Would you miss the Huskers?
So, OU President David Boren thinks the Big 12 should look to growing up to, well, 12. The article at the worldwide leader indicates one of the options for growth might be taking Nebraska back, in addition to the usual speculation of Cincy, BYU, and others.
I think our obvious vote on this board would be to give them Maryland and Rutgers. Or do we hand over all 4 of our recent additions?
after we at least even the series with them in football. .. .
And Rutgers...
Oh, come on. Football isn't EVERYTHING. If terrorists nuked New Brunswick, it probably wouldn't even make the front page of most newspapers. We can mock Rutgers for being Rutgers. Name one substantial thing about that school and I will be impressed. It's a damn embarassment that the Big Ten has associated itself with that shell of a supposed academic institution.
Lol I know Rutgers gets a hard time b/c it's the safety school of every east coast kid in NJ NY and PA along with Penn State and Pitt, but come on... Rutgers is still a better school than a lot of Big10 schools like Iowa, MSU, Nebraska, Indiana etc...
New Brunswick is in one of the most densely populated areas in the country and an hour from NYC (close enough for residual radiation to make a huge impact)...New Brunswick would be one of the most high-impact areas if it was hit by a nuke.
And Rutgers is just a regular state school, on par with Sparty, OSU (maybe not in graduate programs), Minny
And basketball.
We wouldn't play them that often anyway, if they do leave, the West Division would only weaken even more and Delaney would need to address the lack of balance of power.. As it is now, we have a lack of balance even with Neb., can you imagine if they leave, it would be even more of a joke.
Either we would have to kick some school out or invite another school that can compete year in and year out, who is out there to be able to do that?
The whole thing is a cluster fuck anymore.
That is the real danger for us as Michigan fans if Nebraska leaves (and I don't think that scenario is as farfetched as some believe). It creates a severe imbalance in the Big Ten that may jepordize the B1G East.
The B1G East has worked its way into the status as one of the glamor divisions in all of CFB. And it will only get better with the reemergence of Michigan and Penn State on the national scene.
It is a nightmare scenario for us if we get realigned to something like the Leaders and Legends disaster again.
If it were to happen, the most obvious candidate to get shipped out for balance would be MSU. This is something they wanted in the first place, so let them have it.
But we are all better off not finding out. If Nebraska is still not on schedule to receive a full share of revenue, the B1G office needs to accelerate that schedule and give it to them immediately. Invest some of that orgy of cash in a pair of golden handcuffs for Nebraska. We don't want them leaving.
I wouldn't mind seeing MSU in the opposite division, we usually play them in the middle of the season so it would be a few weeks before a potential rematch in the B1G CG.
I think Nebraska wil start to like being in the B1G way more now due to them being in a weaker division on paper, that will probably be true in most years, This way they will think they have a good chance of being the West Div. representative most years with only Wisc and a sometimes Iowa or whomever might be decent in a particular year.
I think the Big Ten West is an underrated division from a fan interest stand point.
The rivalries are great and intense . . . the traditional Triumvirate of Hate - Wisc, Iowa, Minny - plus Nebraska now thrown in there. NW is now on solid footing and is actually building something of a fan base in the Chicago area. If Illinois can get a pulse like it had in the '80s, the West division could become very competitive.
They will likely still struggle against the B1G East in the Championship game, but that does not discredit the entire division. The SEC East has not won the SEC Championship for years and nobody is talking about reorganizing the SEC.
I want the west div rep to have to earn it and not be a cakewalk.
Seeing as how they are the only school in the West that has been good for more than 30% of their existence, yes I would miss them. Their fans are beautiful people, their stadium is awesome, and they are a college football blue blood - we have 4 of those in the B1G, let's not lose any and replace them with more Rutgers' and Maryland's. I know my opinion won't be a popular one, but I have a really hard time rooting against Nebraska when we aren't palying them and really want them to stay in the conference. It's a nothing but a positive.
I do love me some realignment/Blue Bloods discussion though.
I can get down with that. I would put Tennessee on that borderline list too, but I am biased. I can make a good argument for it though.
I also enjoy these talks. I would love to see 4 regional conferences (Midwest, East, South, West) with equal number of teams each. These conferences have 4 team playoffs and then those winners make up the national championship playoffs. Who would ever argue with the champion of that system? You could even keep 20ish bowl games and make sponsors team up, for the teams who miss out on their conference playoffs. Just a wild dream of a football fanatic I guess.
Minnesota has actually been good for about 50% of it's existence. It's just that they haven't been good in over 60 years. But from 1890-1950 or so they were good and were one of the football blue bloods for much of that time. Of course that ended before most of us were born.
So was University of Chicago... I still wish they kept their program.
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North Carolina has about as much chance getting into the B1G as I have of banging Alex Morgan.
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Okay, Mizzou. Now we're talking. But with the shitstorm UNC now has with their academics, I wouldn't touch them with YOUR ten-foot pole.
If we're really throwing shit at the wall, let's send Texas to the SEC, Mizzou and Nebraska to the Big 12, and we foist Penn St on the ACC.
I don't get the logic for a 10 team conference. In a 12 team conference we lose a conference championship and a leg up for a spot in the College football tournament. Sorry, the days of Bo and woody are not coming back
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Texas is obviously an amazing sports school and would have been a great fit academically, but I'm not a fan of geographic outliers. Have you ever looked at a map of the Big XII schools? It looks downright bizarre to see West Virginia in the mix.
Any conference alignment that causes people to look at one school on the map and say, "What's the story behind that?" is usually a bad idea.
