More than just football rights, no? I would say the Pac is dominant in everything but football and basketball. You would think baseball and potentially some non-revenue sports would be worth having on TV in a world where the incremental cost of additional channels is negligible.
Agreed that ND and KU is a best case. But don’t know if ND is an option or not. It would have been dumb of them to lock themselves to the acc but maybe they just hate the B1G.
The Pac12 alliance sounds cool and is better than adding Pittsburgh or Iowa St to me. But have no idea how that looks from a practical stand point.
I think I’d like adding Iowa State. Their rivalry with Iowa being an in-conference thing would be cool.
I’d take a lot of the other Big 12 scraps if they could get them. Baylor, Texas Tech, Kansas State, Oklahoma State would all be fun additions for various reasons with Kansas.
LOL, well done Maryland
Is there a world where all the other conferences stay put? Does adding ISU and KU actually benefit the B1G? Maybe the other conferences stay put, the Big 12 adds Houstan and Memphis and moves out of the P5 in football but remains a P6 basketball conference
Id rather that than add two B12 programs
The issue would be that being in a power football conference is probably quite important to many of the schools based on how much more revenue even bad football schools generate than the other sports. For example, Kansas football, arguably the most inept P5 program, generated $38 million in revenue compared to $19 million for basketball, a full blown blue blood, in the last real year (2018/19).
not just football, football should have been ran separated a long time ago
I’d look at Colorado. Iowa State does nothing for the Big Ten. Kansas wouldn’t be a horrible addition, but I’d pass on the rest of the Big 12.
Re: the Pac-12, sounds like we’re nearly all in agreement that many of those schools are preferable to ones that are closer to the B1G footprint, but the Pac-12 really does struggle w/ revenue even net of the dumb things they’ve done re: TV:
Wish Rob would do more citations here but I feel pretty confident he knows of which he speaks. There’s a handful of schools that aren’t Texas & OU and aren’t already in the B1G/SEC and those are going to get priority.
TBH I’m not sure that list goes deeper than Notre Dame, North Carolina, and Clemson? USC & UCLA are the 2 west coast schools that really draw eyeballs AFAIK. Hard to make that work geographically.
Any pac 12 b1g conference would likely mean the pac 12 leaving schools like oregon state and wsu behind. If that happens, i think theres enough value through packaging the tv deals and playing 10-12 cinfernce games against one another +a championship week to make crazy money. Theres also a ton of value in the b1g getting more tied into states that are actually growing imo.
IMO geography is out the window if the top priority in this arms race is maintaining competitive balance with the new Super SEC.
Geography/migration will flip back toward the north in our lifetimes as well due to climate change.
We are keeping Houstan, but they can have Houston if they want.
I knew this would happen eventually. I’ve typed Houstan so much recently that Houston is the weird one in my brain
Can’t wait to see the Hou-stans in the Maize Rage.
Definitely think it’s a good point that from a long term financial perspective the B1G should be trying to get into the areas where the Sun Belt is both growing and reasonably wealthy, though there really aren’t a lot of good fits. North Carolina and Virginia are prob the big ones?
Not sure what I think of the point re: removing geographical barriers. Don’t really even know what the operating constraint is? The way it works I think is that it’s pretty much just that whatever new TV deal is reached with a prospective school needs to leave the current members better off? Do USC and UCLA really draw big TV numbers for football? I’m kind of skeptical.
I think that’s what makes Texas & OU such a coup for the SEC. They’re obvious huge $$ draws. ND is the only player at that level left on the board.
Caveat here: I didn’t want any of this to happen and if everything went back to where things were in 1993 that would be great.
I’ve heard no one can really leave the ACC for 15 years or so
It would be unfortunate if the B1G ended up with a poo platter to reach 16 teams. Kansas does nothing for me the B1G in basketball is still a top 1/2 conference in the sport. You can’t really upgrade things that much. Football?? Meanwhile there will be a conference if the ACC breaks up that will get Clemson for football, (not bad in basketball). The Big Ten is going to come out of this on the bad end because they already have 14 teams.
Well with the SEC already at 16 there won’t be any more room unless conferences go to 20 teams. But Kansas absolutely helps basketball a lot regardless of already having strength there. The SEC is already the top football conference and just added two elite programs