I'm not sure that they find it 'more desirable'. My understanding is that Texas was never seriously considered by the Big Ten. For Texas, the Pac-10 is the only other option if they want to get on the right end of the conference realignment and nail down some major funding.

And just to make sure it doesn't get taken the wrong way, I'm not downplaying Texas in any way. With a little closer proximity, I have no doubt that Texas would be a shoe-in.

Notre Dame says that it will remain independent in football. That's not an option in the Big Ten, so that takes them out of the equation.

Notre Dame plans to remain independent in football, AD says, despite push from Big Ten

Let's say that Nebraska and Missouri go to the Big 10. Colorado goes to the Pac 10. The Big 12 is now the Big 9. Do they expand, or do they get poached by the SEC? The politics in Texas making poaching difficult. A&M would have to go with Texas (and that would make sense). Would the Tech and/or Baylor lobby get to go with them. Would the SEC take those teams? Would Oklahoma and Oklahoma State make sense? Or would the SEC look to the ACC and either expand into NC or expand their current base with FSU, GT, Clemson, and Miami?

The Big-East should draw a line in the sand and tell Notre Dame they need to be a full member or withdraw from the conference. Can Notre Dame exist as an independent in every sport it participates? I can't imagine the revenue it receives in basketball is anything that significant. If Notre Dame defects, the Big East can poach other team teams in response, no?

We know that there's likely going to be 4-5 'mega conferences' once this is done. I'm guessing that how the Big East and ACC shake out will dictate this. I'm not sure the remaining B12 schools would be deciding as much as they would be reacting. I think this is a big reason why Mizzou and Nebraska want to jump now. They want to decide their destination rather than wait on the dominoes to fall and have their options limited.

I wish the Big Ten teams would refuse to play Notre Dame in football unless they join the conference.

I have nothing against Notre Dame, but I agree that it benefits from a lot of enabling. If the Big 10 refused to play it in football for as long as it is independent, and if the Big East refused to let it be a "anything but football" member, then it is hard to see how it could stay independent in football.

The Big 10 makes sense for those schools, at least in a academic and regional way. They don't like the way the Big 8 schools have been treated in the conference (which has likely been in large part due to Nebraska's fall from the top). Missouri makes more sense to me than Nebraska does as far as the Big 10's perspective, but if you want 16, you're probably going to have to expand a little further then you want to.

I think if the Big 12 lost Mizzou and Nebraska, they would be able to reload. They would take in TCU. And maybe they could take in a school like Utah or Houston. It would lower the conference prestige some, but TCU and Utah have been similar to Mizzou and Nebraska in recent years in football. The revenue would be the part that hurts.

If Colorado goes too, the Big 12 starts seeing problems. Not because Colorado is a crown jewel in the conference, but because you start wondering who you are going to get to replace. Utah might not jump if Colorado's not there. If the goal is to get to at least twelve, then the Big 12 is starting to run out of options, at least in-region. You see a situation where the SEC could try to get to 16. Although I don't see the SEC needing to expand because they don't have their own network like the Big 10 (sure, they have a syndicated network, but that's pretty much national anyway, and certainly in the region they would expand to). The Pac 10 would already have Colorado, and could shoot for Texas, but I don't see this as likely as other people do. Texas A&M is going wherever Texas goes, and the question is whether they fit in with what the Pac 10 wants.

I think Utah has a wink/nod with the PAC-10 already, I think it is up to Colorado. Not many other schools make sense unless BYU decides that it will allow its athletes to participate on Sunday

From the discussion I saw, if TAMU is what it takes to get Texas, I doubt that it would be too bad

We do?

fixed

Sometimes principles are more important than cash. If ND is too good for the Big Ten, then they are too good to play Big Ten teams at all.

I'd love to see the megaconferences form and then rescind Notre Dame's auto-lock into the BCS.

That would be AWESOME.

If the Big 10 moves to 16 teams, you'll see the Pac-10 and Big East both quickly move to 14 or 16 teams as well. Then all that's left is to see how the Big 12, SEC, and ACC reshuffle. Best guess is that those three conferences take their remaining members and form two large conferences.

What's also becoming apparant is that the BCS will need to be juggled a bit to work in its current state.

Why? I mean, you say that as though ND would have a hard time replacing Purdue/Michigan/Michigan St/Pitt with other teams. The only one of those that might be a challenge to replace with equal stature would be Michigan & even then there are quite a few options.

