Conference expansion talks

[abuck76]

Now with Kelly getting ND back on top, the BIg Ten will never see ND in...............They make way too much money outside a conference.......... :12224

[seofan_via_dublin]

That would be a great argument, except for that they'd make even more money in the Big 10!

[GoBuckeyes2786]

ND would make far more money in the B1G rather than being Independent.

ND would make tons from BTN, they would receive bowl revenue not only from their bowl games but other members.

Plus they could tell NBC to take their sh!tty broadcasting and cram it lol.

[dazed&confused]

Poor ACC! Lap dogs for the Irish. Can't get any revenue from their football and the Irish can't add much to the ACC basketball tradition.

[NYBuckeye96]

Four questions for everyone..............

Who do you think will be more successful in the Big Ten ---- Maryland or Rutgers?

Do you think its possible that in the Big Ten, either Rutgers or Maryland will become a football powerhouse? They both have great markets for high school talent that in the past often looked over the home school for other football programs. Now that Maryland and Rutgers are in the Big Ten and will have all the money they need for facilities, coaching, etc, do you think they will become a destination school for the local talent in DC/Maryland and NY/NJ? Does anyone see potential for one of these schools moving up to the level of Ohio State - Michigan - Penn State - Nebraska?

With the additional money and recruiting area, does anyone think Wisconsin, Michigan State, Iowa, etc. etc. etc. can make a move to join the level of Ohio State - Michigan - Penn State - Nebraska?

With the additional money and recruiting area, does this move help the Big Ten better compete with the SEC in the long run?

[3morethan2]

I see Maryland and Rutgers having some trouble getting adjusted to the Big Ten...I think before they go up to that level, it will take some time to get players to commit to their school before a powerhouse like Ohio State or Michigan. But I do see potential there. It might happen faster in basketball for both schools thought

[seofan_via_dublin]

Great post from twitter:

@DanWolken: Rutgers gets made fun of, Louisville gets praised in realignment. Records last six years: Rutgers 47-28, Louisville 38-35.

[Bleeding Red]

ND would make far more money in the B1G rather than being Independent.

ND would make tons from BTN, they would receive bowl revenue not only from their bowl games but other members.

Plus they could tell NBC to take their sh!tty broadcasting and cram it lol.

Agreed! ND only (only ) gets a reported $15 million a year through NBC.

Maryland is expected to make over $100 million between 2014 and 2020 in the Big Ten.

ND gets no other money from bowling since they are not in a conference and I still stand on my opinion that with ND not having a conference championship game, it will haunt them sooner or later. It may even keep them out of the 4 team playoff when it begins just because there could be 5 undefeated teams and ND would have one less game (and quality win) under their belt. And they are centrally located in Big Ten country. Far less traveling expenses as well.

ND joining the Big Ten is not impossible.

[GoBuckeyes2786]

ND going to the B1G is one of those things that it makes way entirely too much sense yet it won't ever happen prob just because it makes so much sense.

Kinda like my management at work. The most logical and sensible thing is always furthest from what they do ;) lol

[ACCBiggz]

ND would make far more money in the B1G rather than being Independent.

ND would make tons from BTN, they would receive bowl revenue not only from their bowl games but other members.

Plus they could tell NBC to take their sh!tty broadcasting and cram it lol.

Agreed! ND only (only ) gets a reported $15 million a year through NBC.

Maryland is expected to make over $100 million between 2014 and 2020 in the Big Ten.

ND gets no other money from bowling since they are not in a conference and I still stand on my opinion that with ND not having a conference championship game, it will haunt them sooner or later. It may even keep them out of the 4 team playoff when it begins just because there could be 5 undefeated teams and ND would have one less game (and quality win) under their belt. And they are centrally located in Big Ten country. Far less traveling expenses as well.

ND joining the Big Ten is not impossible.

Notre Dame joining the ACC or the Big Ten is not impossible, because in this crazy world nothing ever is. However, with ND's resurgence it has about a .01% chance of happening. I think both of you underestimate exactly how much ND profits. There is no reason to take a share of conference profits when they bask in their own glory.

