Big Ten Serious on Expansion to 12th Team

Without Kelly, they could slip right back into mediocrity

Cincinnati isn’t even in the conversation. I mean, not even remotely. There’s probably about 20 or so schools that the Big Ten would accept for membership before even considering the Bearcats. Outside of geography (which is kind of a plus/minus since the goal would be to expand markets and SW Ohio is pretty well covered by the Big Ten), in what way is Cinci a good choice? To wit:

1. The academics are lousy (compared to Big Ten schools)
2. It’s a regional/commuter school, not a large flagship research institution
3. It doesn’t bring in a new market. Not only does this fail to increase exposure, but it fails to put the BTN into any additional homes, which is a major source of conference revenue.
4. It doesn’t bring in additional revenue. Cinci would be a net siphon of conference shared revenue.
5. It has a small fan base
6. There is no football history there. Basketball is decent, but not so good as to make them a marquee name. Overall athletics is weak (only 14 varsity sports).

There are 8 Big East football school. Six of them would be better choices for Big Ten expansion than Cinci (USF is the odd one out, but that’s more due to geography than anything else). I honestly don’t have any idea why people would mention them beyond their football success this year, which is all fine and good but not the kind of crap that you base huge long term decisions on like conference affiliation.

I think Pitt has virtually no chance at Big Ten invite, but they are basically a superior choice to Cinci in every aspect.

we could get Nebraska. I know they would never leave the Nintendo 12, but they offer so much tradition and good hard nose football. Plus we could beat them up every year as revenge.

adding Mizzou would enable by BCS “zOMG conferences of doom” scenario:

-mizzou to the big ten

-tcu takes mizzou’s spot in the B12

-boise state and byu to the pac 10 (and utah if they would boot washington state)

-unleash the awesome

I feel like a LOT of people completely forget these two important facts whenever this discussion takes place.

I think the ideal non-ND school is Maryland actually if you want to aim high. They are basically a combo of the best aspects of Syracuse and Rutgers (except they aren’t as good in hoops as Cuse, but the Terps aren’t bad either) — large flagship public school, heathy sized fan base, actual sporting tradition (and good in a lot of non revenue sports FWIW like soccer and field hockey), contiguous state. You lose NY/NJ but gain DC/Baltimore — and a much more solid presence in DC/Baltimore than either Rutgers or Cuse has in NYC.

Yeah, you’d have to pry them away from the ACC where they are founding members, but if the money and exposure is right…… Let’s just put it this way — of their 12 football games this season, Maryland had seven on ESPN360 only (no TV) and another three on ESPNU. Put their team in the Big Ten and they’d gain a bunch of ESPN/ESPN2 (if not ABC) broadcasts plus at least the tertiary games would end up on the BTN, not just relegated to online only.

I think this is false, only on its surface. As it stands now, how many people in western PA are watching the BTN? Only PSU fans I’d guess.

Doesn’t matter too much. The real money is from the subscription fees and they way to increase those fee revenue is to be in more homes. The BTN is already on basic cable in most of Western PA, so adding Pitt won’t put the channel into many homes that it’s not already in. But add (say) Rutgers and now a bunch of homes in NJ who only get the BTN on a sports tier will ster getting it on basic cable or digital cable, which is a lot of extra revenue for the conference even if not a single extra person actually watches the BTN.

Seriously, how much better would it be to end the season with a "showdown" with Pitt than with Mich St.?

Nice for PSU, I guess (though I think an end of the year game with Rutgers or Maryland or Syracuse is pretty much the exact same thing as a game with Pitt). But how does the Big Ten as a whole benefit? This expansion isn’t about what is good for PSU only.

It doesnt hurt the basketball conference any since Pitt is a basketball school and all., but they would fit just fine with the B11 (again…assuming ND is off the table).

Maryland and Syracuse as just as much if not more basketball schools as Pitt — unless you don’t consider winning a national championship recently making a school “a basketball school”.

I really don’t see Pitt. They are a great fit in virtually every respect except the most important of money. Put Pitt, with everything else about the school the same but in New York state and they’d be in easy. But they are in Western PA, an area already covered by the Big Ten.

If they wanted to leave the Big East, the ACC was a much better fit for them than the Big Ten. And they turned the ACC down.

No they didn’t. They were very eager to jump to the ACC, but the ACC ended up not inviting them. The ACC as a whole wanted to invite Syracuse, BC and Miami(Fl) but UVa (encouraged by the governor of Virginia) demanded they invite Va Tech and the UVa vote was critical to get it done. So, Miami(FL) and Va Tech were in and it came down to Syracuse versus BC and the ACC decided they’d rather take the team in a major metro area.

Syracuse never rejected ACC membership. And, in fact, they were the only one of the 5 Big East football schools left behind who did not participate in the lawsuit against the ACC (because they wanted to stay friendly with the conference in the event of a future invite).

Everybody thinks that every school in the Big East is dying to get out of it, but a lot of it’s member schools, I’m thinking of Pitt, UConn and Syracuse specifically, are actually quite well served by it.

I don’t think any school is “dying” to leave the Big East — it’s a perfectly fine conference. But any of the football schools there would be better served by joining one of the other BCS conferences than staying in the Big East in terms of revenue and exposure (and perception of football quality FWIW). It also doesn’t help that the Big East is an odd hybrid conference with football and non-football schools that doesn’t always have the interest of the football schools at heart (leadership has tended to be dominated by basketball oriented folks who are more aligned with the Catholic schools).

The other issue is that even if the Big East is fine as is, it would become weaker if it loses another of the major schools. So, if you are Cuse or Pitt or Rutgers, etc. and the opportunity to join the Big Ten comes up, you take it because if you don’t then likely some other Big East school will and leave the conference worse off for it.