Just glancing at ND's opponents over the last 30 years (I had to pick a time frame), the most often played non-B10/BE teams not on their 2010 schedule are Air Force, Miami, LSU, Georgia Tech, and Tennessee. That's not exactly a chopped liver group and ND is going to sell tickets pretty much no matter who/where they play. Would it be a shame to see some very traditional games lost? Sure. Would it have some sort of crippling effect on ND? Not a fucking chance.

That's a lot of ifs and guesses for you to state that we "know" something.

Not really. The only thing that needs to happen to trigger that chain is the Big Ten expansion to 16 teams, which has quickly become a primary focus. After that, it's very easy to see how it will all play out.

Why would the Pac-10 go past 12 at this point? It’s still up in the air if they even want to add 2; unless they can hit a homerun and add Texas and aTm the numbers don’t make sense from the existing schools perspective.

Ha ha. OK, glad you have it figured out.

Have you worked out how a conference like the SEC is going to increase the television contract they just signed by 33% to account for the additional four teams they have to distribute proceeds to?

Considered how playing in a tougher conference and likely losing more games is going to affect a middle of the road SEC school like Auburn? What if they find themselves mired in mediocrity, and football ticket sales (which covers about 30% of their entire athletic budget) falls? Are alumni contributions going to drop? Is all of that going to be offset because of the invasion of Longhorns every four years (assuming they would be in different divisions)? What about their increased travel costs?

Point is, you're trying to make it as neat and simple as rearranging a few few files in your FBCB conference folder. There are a lot of smart people who have made a lot of money in these conference offices and at the school's athletic departments (particularly the SEC). We may end up with several "mega-conferences" but it is going to be because the math makes sense, not because the Big Ten and the SEC needs to "do something."

Sure, you can argue who it will be and how it will all fall, but it's going to end in less major conferences than we have right now.

Which is different from 3-4 megaconferences.

I believe my scenario laid out 5 'mega conferences' of 14-16 teams.

But you haven’t explained the math yet.

Take the Pac-10; how does a 16 team league generate 60% more revenue than a 10 team league? And that’s just to break even from the existing schools perspective; they would need to see an increase in order to justify the wholesale changes.

Like I said, glad someone has it all figured out. Please post new conference and universe files ASAP.

Fewer major conferences.

I'm salivating over the hairbrained idea of the sec as follows:

West: OK, UT, A&M, LSU, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Alabama, Auburn

East: Ark, UGA, FLA, Tenn, Vandy, USC, Kentucky, FSU

If 16 team conferences are inevitable, I can't be the only one who prefer it look like the following:

Big 16
PAC 16
SEC (16)
ACC/Big East hybrid (16) **would likely need CUSA teams**
MWC/WAC/B12 hybrid (16)
MAC/CUSA hybrid (16)
Leftover teams from Sun Belt, CUSA, MAC, MWC, WAC (16)
Notre Dame and the service academies (3)

That would mean a few teams would have to move down to 1-aa, but I'm fine with that. Or just add 8 more teams (I think) to go to eight 16 team conferences.

Ok, call it 3x14 and 2x16 = 74 teams. There are currently 67 BCS teams. Add Boise State, Utah, BYU, and TCU as the supposed no-brainers.

Which other three are getting pulled in?

Meanwhile the NCAA has certified 35 bowl games for next year, a total of 70 of the 120 D1 teams are due to go bowling (even if 1 or 2 have a losing record).
edit to add: Those certifications are good through 2014

I don't think anyone's pointed out the best possible result of all this reshuffling (unless I've missed it in this thread somewhere)... Jim would almost certainly have to release TCY2 to keep the game semi-relevant rather than just small updates to the schedule!

allowing 70 teams to get bowl games is fucking retarded. Bowls are meaningless that way.


just my grumpy nickel, please carry on!

That ship sailed somewhere between 20 and 30 teams.

Obviously, we'll never know for sure. I'm guessing that Memphis and Houston would both be prime options for selection, especially if the Big 12 teams decided to stay together. No matter which way you go, there's going to be a couple of watered down teams selected at the end.

At the end? wtf? the entire system is watered down past oh, say 30 teams.....

You don't think a 16-team Pac consisting of the old Pac-8 schools in one group and the Arizona schools joined by Colorado, Utah, Texas, Texas A&M, Nebraska & Oklahoma wouldn't increase the revenue per school for the entire conference?

Not to mention, a 16-team conference works out a lot better for scheduling than expanding to 12 does. With a 16-team conference, the old Pac-8 could be one division and all those schools would continue with a round-robin schedule (assuaging the issues the PNW schools have in potentially losing annual trips to LA) plus 1 or 2 rotating games with teams in the other division.

