After reading the article, it is not clear whether or not that doofus politician realizes that:
Northwestern is a college in the State of Illinois,
and golly,it happens to be in the Big Ten.....

They mean public schools. They really want another quality university to join the ranks of big boy football.

They're setting themselves up for failure if they think they can get into the Big Ten, the goal should be the MAC.

_________________
Fan of the Big 12 Conference, the Mountain West Conference and...

Looks like Mizzou is continuing to schedule Indiana instead. And, the B12 schools (incl. Kansas) refuse to schedule Mizzou further. Does Mizzou really care now? They hooked-up with the SEC. The past tense is correct.

But what about those other schools involving other conferences that got blackballed or discouraged from consideration by one or two schools of a given conference? Allegedly, BC worked against UConn being considered for the ACC. It's been reported WVU would have gotten an ACC invite if it were not for UNC and Duke opposition. However, everyone in the conference gets to vote on an application, and a Conference Commissioner and reasonable members should look for the 'good of the whole' and confront an institution expressing unfounded opposition based on greed alone or pettiness.

I see Maryland has a fb game with Syracuse this coming season. But Maryland cannot be that concerned that the ACC schools have declared they don't want to schedule them any more for anything. They've got the B10 now, and there other OOC options as needed.

Big Ten site release with announcement of a new league East Coast office opening in June at http://www.bigten.org/genrel/041014aad.html

As Mark Packer said on College Sports Radio, the Big Ten picked the only city which doesn't care about college sports.

Oh heck, they got the money to throw around for high dollar rent, plush offices, added staffing, and to wine and dine executives as well as other entertainment. Convenience and size counts and they may be right. The ACC and Swofford earlier also declared NYC (area) part of their domain of interest, so it shall be interesting as to what prevails. And, the new-BE, the AAC, A10, even the Ivy League and others, see NYC as important in their efforts for attraction.

The B1G expects, as the ACC has, it is going to enhance the conference with advertising, broadcasting and print media, student/athletic recruitment, and contracting with high profile venues such as MSG.

If the B1G is really so committed to obtain a formidable stronghold in the northeast corridor, including more around NYC, they should really consider adding UConn. While the region is certainly not obsessed with college football, winter sports in general do function well around there, and UConn basketball is a proven commodity.

But isn't the semi-declared intent of the B1G is to move down the mid-Atlantic into the south/southeast? I am not sure a NYC focus does much for that objective if such a purpose is truly real. As it stands now, further territorial in-roads related to the northeast seem more plausible than a southern route.

Agree though, what can be extracted from NYC have their limitations.

Article out of Cedar Rapids discussing how the Big Ten is increasing it's FB recruiting expenses in attempt to attract more FB talent at http://www.thegazette.com/subject/sport ... r-20140429

Now if they can just do something about the weather.

I don't want to think about how much money these schools are spending to go after kids who would probably be on the other end of a rejection letter for these competitive institutions if they didn't play football.

There gets to be a point where cart is so far in front of horse and the tail wags the dog right out of its hide. Sustaining college football revenue and presence is at that point.

Institutionally, this stuff will come back to hurt these schools. Even at the mighty Big Ten.

Washington Post blog article(previously posted in another thread)reporting that Big Ten/BE will start BB series in 2015-2016 at http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/co ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Couple of articles out of Big Ten country discussing that conference's ongoing "east coast gambit" at http://btn.com/2014/05/07/dienhart-big- ... -move-east and http://www.thegazette.com/subject/sport ... e-20140506" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Freaked -

That second article wasn't too bad.

The first one - OMG !!! I thought it was written by Delany's pyublicity agent, then I looked and IT WAS !
Written by a guy from the Big Ten Network ! Every factoid had a pro-B1G spin on it.
They had to take Maryland and Rutgers, because things were getting SCARY for the Big Ten... oh, boogity-boggity !!!
Scary how exactly ? The B1G schools were starting to reap enormous income from the BTN.....

Tranghese says the B1G never posed a threat to the Big East ? Are you kidding me ?
Of course the B1G didn't want the BB schools, but they sure wanted Notre Dame !
Syracuse, Pitt, and WVU were very wary of each other jumping to a power confernece and leaving their Big East mates in the lurch...

tute79, similar thoughts here on the B1G's publicity tour.

The thought remains, why not have expanded on who you are, rather than pursue new gambles on new regions? That mid-west forte of great lakes, plains, farm-belt and even rust-belt in a positive sense, has been their identity-- and did it need fixed beyond the desire for extending cable subscribers?

Along with the B1G haven taken Nebraska, and they moved on Missouri before the SEC absorbed them, and they accepted Pitt as a logical connector to Penn State, and they accepted Iowa State and then Kansas, that would have been a distinct, logical progression with a complete mid-west flavor for a 16 member conference. That is marketable. And marketing is about selling a clear product that the consumer identifies with. Being all over the place and diluting your roots in the process can show risks.

But the thrust is to go into new population regions to attract bigger and wider TV, generate greater media attention, find new recruitment grounds, and checkmate or jump out in front of other major conferences as they search for new additions and turf.

This endless and fruitless quest for Notre Dame, getting into a pissing contest with the SEC, trying to show the ACC whose boss, and hoping to dominate everything east of the Rockies, through the mid-west, into the DC/Baltimore and NYC metro areas, and down the Atlantic coast is like---declare it and they shall come. The ACC had been tooting about the northeast also, but the B1G has more brassy and shiny horns.

I agree, but a true Big Ten homer would talk out of both sides of their mouth and say that the Big Ten is an athletic conference, not an academic consortium, although the Big Ten has one of those, too. Maryland's their type of school academically and athletically, but not culturally. Nebraska's a fit culturally and athletically, but not academically. Rutgers is just a big state school in New Jersey with decent academics. Passing on the likes of Missouri and Pittsburgh, or even trying to "bury the hatchet" so many times with a Notre Dame who has a payer base that loves to play the victim card in something they themselves never experienced...it makes the Big Ten look dumb.

I said it in another thread: taking a non-AAU public school in UNL, doubling down in Maryland (UMD and JHU), and adding the deadbeat non-contributor of all non-contributors in Rutgers made this spin utterly untrackable. So much BS. One just hopes that maybe some institution that feels "cut out" because of these sliding standards uses their state political system to take the conference out behind the woodshed for a lesson.

I too, think that when the texahoma schools were talking to the PAC, the Big Ten should have invited Mizzou, Kansas, KSU, and Iowas State.
That would have forced the issue, and we would now have 4 major conferences, and I think that would be the final alignment going forward for the foreseeable future.
(The B1G and the PAC would have gobbled up the Big XII), leaving SEC and ACC to pick and choose from TCU, Baylor, WVU, Louisville, Cincy, UConn, Notre Dame.

The whole deal about the B1G holding up all their strategic moves to be jerked around by Notre Dame seemed ridiculous.
Delany is such a Macchiavellian rip-your-heart-out businessman, how could he go so long letting ND jerk him around.... MOVE ON !!!!
I think Notre dame must enjoy jerking the Big Ten around in some perverse way.

I think, though, you are making too much of this Johns Hopkins thing - they are a D-3 school and are ONLY a Lacrosse affiliate member.
Not sure how their contract reads but the B1G may have a provision to kick them out (not renew their affiliationn) after so many years,
if and when the B1G has 6 or more lacrosse-playing members within the B1G member schools.
(But I speculate on that....) I do think it might have made more sense for JHU to become a Lacrosse affiliate of the ACC.... way less travel !!!