltimore Business Journal

Very glad to have disembarked from the sinking ship of the Big East. Happy to be the weakling of the Big TE14N

Fix'd :p



If you haven't noticed, we're not very good at football right now...

P.S. Please use some of the extra Big Ten $$$ to get a hockey team, a six team hockey conference is not going to be very fun.

Rumor has Illinois moving to the Legends with the Ms and Ns and Iowa. Maryland and Rutgers will be in the Leaders.
Not sure how scheduling will go. Im hoping Iowas protected "rivalry" game would shift to Rutgers. Illinois and Purdue already play for a trophy.

Scooped.

If the notion was that the Big 10 did this partially as a response to the ACC getting ND, it's entirely possible they did it in mind to destabilize the ACC and get ND to reconsider. Even if they don't get ND, I imagine it serves their purpose by keeping ND out of the ACC (and remaining on the schedule of Big 10 schools in football).

It would also be a possibility that Fox Sports contributed to this as a flanking manuever against ESPN (if one considers the BC AD's "admission" that ESPN drove the last round of ACC expansion).

I don't think so, this looks to be a purely financial move. Check out this post from a great blog back when this first started:

The Value of Expansion Candidates to the Big Ten Network « FRANK THE TANK'S SLANT

The Big Ten has landed 2, 3, and 4 and I don't think 1 was ever a possibility. Nate Silver also did a study and he came up with Rutgers as the most popular college football team in NYC, 600,000 fans or 20%, more than double Notre Dame at number 2. Syracuse was at
4.6%.

If this holds true, Boston College and Kansas might be the next targets.

Yeah, no idea what that trophy will be. "The trophy for state schools with non-state names in them?"

I'm guessing they'll invent a Maryland-Rutgers trophy and a Penn State-Rutgers trophy.

BC isn't contiguous to the footprint, though. Also, BC isn't a member of the AAU. KU is, as is Georgia Tech, which is probably why they're always mentioning them, but also not contiguous.

If the Big Ten goes to 16 I do hope that Kansas is one of the schools.

I doubt that rule would be an issue if the conference could make more money by changing/ignoring it. Nebraska isn't an AAU member either, so I doubt that would be a sticking point.

Cash trumps rules and tradition.

I'm not quite that cynical, yet. Plus, the AAU thing is way more important than the geography. So KU makes sense in that regard, as well as it's geographic benefits.

Long term, if this plays out into the 4x16 super conferences, then this was a bad move for the Big10, probably in response to the ACC getting a foothold with Notre Dame. The Big10 figures if the ACC is going to invade our territory then we'll take a shot back at them and steal Maryland. Now, this move did shake up the ACC confidence a bit in the very short term, but looking big picture, nobody in the ACC cares that Maryland is leaving. The Big10 ends up with 2 crap sports programs but some good markets. The ACC still has the advantage with Notre Dame.

In a 4x16 scenario, the 3 obvious locks are Pac10, Big10 and SEC. But where is the PAC10 going to pull its teams from? The only obvious answer is the Big 12. The ACC will be the 4th Super Conference in this scenario. In a 4x16, Notre Dame cannot stay independant, so they end up in the ACC. The big score will be if the ACC can get Texas or OK in the future. The other going to the Pac10. The Big 10 would have been better served to wait and get some better pickings from the Big12 instead of taking Rutgers, who they can have anytime they want in the future. They jumped too quick here as a reactionary move to Notre Dame's move.

Personally, I think this is all horseshit. I am for an all-inclusive system where conferences are based on geography and long standing rivalries. The more conference movement that occurs, the less and less interest I have in college football. In my world, basketball is king, and I despise these super conferences. What fun is it seeing the same teams over and over and over again in the title games? How does it make any sense that Alabama gets the bid last year for the title game because they have the 'best' loss, but this year they get the nod because they have the hardest schedule (and Oregon has the 'best' lost at least by the BCS standings)? Yes, I know the SEC always has some great teams, give me the NFL's parody anyday.

I am really not looking forward to playing Duke, Virginia, GTech, etc. (no offense to those fine schools) when I love playing Uconn, Rutgers, Georgetown, Villanova, etc. I can't imagine Maryland or Rutgers fans are really excited to play Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, etc... Again, all great schools with good teams, but really of no interest to (former) big East teams. I am sure the Clemsons of the world could give two shits about Syracuse as well as OSU and Michigan playing Maryland or Rutgers. It is just stupid.

Virginia and BC are next on the list I imagine. I think the B1G is done in the midwest.

Another thing that I probably ought to save for a blog post...is a lot of folks are quibbling about the bleeding over of geographic alliances, but we're talking about organizations with long histories that were formed due to shared interest, geography and perhaps collaborative goals the old dudes in smoke filled rooms had at the time.

The other elephant in the room is the fact that it was a lot more expensive to travel in the old days than it is now and so, of course no one would've started a large geographic conference in the days of bus trips. But now? All of our professional leagues are bicoastal behemoths, so I think if anything, college sports were just slow to the game in some ways to catch on to national trends.

Even shitty, third tier pro leagues extend nationally in many cases. So while I can understand the consternation, it just seems like a lot of these moves while strange make sense in the context of a globalized world where Greece and France share the same currency.

I feel like people will get used to it. Or the whole thing will dissolve over time and go back to how it was. But the former seems far more likely to me than the latter.

I don't think the contiguous rule is much of a consideration, but who knows? At this point, it seems like a silly consideration.

I could also see a Virginia/North Carolina combination as the next target. I don't know if they were originally included in the analysis I linked above but it would be interesting to see how they compare to BC and Kansas.