Probably not as much as just adding Texas and Colorado and then having a championship game would.

For example, I have a tough time seeing Utah creating enough revenue for the Pac 10 to justify the other teams creating another slice of the pie.

Most of the talk is designed to coincide with the PAC-10's television contract being up. If the PAC-10 can add a conference championship game as well as 2-6 more teams, it will surely up the ante

Maybe Jim Delany really is the smartest commisioner in all of sports (pro or college). The Big Ten actually has the base to expand itself to 14 or 16 and be just fine. If the other conferences follow along, they could succeed, but they could just as easily find themselves with too many mouths to feed and end up setting themselves back while the Big Ten continues to move forward.

The other interesting piece to this is that the Big Ten Network is, to the best of my knowledge, jointly owned by the eleven Big Ten schools (51%) and Fox (49%). Will the existing teams sell their shares to the new teams and, if so, for how much? I cannot imagine a scenario where they agree to split that 51% sixteen-ways, rather than eleven-ways without the new schools spending millions (tens or hundreds of millions?) to buy their way in.

Well, that’s kind of my point. We have to create a perfect scenario before it starts to look good. And as far as your list goes, let’s dump Utah and bring along Oklahoma State to maintain the regional rivalries.

As far as generating more revenue with these new teams, it’s a bit of a chicken and the egg conundrum. It will be impossible for the Pac to pull those schools in without a lucrative TV contract, or their own network, and it will be impossible to negotiate those without having a proven commodity to bargain with. So the most likely scenario is that each school coming into the new Pac will have to take a leap of faith, signing up without really knowing how much revenue they will be gaining. It still makes sense for Utah to jump at it, and probably for Colorado too with the uneven TV distribution of the current Big-12, but not many other schools will be happy with that.

The percentage of ownership between the conference and Fox would remain the same, but you'd obviously have a 25-30% increase in games on the network and an increase in revenue with markets like KC and STL along with the East Coast making a change in what tier the network was located on. So you see an ad revenue and a subscriber revenue increase as far as network revenues go.

Just so you're aware, most of the BCS conferences are planning to follow the Big Ten model when their current TV contract runs out. The Big 12 is already talking about setting up their own network. SEC is looking to do one as well. I've heard that the Pac-10 is waiting for expansion before diving into that, but that may come sooner rather than later at this point.

I understand that there will be additional revenue and I think the Big Ten can make it work so that its current teams will, at worst, remain at the same income level. I also know that the percentage of ownership between Fox and the schools will, almost certainly, stay the same. And, we can also assume that the new schools are going to increase their revenue by joining up.

I'm more interested in what the dynamics of ownership (of the schools' portion) within the Big Ten Network will be. It doesn't make sense for the existing schools, who each own a little less than 4.5% of the network to let five new schools into an already profitable venture (where the risk has already been assumed and overcome) and lessen their shares to roughly 3% (even if a percentage becomes worth more) without the new schools earning ownership, somehow.

I'm sure there are smarter folks than us that are working on this, at all levels, right now. I'm just curious as to how it will work.

I think a lot of the “we’re going to start our own network!” talk is simply posturing before they sit down to actually hammer out a deal ESPN/ABC/FoxSports/CBS et al. My guess is that all of the conferences will launch something they call a “network,” but it will look a lot more like ESPN3 than The Big-Ten Network

Umm, the SEC pretty much abandoned that notion when they signed the largest conference TV deal (jointly, with CBS & ESPN) in history back in 2008, it runs through 2023.

Yep. What is the SEC Network is simply a re-branding and nationalization through better syndicaiton of the Jefferson Pilot/Raycom deal.

Does anyone know how long the Big Ten Network was in development before it took to the air?

Roughly a year or so, best I can tell from Googling to find vague references to it's being founded in 2006 (board of directors formed 10/19/06) with on-air debut in fall 2007. Nothing I've found seems to indicate how long Fox & the conference were in negotiations before an agreement was reached.

The fact that there are too many bowls is okay. I mean, there's no playoff and so there's no reason to prevent players from participating in postseason games since they work hard all year and to go largely to locales that aren't glamorous unless it's one of the better bowl games.

Even though it ends up costing schools more than they make in many cases, who cares about postseason integrity if the games are just glorified exhibitions anyway?

I'm having a hard time following this thread by now, but DeToxRox promised me Big 10 expansion back in January. Has this shit happened yet?

I'm pretty close to just expecting that nothing at all happens.

Also - wasn't the USC/NCAA stuff supposed to happen this week?

Nothing ever happens. Except old ladies doing their grandkids.