UConn to join Big Ten?
Im watching the Herd on ESPN and Colin Cowherd just said he has inside information that UConn is going to join the Big Ten. At a first glance, it seems like a good fit. The Big Ten would get some of the New York media and UConn has a solid football team, solid academics, there making big renovations to the campus, they have an above average basketball team and the top women's basketball team in the country. I think Uconn will be a good fit. Thoughts?
April 20th, 2010 at 12:50 PM ^
Not during football season.
As someone who currently resides in the New York market, adding UConn would increase the Big Ten's visibility in the area by a number only slightly larger than zero. Nobody pays any attention to UConn football here. This is a bogus rumor.
UConn is a pretty bad academic school to boot.
April 20th, 2010 at 12:59 PM ^
Not to mention that UConn would not have a single rival in the conference. (same goes for Nebraska or Kansas).
At least Pitt, SU, ND, Rutgers, and Missouri have rivalries with current conference members and other candidates.
Pitt w/ ND, SU, PSU
SU w/ PSU, Pitt, and an emerging one with ND
Missouri w/ Illinois
ND w/ pretty much everyone
Rutgers w/ SU and to a lesser extent Pitt, and could develop one with PSU
Those are the five. They're all AAU, they all have academics that fit, they all bring one thing or another financially to the conference. They all make sense (except RU in my opinion but I think they're in a group of five).
I'd prefer 12 teams as well, with ND the obvious choice. If not ND, then I'd be fine with either Pitt, Missouri, or Syracuse (probably in that order). If we went to 14, then any combination of the above would suffice. Sixteen teams just sounds like a nightmare to me. Of course, no matter what happens, football will still be football, and my main concern will continue to be the success of our program.
University endowments probably don't matter much when it comes to athletics, but if the university presidents are considering the academic side of the equation, they may look at endowments of the institutions supposedly in play, since size does matter when it comes to endowments at research institutions.
For the B10, the only university with an endowment under a billion is Iowa, which comes in at $935 million. Michigan and NW top the list at $6 b and $5.45 b, respectively.
ND: $4.8 b
Pitt: $1.88 b
Mizzou: $881 million
Syracuse: $674 million
Rutgers: $545 million
UConn: $254 million
FYI... take on UConn's candidacy from the SB Nation UConn blog:
Big Ten Expansion and UConn
Some of it sticks and becomes a thread.