Big Ten Expansion So Far
Seems like yesterday I was writing my thoughts and such on here, but in reality, I haven’t written anything for about a month now. So- I thought that I should write something here for the month of May. Yes, I know I was going to review both Final Fantasy XIII and God of War III, but I haven’t touched FFXIII for about a month now and I’ve yet to dive into GOW 3. I’ll just say that I will review these games whenever I get to them and finish them.
Anywho, onwards to the main topic of this post… Big Ten Expansion! Yes, this topic has been kind of overrated now, especially after Delany has announced that the conference will stick to its 12-18 month timetable. However, in a meeting with the AD’s last week, he stated the main driver of expansion was indeed to get more viewership for the Big Ten Network; however, saying that they’re looking towards more of the southern population centers of the country.
You know what that means… Texas, as well as Missouri.
Even though Texas AD DeLoss Dodds said that he’s happy with the Big XII, he does not have the final say. Although, there have been debates that if something happens to the Big XII, they will likely join another conference or become independent in football and have the rest of their sports in another conference, much like Notre Dame. If Texas decides to go to another conference after this inevitable conference realignment, it probably would want to go with Big Ten.
Why?
The SEC doesn’t offer much for Texas, along with some academic issues. Fans of Texas made some posts on Frank the Tank’s blog stating that Texas wouldn’t be good match in the SEC and wouldn’t want to see that come to fruition. The Pac-10 was the school’s first choice of going to before the creation of the Big XII, but Stanford opposed of them joining the conference. The Big Ten was Texas’ second choice of joining, but this was when Penn State joined and kindly said that they weren’t interested on adding another team to the Big Ten that time.
Nowadays, maybe the Big Ten might be considering Texas’ request 20 years later, in addition to possibly adding Mizzou and Nebraska as well. Most of these three schools are in the AAU, which is an important key in joining the Big Ten, until Notre Dame decides to join which is not an AAU member. Although Nebraska is really not in the southern area and does not have a big market for the BTN, it surely is a national household name and has one of the largest fan-bases out there.
Big Ten is looking more south, according to Delany, which includes such schools such as Texas, Mizzou, Texas A&M, Alabama, LSU, Arkansas, Florida, Kansas, Maryland, Georgia Tech, Duke, Arizona, North Carolina, Vanderbilt, Tulane, Rice, USC, California, and Virginia. Any of these southern schools could be logical targets of the Big Ten, with 3 of them non-AAU members (Alabama, LSU and Arkansas). Some of these listed schools could be ideal for the Big Ten, and be a benefit for the conference and the school, since they’ll be receiving more bucks in the Big Ten than the conference they’re associated right now.
Out of these listed teams I’d like to see in the Big Ten besides Nebraska is Texas, Mizzou, Texas A&M, and Kansas. It’d be nice to see Florida in the Big Ten in order to be more exposed in the Sunshine State than when the Big Ten schools play there for bowl games. It’d give the conference a bigger presence in recruitment than it currently does, and probably a better chance not only going to the Rose Bowl, but going to the Orange Bowl as well. But I know Florida to the Big Ten will likely never happen if only something very strange happened to the SEC.
The same can go with Texas. Whenever the Cotton Bowl becomes the newest BCS game (which hopes to join around 2015), that could replace the Orange Bowl as the Big Ten’s secondary BCS game and plus would save on travel costs, especially Texas. Also, Texas would become a bigger recruitment pipeline to the Big Ten than it does now. I’m still keeping my hope up for Texas.
We likely won’t hear anything officially on what the conference will do months from now or not too far into the future.