I'd like to see Missouri and West Virginia, personally, if we are going to expand again. West Virginia-Pitt would be cool too. Allow that rivalry to become an annual staple again and gives me an excuse to go to Pittsburgh.
I don't think WVU passes muster on the academic side of things--unless they someday made a massive commitment there, I doubt they'll ever be considered.
Believe it or not, WVU's poor academic standing is also the reason why they weren't seriously considered by the SEC.
+1
Maybe their "less than zero percent chance" is bigger than my "less than zero percent chance".
Unless something drastic happened, I am almost sure that Nebraska would not want to leave as at the end of the day their take for being part of the B1G is much more than it was being part of the Big 12 (less 2), even at their current league revenue sharing.
And any extra inducement money would need to get the approval of Texas, and they think they are a league of their own, and would never agree.
Moving to fourteen bothers me more than anything Maryland-specific. We added a historic powerhouse to finally get twelve, which gave us the championship and (what should have been) a good divisional setup, which was perfect.
Maryland + Rutgers was a bad deal. Truthfully anything that was possible would have been a bad deal. Maybe Texas and ND or something, but that's obviously never happening.
I definitely understand your basketball/non-rev point of view, but I don't think the conference was lacking enough that Maryland was worth it from that position either.
2-division conferences work best wtih member counts that are multiples of 4, especially if you want to play everyone in your division. Those last two didn't really add much geography-wise or viewership-wise. Football is the primary thing that moves the needle, with basketball second.
The ESPN article puts too much credence in the changes at Texas meaning anything. I still see Longhorn Network on my cable; Texas is still Texas, so I don't see Nebraska wanting to go back.
If I were to bet, I'd go with BYU and North Dakota State as having the best chances.
If we had added Missouri and Pittsburgh, I think that would have been a good deal.
We should have added Pitt back when we brought Penn State in and solved the whole issue then.
Maryland was such an odd situation. Other than a handful of administrators, nobody at Maryland wanted to join the Big Ten, and nobody in the Big Ten wanted Maryland to join.
It is the ultimate shotgun wedding. Now we are stuck with each other.
But Maryland will hold its own. They had a pretty good year for their first year in the Big Ten . . they baet Penn State at Penn State which is priority #1 for them, they beat us, they were strong in basketball and look to be a favorite this coming year.
Unlike Nebraska, they got more cash which they desperately needed, and their sports programs benefited or maintained their prior status.
It's because their football program doesn't have a lot of tradition behind it and football is the engine that drives college athletics. They're also located in a part of the country where college football is not quite the pastime it is in the Midwest and the South. And that's just one of many reasons why it's culturally awkward to bring an east coast school into a traditionally Midwestern league (which goes double for Rutgers).
Pitt would have been a much better addition, especially since they're firmly within the existing footprint, they already have a traditional rival in the conference, and there is some semblance of tradition around their football program. But they won't be considered because they wouldn't bring any new subscribers to the Big Ten Tetwork. The fact that that's the main criteria is unfortunate, since BTN was created to serve the conference, not vice-versa. The tail is wagging the dog.
They need 12 to get that lucrative conference title game back and be on the same competitive footing with everyone else, and their current options are saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.
They'd fall over themselves to get Nebraska back instead of having to pick a 2nd team from the BYU, Cincy, Memphis, UCF, USF, Houston, SMU, Boise? who cares Boise! platter of pain.
It's maybe not that great from a football perspective but the basketball schools in the conference would love to have them and it gives West Virginia a natural rivalry. (And especially so if it got done while Huggins was still there.)
They would paper over any dust ups and take Nebraska back in a minute.
As a fan of college football, I wish Nebraska was still playing Oklahoma every year because it was a great rivalry people from all over the nation could enjoy. I don't dislike them, they're perfectly fine in the Big 10. But I don't think they'll ever fit in to me. I'll always see their game on a schedule and go OH MAN THAT'S A GREAT OOC MATCH-EM-UP THERE.
So if they went back to the Big 12 (that seems like insanely unlikely speculation though) I'd be happy to see it.
They are good for the Big Ten. But I'm not sure the Big Ten is good for them.
They lost their link to their TX recruiting grounds and can't make it up just on the Ohio scraps that Pelini brought. They have no natural recruitng area and don't have enough recent glamour to make it up nationally. They've lost their way a little bit in football, and football rules all in Nebraska.
They did this for the money . . . and not much else. They would never have done it if the Big 12 had equal revenue sharing and they did not have to live in the shadow of TX.
I'm sure a lot of Nebraska fans would like to go back to the Big 12 if it could be arranged.
I would hate to see them go . . . they make the Big Ten West interesting. But I can understand if their fans and alumni, who don't get to directly benefit from the cash, would like to see a return to the Big 12.
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I don't discount that. In my heart of hearts I believe that was indeed true.
But if you've cleaned that up and you need to compete straight up, you want a fertile recruiting area like TX to do it from.
Schools like Baylor are getting the recruits that used to go to Nebraska, and it has to frustrate the hell out of Nebraska fans.
Recruiting the state of Texas is much easier for Nebraska when you can tell recruits they'll probably be playing in the state of Texas 2-3 times a year when they were in the Big 12.
When Nebraska was truly in its glory days it was recruiting SoCal ...LA metro and other areas for talent and then overloading the roster with cornfed Nebraska boys to play the line. They would carry every kid that wanted to "be on the team" in order to keep the kids local. Bill Callahan did to NU what Rich Rod did in A2 and Dr. Tom got sick of Texas bullying them around when it came to recruiting classes and admissions. Sure the B12 would want the NU revenue again but unless Texas stops calling the shots, no way.
Buggeaters...