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Ol Badger wrote:

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Damn!  Forgot about Syracuse.  Not a national power, nor a good facsimile for a long time; not an AAU member; not a land grant--or even public--university; small tv market, but access to NYC and Boston.

Winning percentage, 2000-10:  .409

Per game attendance, 2010:  40,064 (60)

By my logic Syracuse would be much more in the mix then Iowa State, UVA, UNC and WVU.  To the earlier points, Syracuse gets coverage in NY market, and if in Big 10 could make a play to increase presence there.
  

blockski wrote:

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Ol Badger wrote:

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blockski wrote:

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I don't necessarily see how a growing SEC or PAC-1? requires a response from the Big Ten at all.  It may very well open a door (by the way of destabilizing the ACC, for example), but I don't see how it requires a response. 

It doesn't necessarily require action, but there is a limited number of attractive possibilities, and if other conferences get them now the B1G will be faced with fewer desirable choices later.  Once schools join a stable conference, such as the SEC or Pac-xx they are not going to be moving to the B1G anytime soon.  I don't think Delany's going to let the other conferences sop up all the best available choices. I would love to see the results of their 18-month study to get a sense of what the long-term strategy is.

Right, but any of the schools worth having aren't going to be swayed easily.  Nobody in the Big East interests me, frankly.  

Pitt would be a fine fit, but I just don't see how that makes financial sense.  Maybe they'd be #16 to even up numbers, but that's it. 

Notre Dame - this is one that's not about fighting other conferences, but about fighting ND about their intentions. 

Various members of the ACC - these are schools that might be good fits, but they're not going anywhere unless the ACC finds itself just as unstable as the Big XII is. 

So, again, with no attractive candidates in any position to be lured, and no inherently compelling reason to go to 16 (or 14) teams in the first place, then I don't see what action will be required. 

If we assume that going to 16, thanks to the diminishing returns of a 16 team conference that can only play 12 games a season, actually shrinks the per-team pie, then there's no reason for the Big Ten to act at all - even if all of the attractive candidates get taken. 

I'd agree with OB.  No it doesn't require action.  But it does make the case for action more compelling. 

The case you make is a good reason why the Big 10 is probably not going to take preemptive action (unless ND somehow became available).  However once other conferences start bulking up and the somewhat attractive partners start getting taken, there could be a rush to consider others in that category before the remaining options worth considering dissappear.  Ultimately the Big 10 may need to decide if it will be comfortable being a 12 team conference if there are several other 16 team "mega-conferences" or if it will need to join them.

The Big 10 clearly doesn't have to do anything now and will most likely stay where it is in the near term.

However if the Big 10 were looking to expand and given the limited pool of viable candidates, if other conferences start dipping into that pool, the argument could be made to make an expansion move before the pool becomes even more limited.

The Big 10 is also in a much different place from other conferences given the BTN.  By growing the footprint of the Big 10 and thus BTN, BTN revenues would grow with the right expansion candidates.  For leagues with fixed long term TV contracts, its a case of dividing the contractual revenues by a larger number of schools, say 14 instead of 12, so the addition of schools is dilutive to per school revenues until the TV contract could be renegotiated.  For the Big 10, this would not be the case since BTN revenues would grow in the new market(s), and be divided by the increased number of schools.  Now would this result in an INCREASE in revenue per school?  Unlikely unless you get schools which increase the BTN footprint in a big enough market (think possibly Rutgers or Syracuse in NY) or nationally (think ND).  However this does make the case that the Big 10 is more financially able to consider expansions then conferences locked into long term TV contracts.

Now would the Big 10 expand for some marginal candidates?  I highly doubt it.  The last 3 expansion moves that the Big 10 has made have arguably been first tier national program traditional football powers only: Penn State, ND offer, Nebraska.  I for one hope the Big 10 sticks to programs of this caliber.  It is always interesting to consider the possibilities however.

We need to realign Big 10 around Crew!

Ok, back on topic...

A few more arguments why Big 10 expansion.

Re: "A 16 team conference is not a conference it is an association of 2 conferences with a scheduling agreement" - well you could say that ship has sailed already when the Big 10 went to 12 and the 2 divisions.  Especially when you consider where we ended up, in a division (conference to some) away from our rivals such as: Minnesotta, Iowa and Nebraska - and with the "eastern schools".  I understand there is the Minny protected rival game and that we might play the others every x years, but you could certainly make the argument that this "association" change has already happened, especially for us given where we were placed.

One a bit more fanciful and I would guess unrealistic at the current time ... imagine four 16 team mega-conferences - 64 teams - all the top AQ teams - each conference with a championship game, and a series of games producing a winner, a ... wait for it ... MNC from this group.  (Someone - maybe Frank the tank?? posited this much earlier.)  Clearly a bit unrealistic given the concerns about the current BCS/AQ structure and the political noise this would generate would likely be not survivable in the current environment.  Also this would be a major reshuffle of the bowl system and not clear what the financial impact would be on the various constituents to that.

Maybe you could make an argument about increasing the Big 10's brand, or market share, or similar by expanding.  Or just keeping up with the Joneses.  (The counterpoint being that this expansion would come at the cost of dilution.)

As far as I can tell these are the "arguments"...