Holy Crap: Big Ten Expansion For Serious
I got a couple requests in the inbox for a take on Big Ten expansion after Barry Alvarez made a comment the other day about the Big Ten adding that elusive twelfth team. On the assumption that Alvarez was just making an idle statement and expansion was a distant possibility at best, I was going to dig up the post I made two years ago detailing pros and cons of various candidate schools and leave it at that.
But it appears that Alvarez was not just idly speculating:
It has been 19 years since the Big Ten expanded to 11 teams, and it appears the conference is ready to seriously explore moving to an even dozen.
Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany was expected to release a statement later Tuesday to say the conference is ready to consider the addition of a 12th team.
That would be in about half an hour. It's time to update the above list, which I am in the process of doing right now.
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EAST: Pittsburgh, PSU, OSU, Michigan, MSU, NorthwesternThis division's champion is a media darling on par with the Big 12 South's or the SEC favorite. That increases the chance of the BIg Ten champ making the BCS championship game in years where there are more than two obvious choices -- better strength of schedule in the computers, better prejudices amongst the voters.
WEST: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, PurdueThis makes sense geographically. College football is about traditional, geographic rivalries. One of the reasons the ACC can't get any traction in football is their divisions make no sense geographically. In a misguided attempt to create parity, they have Florida State and Miami in separate divisions. Also North Carolina and North Carolina State. Georgia Tech and Clemson, also natural rivals, also separated. Maryland is separated from Virginia. It's just stupid, stupid, stupid.
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