Also, their TV deal with NBC expires in 2015. It'll likely be extended at no less than $20m going forward thanks to their comeuppance. They are not going to join a conference.


As for expansion. I think we all know there'll be four "Super" Conferences with a mid-major 16 team conference. And I think with ND's independence and The Longhorn Network those two schools will ultimately go independent.

The ACC can still add UConn and Cincinnati to get to 16 (or 15 should FSU leave). The SEC can easily tack on Oklahoma, and the Sooners will also have Pac-12 wanting them as well. If I am the commissioner of any of those conferences I become pro-active and look at who best fits long term. Who will add that value?

As an ACC fan, I think they were stupid for signing that TV contract. Especially with adding Notre Dame. NBC Sports is DYING for content. They could have signed a very lucrative deal with them and been in the best position of all if NBC wanted to force ND into the conference. It's not a big deal, but they had all the leverage over NBC who needs content badly and that's why they'll continue paying Notre Dame out the rear-end.

[NYBuckeye96]

One thing I dont understand................I have read a lot of fans of the ACC on blogs post about how they would glady trade Maryland for Louisville, and how Louisville is an upgrade. I don't buy that. Think about it. The Big Ten could have added Louisville but didn't. Granted, you could throw the whole not being an AAU school into the picture, but even if Louisville were AAU, they wouldn't generate as much money as Maryland for the Big Ten.

I also don't buy the whole "we are committed to the ACC" talk from all the ACC schools. If the Big Ten or SEC came calling, teams would leave the ACC. For that matter, if the Big 12 came calling, teams would leave the ACC. Even if the full $50 million exit fee held up in court (which I doubt it does, that will be negotiated), the Big Ten and SEC could still land the schools they want..........even if the B1G/SEC had to loan the schools money initially to pay that exit fee. That exit fee won't stop Delany and Slive from getting whoever they want out of the ACC.

Not to bash the ACC, but they are 5th in the pecking order of a tidal wave to 4 super conferences.

[ACCBiggz]

I would argue that the ACC is not fifth. The Big XII is not the same as they once were. Not to mention the Big XII has been idle throughout this process, and show no signs of being active. They are content to stay where they are (falling behind). Texas AD even said in recent months they are not looking to expand to 12. They're options for expansion are much smaller than each other major conference as well. I think it is far more likely Pac-12, Big Ten and SEC raid the remaining Big XII teams for their last members and Texas winds up as an independent.

[NYBuckeye96]

I don't agree with this article, but it is interesting to read none the less.........

http://www.pennlive.com/pennstatefootba ... e_ora.html

Syracuse, Pitt wish they were in Big Ten now -- and the league should feel the same

By DAVID JONES, The Patriot-News
on November 30, 2012 at 9:00 AM

It's easy for corporate accountants to rationalize mergers and acquisitions. That's what they do. And that's what's going on now in the crazy world of college athletics.

Revenue streams are being used to make sense of the nonsensical. Right now, the headwaters of those streams are in the process of being rerouted. So, the entire landscape is in chaos.
That's how you get corporate partners allied in defiance of basic geography. How you get a school in western Kentucky being invited to a conference named after the Atlantic Coast. How you get a school in West Virginia being admitted to a league rooted in the Great Plains. I mean, if anything shouldn't Louisville be in the Big 12 and West Virginia in the ACC?

Hey, don't ask questions, right? The branding and demographic experts know what's best.

The problem with realignment is, the landscape is changing so quickly that schools are making rash decisions on what they believe is best at one moment and in the next moment a completely different opportunity opens up.

I think that's what happened with Syracuse and Pittsburgh moving to an ACC where they definitely don't belong. And I'll bet both those schools, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany and many of the Big Ten presidents wish they had a do-over. They would now fit perfectly into the Big Ten and fertilize the league's newly cultivated Eastern turf.

Think of it. This would be a super 16 that actually makes geographic sense, that brings together the people of the Northeast and those of the Midwest and engenders rivalry and sensibilities that are already there based on where people live and who they are.

