Nate Silver on B1G expansion

NO POLITICS

behind the obvious big 3 targets that made some semblance of sense (Texas, OK, ND) and it looks like they would have been much better adds based on actual fans.  But I guess all that we care about now is cable contracts...sigh...

M had a home-only series with MD in the late-eighties, early nineties ('85, '89, and '90). M won by 20 or more points each time. In two of those seasons MD wasn't bad. In '85 they finished 9-3, beating 'Cuse in the Cherry Bowl at the Silverdome. In '90 they went 6-5-1 and beat LA Tech in the Independence Bowl.

The College Football Data Warehouse does not show that M has ever met Rutgers in football, as curious as that seems (to me, anyway).Given the long football history of both schools, sometime back in the day (1890, 1905, whatever) these two should have played each other. Rutgers does own a 3-2 all-time advantage over Little Brother, the two having met last in 2004 at New Brunswick. And Rutgers has played Penn St many times, but is on the short end of a 2-22 all-time record.

So M and MD do share a little --- very little --- football history, but M shares none with Rutgers.  

what the true reasoning seems to boil down to is getting more BTN subscribers in these states/regions...which when you think about it is kind of insane and over the edge of sanity. We're basically manipulating a 100 year old conference so we can have a channel be on more people's TV's which will ultimately line someone's pockets with money.

And you and I (Joe Schmo Fan) are rewarded with getting to see Rutgers play Indiana every year while you see Michigan play Penn State and Wisconsin never.

Rutgers I'm okay with, but Missouri, Pitt, and Syracuse were all much, much better options than Maryland, IMHO. Their fan bases are easliy double Marylands, and they have a much richer tradition of major athletics, and several rivalry games with current Big 14 schools.

AAU membership used to be a black and white symbol of excellence, too, but in recent years the line is pretty grey. Several non-member schools out perform various member schools by leaps and bounds in academics, research, and grants, but don't technically have the exact levels of specific diversity to meet the all around requirements, so they back out, like Syracuse did. Or Nebraska's medical school. It's excellent, butit's off campus, so they're no longer members. 

As others have noted, this isn't about "football" as much as it is getting BTN on the regular cable networks.  I pay extra for BTN in NY, but if it becomes big enough that ~$16M people (I'm guessing who actually pay for cable) have it included as part of their cable package, we talking about untold wealth and prominence flowing to the Big 10.  And that's the whole reason these conferences exist; to promote their sports and provide for others.  Yes, it dilutes the product in certain sports, but it also helps schools keep non-revenue sports like track and wrestling alive, which definitely isn't a bad thing.  And a sport like hockey, which is pretty big in NE/NY area, would also benefit from being available on cable programs.

These are all imperfect arguments, but I've never understood Brian's (and by extension a subset of the Big 10 fanbase's) fear of growth.  If you still think of college athletics as some uncorrupted bastion of gladitorial combat, then by all means rail against what is happening, but I'm not sure what reality you live in.  But this isn't an example of "MBA suits" ruining something that was previously pristine; it's a bunch of people realizing that having a foothold now means you protect your brand from becoming irrelevant.  We make fun of the BE and ACC for becoming football after-thoughts, but at one point those programs were held up as the pinnacle of sport. They struggled, and now are falling apart.  The same appears to be happening to the Big 12, which is kind of sad given their history.  The Big 10 is protecting its legacy, in a sense, but keeping the money flowing and the brand out there, and even if that means some of your memories and visions of the conference are "tainted", I'd rather that than totally being forgotten.