Unverified Voracity Goes Ahead And Panics

I'm with Beilein. I would like to see more 'play in' games, and instead of involving all mid majors, get some of the BCS league schools involved.

If each bracket had, say two play in games among the group of final cuts and final invites, with the winners, say, advancing to the 8/9 games, then maybe thats not a bad idea. For this year, how about play in games with L'Ville vs VCU and St. MAry's vs USF with the winners playing each other in an 8/9 game three days later.

Or somehow doing a bracket buster type of an event between some of the final at large candidates.

The problem is there are so many more teams now than the last time the tournament expanded. I'd be in favor of it, if it guaranteed more Colonial teams, for exmaple. There are 6 teams in that league that can win games in the tourney this year. Except only one will get in. These leagues werent around or, if they were, just a shadow of what they are now the last time the field expanded. Something needs to be done to get them in the field. But, I think major expansion would, as outlined in the post, just allow for 3/4 of the bCS leagues to make the field and that is boring and not worth it.

But, some expansion has to happen. I'm old enough to recall being thrilled by the 1979, 1982 and 1983 tournaments all of which didnt have the magical 64-team bracket. There are a lot more teams to consider now and some reform is in order to allow leagues like the CAA, MWC and Horizon a chance at at large bids.

Also: I live in Ohio. Its not bad. Where would Michigan football be without it? Nowhere, that's where. Hardly the worst state ever in my book. I still think its a funny shirt, however.

Until Brian gives back the "tWorst State Ever"

CHANGE!!!!!!!!!!!

I for one would totally accept the University of Texas playing in the BigTen and the extreme RPI boost made available in all of our sports, particularly baseball.

As a native Texan, to hell with playing Oklahoma, get me more money and give less to OU.

thing is, sooner or later Fred Hyperbole Jackson is going to hit the nail on the head and we're going to have Zeus in our backfield.

Mark Ingram, 3-star, No. 58 RB from Flint, MI

Fitzgerald Toussaint, 3-star, No. 49 RB from Youngstown, OH

Ergo bibamus, Mr. Toussaint is on a collision course for Heisman hardware!

I was in Austin a couple weeks ago and noticed some official looking Wisconsin and Michigan polo wearing types hanging out in the airport. Could be a coincidence though...

Is it safe to say he is our Don King of RB hype?

Brian:
What is the point of this new rule about head coaches in waiting?

All I can think of is, if you're a guy like JoePa is or Bobby Bowden apparently was in his last few years, basically an organizing figurehead who farms out most everything in the realm of Xs and Os and dealing with the kids, you're not really the head coach in a traditional sense.

Now what if you're one of those guys and you also have a publically designated coach in waiting on the staff, who may actually be running the show? Now you've got the figurehead head coach who is subject to the more restrictive rules, and you've got an assistant who is the de facto head coach, who can go into living rooms as much as any other assistant.

Seems to me like the new rule closes a loophole which, though probably not a big deal, is there nonetheless.

I think the idea of two Big 10 Divisions that each contain two of the what would be the Big 4 (Michigan, OSU, Penn State, & Texas) is pretty awesome. That's a whole lot of tradition in one conference. Austin would also be a ridiculously fun road trip for Michigan fans.

Chris Perry? Meh.

Give me a Biakabutuka clone. "But faster"

And then UofM's piped in music can consist of World Destruction
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93HWraYnSFc

(P)utting the Big Ten Network on Texas channels means even the crew teams can fly first class. It would be ridiculous. Jim Delany would buy a monocle.

And put his pinky to his lips.

Glad to hear the Fred Jackson "Player X possibly has Unicorn blood" hype machine is back in gear.

I thought Missouri was interested in joining the BigTen because Missouri was not getting an even split with schools like Texas. Now you tell me Texas is interested in joining the BigTen?
Hmmmmmmm, either,
A) an equal share of the BigTen+Texas pot is better than an oversized slice of the BigXII pot, or
B) the BigTen is considered non-equal revenue shares.

Since B) goes against everything for I've understood the Big Ten to stand for, these the last 40 years; I must conclude there's a huge pile of money to be equally divided in a BigTen+Texas+TexasA&M+... scenario.

Logic forces me to question the veracity of my premise regarding Missouri's interest in joining the BigTen.

Let's just do the simple math...