Imagine two distinct divisions that fit together:

The Big Ten East: Rutgers, Syracuse, Maryland, Penn State, Pitt, Ohio State, Michigan and Michigan State.

Just distill it down to the major metros in this division. Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, New York, Newark, Philadelphia. They already know each other and have been battling each other for decades in pro sports. (Cleveland and Detroit are in many ways more like Eastern cities than Midwestern ones.)

The fans of these college programs are the same ones who rooted for the Indians or the Tigers against the hated Yankees in the old 6-team American League East; the Ravens and Browns against the despised Steelers in the NFL. This is a geographic fit. It's a natural hive of rivalry.

The Big Ten West: Indiana, Purdue, Illinois, Northwestern, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska.

Completely different feel. Based around the major metros of Chicago, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Des Moines and Omaha.

You can almost hear Jack Buck and Harry Caray calling a Cubs-Cardinals game on the radio on a hot summer night. It's beer and steak and processed meat products on the grill with corn on the cob. It's less about taxis rolling down sooty streets and more about freshly mown fields.

Oh, but the beancounters would never allow it. Too few major markets in the West, too many in the East. Know what? The people of the West would love it that way. They'd take it as a badge of honor to be the underdogs and, trust me, they'd build up a simmering resentment toward the East.

That's why it would work!

But to really make it happen, I think you need Syracuse and Pitt to consolidate the conference's eastern half. Bringing them aboard would dominate the region and make the Northeast truly Big Ten territory.

What would it cost now that they've already committed to a shaky ACC? Are we talking 9-figure penalty payouts? Whatever it takes, the Big Ten has it and could help out. And this is a long-term proposition.

Again, I don't think the conference chieftains would ever do it because they're constantly seeking to expand the league's footprint, not deepen the it. They want new cable markets, maybe in the research triangle of Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill or Atlanta.

I think that's a mistake and I hope it's nothing but nonsense chatter. Such a stretch to North Carolina and/or Georgia Tech, as one of the rumors has it, is delusional empire building that won't stand. Atlantans have nothing in common with either Minnesotans or New Yorkers. Sooner or later, any such fabricated link is destined to weaken and crumble.

People need to be with their own. Two coherent divisions of two distinct regions of people could work for a Big Ten super-conference. But any farther lunge, especially into Dixie, is foolhardy and destined to fail.

Geography does not change. Neither do the people bound by it. No matter how the accountants try to convince themselves or us.

[NYBuckeye96]

http://frankthetank.wordpress.com/2010/ ... n-network/

This article mentions how much $$$ teams would bring to the Big Ten back in 2010 when the conference expansion talk began before Nebraska was added..........

School/Expected Revenue for the Big Ten Per Year

1. Texas $101,369,004
2. Rutgers (with NYC) $67,798,609
3. Nebraska $54,487,990
4. Maryland $50,818,889
5. Boston College $48,382,692
6. Notre Dame $47,629,255
7. Kansas $46,320,092
8. Missouri $45,901,459
9. Syracuse $43,504,813 (if include NYC - $65,874,573)
10. Connecticut $38,080,271
11. Pittsburgh $34,365,175
12. Iowa State $31,831,077

I'm not sure how they calculated Notre Dame without a clear way to measure new TV subscribers.

At any rate, if the Big Ten starts delivering $40 million a year per team, you would have to conclude that Connecticut, Pittsburgh and Iowa State are now no longer in a position to add to the coffers.

Missouri is probably off the table now that they landed in the SEC.

Boston College, Syracuse and Connecticut are never talked about in expansion rumors this time around.

The only school on this list from 2010 that is still talked about in expansion rumors today that would add revenue past the $40 million per school mark is Kansas. I don't understand how Kansas can deliver that much money. Kansas City isn't that big is it? At any rate, it would seem Kansas is all that is left from this list that would make sense, other than Texas and Notre Dame.

I wonder what the figures are for Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia Tech?

Just for the hell of it, I'd like to see what the figures would be for Florida State. Even though FSU is not AAU, how could you not consider the possibility of entry into the Florida market, one of the fastest growing states in the country and home to a lot of top recruits? I bet FSU would be near the top of the list from a purely financial perspective.

[NYBuckeye96]

I also think this is interesting from the same Frank the Tank article posted above from 2010....

16 Schools = Huge Inventory – The 60/40 rule that favors advertising revenue also gives a whole lot more credence to making a 16-school conference financially viable. I recalled this piece from Don Ohlmeyer on that examined how ESPN chose to schedule programs:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/ ... id=4582425

The message that I got from this was that LIVE EVENTS = RATINGS. A live hot rod competition after a college football game actually holds more viewers than a studio show that talks about said game, even though they have nothing to do with each other at face value.

The Big Ten expanding up to 12 schools really doesn’t increase the inventory of conference football games (which are the higher value games) very much at all. Assuming that the Big Ten continues with an 8-game conference schedule, it would have 48 conference games as opposed to 44 conference games in a season. At 14 schools, it would go up to 56 conference games. At 16 schools, though, the Big Ten would almost certainly go to a 9-game conference schedule, which would catapult the inventory up to 72 conference games.

What does 72 conference games allow you to do? Well, let’s assume that the Big Ten provides 4 games to ABC/ESPN every week (2 games on ESPN and ESPN2 at 11 am CT, 1 game on ABC at 2:30 pm CT, and 1 prime time game), which is a package that would likely see a substantial increase in rights fees when it’s now presumably including Notre Dame and/or Nebraska on top of the current Big Ten members plus a conference championship game. This leaves 2 conference games for the BTN for every single week of the season (except for maybe Labor Day weekend, which is reserved for MACrifice games). With non-conference games mixed in, the BTN could have football triple-headers virtually every week. Going up to 16 schools increases the amount of live football on the BTN in a dramatic fashion and if twice as much live football compounds the amount of ad revenue earned, then I’m starting to see how going up to 16 schools makes more financial sense under the BTN model than 12 or 14 schools.

Then, we get to basketball, where a 16-school conference can get at least one basketball game onto the BTN onto every day of the week except for Friday, whereas now the BTN usually only has games on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. That’s a dramatic jump in the number of high quality basketball games on more nights of the week. This also still leaves enough for the Big Ten to add 1 or 2 more basketball games on ESPN per week for widespread exposure (and likely garner a rights increase there, too, if schools like Syracuse or Pitt added to the mix). Of course, Friday night can be reserved for the new Big Ten Hockey Conference game(s) of the week if Notre Dame joins. There’s even some side benefits in the spring with baseball (as Nebraska and Notre Dame lift up the quality of that league substantially) and lacrosse (where a new Big Ten league could be formed with Syracuse as the national headliner if that school is invited). Other sports such as women’s basketball and volleyball can end up with new national (and TV-friendly) brand names, too.

So, maybe that’s why the chatter about a 16-school conference has taken center stage: if you have that many more high value football and basketball games plus a ton of other sports of interest where you’ve got live programming every night of the week that’s comparable to the college games on the ESPN networks, that can increase ad revenue dramatically (and in turn, carry rates could increase as the BTN becomes more “essential” to viewers’ lives).

[seofan_via_dublin]

Big 10 already took Maryland.
Georgia Tech and Virginia will be announcing the move to the B10 soon.

Won't be long before FSU looks to the B12 or SEC, same with Clemson.

On the surface the UVA addition doesn't seem to fit with the TV market plan,
but look closer and this is what you get.
Delany will package PSU, Maryland, UVA, OSU, and Michigan and sell those fan bases to the DC, Richmond, No.VA, and Va Beach area cable providers to get BTN on basic package in all the mentioned markets. When you combine those markets, you get the equivalent of making a second Chicago sized market out of basic nothingness in the Blue Ridge mountains!

GTech gives you Atlanta.

I truly don't think this stops at 16.
I think Delany gets to 16, solidifies the market, and waits for the ACC/B12/Big East to fall apart.
Then the SEC/Pac12/B10 clean up and take their choosing.
I think the B10 gets 20 teams by the time the dust settles in 3-4 years.