If every Texas cable subscriber now got BTN (assuming they didn't before):

88% * 25 Million * $1.10 * 12 months = $290M / year increased revenue

I think that would satisfy the other 11 members of the conference, no? Let's say that B10 schools net 1/3 of that after expenses and double counting of sat TV subscribers that alreay have BTN, you're looking at a near DOUBLING of the avg per BT team take from BTN revenue sources (SportsBuisnessJournal notes that in the News Corp filing, the BT schools would receive an average of $112M annually). Adding Texas would add almost $100/year to that number per the math above.

So for an average school if you use my numbers:
Pre -Texas: $112/11 schools = $10.2M
Post-Texas: [($290M / 3) + $112] / 12 = $17.4M

I think most Big Ten schools would like a $7M jump in revenues EVERY YEAR. And that's not counting the additional value the ABC/ESPN contract would have with Texas.

Add to that, in football specifically, the winner of the New Big Ten would now be considered equally with the SEC champ (especially since the Big XII would take a big hit and a non-galaxy smashing power USC makes the Pac-10 not attractive), and you likely have the conference champ an almost lock to the nat'l title game and a second BCS bowl bid every year.

Academically, UT faculty would turn into zombies after joining the CIC (mmmmm... large endowment research brains.... mmmmm).

THe more I think about this, as long as Texas can swallow some pride entering the Big Ten, this is not just a win-win, but a blowout-blowout for BOTH sides.

- 88% is approximate number of households that have either cable or sat TV, source: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/08/cable_satellite.html

- 25 Million: approximate population of Texas (2008 census bureau numbers)

- $1.10 monthly for BTN subscription fee (source: www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/article/111214)

I can't speak to the athletic sides of things, but I work in medical research for Michigan and we have a few joint projects that involve Texas. A lot of the Texas faculty and staff have expressed jealously over the CIC (it's academic prestige, ability to get grants, etc, etc). They'd pretty much kill to get in on this.

It all depends on how this plays out. If the Texas legislature can be placated on the athletic issues via promises to play a lot of Texas (state of) teams for out of conference play and bribed with visions of even more massive research grants coming in via CIC membership, they might jump ship. It all depends if the Texas adminstration focuses on sports or sweet, sweet research dollars.

The other point regarding how much leverage Texas has on the school. At Michigan we get conservative state congresscritters bitching over stem cell research, the fact we give same sex benefits and various other policies at the U. They threaten to cut our funding and the response typically is: "Oooooh cut our funding you say? We're so scared, we're sorry, please don't hurt us. No wait, we're not, we'll just go to the CDC and get another semitruck full of money. Go fuck yourself Senator."

Might be the biggest hype machine coach in all of college football. Every year you think we have a running back corps of future Heisman winners.

and I would be willing to guarantee it never happens. I'd kill to catch a Michigan game down here, but the state is so Tex-o-centric and full of themselves, they would never "stoop" to joining a midwest conference (down here, everything north of Oklahoma is Canada). There are still bumper stickers (in the year 2010) pulling for Texas to secede from the United States. Don't get me wrong, I would be thrilled, and as to the Big Ten Network's increased viewership, I pay extra to get it already, so subtract me from the "new viewers" numbers.

Living in Texas for the last two years, I have learned one interesting fact. Football is more important than anything, especially in the education system down here.

Football is life, the rest is just details. However, they don't care about anything that is not Texas. A majority of people down here don't even the know the difference between MSU and Michigan. I have to explain it to most people, then stab my brain with a q-tip.

Plus due to the scheduling of the Big 12, Texas plays a maximum of 2 games outside the State. They wouldn't give up that inherent advantage. Plus they would go insane with some of the 11 AM start times locally.

Brian, although, Texas baseball is great. If the move benefited the football team, they wouldn't care if it sent the baseball team playing to division 3. Nothing registers here besides football.

I never realized Bo Ryan was 95% of the posts on most message boards across the globe. What an awesome collection of words with virtually no coherent meaning or consistent narrative.

I was pleasantly surprised that on College Basketball Game Day on ESPN last weekend, all the talking heads hated the idea of the expansion - Bilas, Digger Phelps, Hubert Davis. Now perhaps the corporate suits told them to criticize it to keep the bidding down to get the rights, but I am not that big of a conspiracy theorist. I think it is good for maintenance of the status quo that the public face of the world wide leader is against the expansion.