[dazed&confused]

Wow! I think you could be right. 3 conferences, 60 teams. So where does Notre Dame fit into this scenario with their stubborn independence?

[NYBuckeye96]

For selfish reasons, I want UVA in the Big Ten. I used to live in Virginia, in the Hampton Roads region, before boomeranging back to Ohio. I can't begin to tell you how many people from Ohio and PA live there! Lots of OSU and PSU alumni down there. UVA is a great school and has everything the Big Ten could want. One of the top public universities in the nation. Granted, UVA is not a football powerhouse, but I think UVA would be a great fit and has other non-revenue sports that it is a powerhouse in that could help to Big Ten. Not that that matters in terms of conference expansion, as this is all about football. But UVA would lead the way in sports like baseball and could help the Big Ten go from no college lacrosse to being the top conference for college lacrosse in the NCAA, along with Maryland.

[NYBuckeye96]

Michigan State AD hints at further expansion.........

http://espn.go.com/ncf/conversations/_/ ... advantages

Big Ten eyes further expansion

Updated: December 5, 2012

By Brett McMurphy | ESPN

NEW YORK -- The Big Ten recently announced it would increase to 14 members, so can a 16-team Big Ten be far behind?

"There are some advantages to 16 (teams) compared to 14," Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis told ESPN on Wednesday. "Fourteen is clumsy. We're not out looking for two teams, but basically we will continue to survey the landscape."

Hollis, attending the IMG Intercollegiate Athletics Forum at the Marriott Marquis, said whether the Big Ten expands is dependent to "what happens in other areas" in the country.


"We don't want to get outflanked," Hollis said.

Last month, Maryland and Rutgers announced they were leaving the ACC and Big East, respectively, for the Big Ten. They are expected to join the Big Ten in 2014.


North Carolina State athletic director Debbie Yow said she wasn't happy that the Terps, a charter member of the ACC, left the league.

"Maryland will be on a plane to play Wisconsin in the middle of the winter," Yow said. "Hope that money is really, really good."

It will be.

The Big Ten, already the richest conference in the nation, will be negotiating a new media rights deal in 2017, and it is expected to pay each school more than $40 million annually.

With 16 teams instead of 14, the Big Ten also would be able to provide more "inventory," or games for the Big Ten Network, increasing its value "as long as it wasn't in the league's current footprint," sources said.

As far as future Big Ten members, speculation has swirled around the league pursuing ACC programs such as Georgia Tech, Virginia and North Carolina.

Hollis would not name candidates, but said if the league expands "what we'll look for is does it fit? What impact does it have on the current membership? If after (an) evaluation, you see any upside, then there is a reason to grow."


"It won't be tomorrow," Hollis added jokingly.

One factor that could impact whether the Big Ten expands in the future, specifically if it targets ACC teams, is whether Maryland will be required to pay the ACC's $52 million exit fee.

The ACC has filed a lawsuit to guarantee the Terps pay the entire amount. Nebraska chancellor Harvey Perlman said Wednesday he doesn't think the exit fee is enforceable.

While Hollis said a 14-team league is "clumsy" as far as football and basketball scheduling, a 16-team league is easier to schedule with two, eight-team divisions.

If the Big Ten did expand, it could set off a domino effect in other leagues. Would the SEC also want to get to 16 teams? Would the Big 12 expand beyond 10? How would the Pac-12 and ACC react? What would all those moves do to the future of the Big East, Mountain West, Conference USA and others?

The possibilities are endless.

"I don't think (conference realignment) is over," Missouri athletic director Mike Alden said. "There's more coming."


College football fans: You've been warned.

[NYBuckeye96]

North Carolina State athletic director Debbie Yow said she wasn't happy that the Terps, a charter member of the ACC, left the league.

"Maryland will be on a plane to play Wisconsin in the middle of the winter," Yow said. "Hope that money is really, really good."

Debbie Yow was the former AD at Maryland. She is the one that spent all of Maryland's money and put them in the financial situation they are in that led to the cut of 7 sports.

Give her a few years, and she will run NC State into the ground too.