BE expansion option #1 is taking an already affiliated BCS team (BC, PSU, ND, or Maryland) - obviously and since none of them are joining.....

BE expansion #2 is the 'next' meaning who is the next 'UL' type of school or who will not decrease their revenue. Schools in that catagory are UCF, ECU, and Memphis. Each has been talked about ad naseum on this board.

I think that they BE will take a conservative approach will wait it out - at least until say 2011-2012 and visit the exansion idea again and see who is available.

All good points, Panthersc97. Well said. :)

Right now Rutgers travel to the Midwest is limited because they don't play home & home in basketball nor do they play every team every year. With only USF & 2 Ohio Valley teams outside the Northeast, football trips are also limited to only one or two per yeat. If they were in the Big Ten, very road game except Penn State would be outside the Northeast. That's a lot more travel.

I completely agree with your point about the attractiveness of the Big Ten with all of its benefits. My point is that a new Big East Football which leaves only four teams in the Northeast begins to look like the Big Ten in terms of travel, so what's the incentive to stay in the Big East? To counteract all of the advantages of the Big Ten, the Big East has to give Rutgers or Syracuse some equally strong reasons to stay where they are. They need to make it a tough choice.

Nice summary of the Big East options. I agree that the Big East is likely to wait before considering expansion. Actually, I don't think that the Big East as presently constructed will expand at all. I think that it would take a split for expansion to be considered.

Although this has been discussed ad nauseum, I think that a "revitalized" Rutgers is the new element in the conversation. In the past, the conversations seemed to be about whether the priority for expansion should be geography with its Eastern identity & market potential vs. looking for a team based on its football credentials to strengthen the credibility of the conference.

I think I'll start a new thread on The Big East section since this is not primarily a Big Ten topic.

If the Big Ten is willing to take Rutgers but still wants to split up "the big three", they could do a split like the ACC:

Iowa - Minnesota
Illinois - Wisconsin
Purdue - Indiana
Ohio State - Northwestern
Michigan - Michigan State
Rutgers - Penn State

Each school would play the school listed on the same line every year in football in addition to the schools in it's own division. The other 5 non-division opponents would rotate in 2-year cycles, so everyone would play each other over a 6 year period (which leaves room for an extra home-and-home in that 6-year period, so for example, Ohio State could play Michigan State four times in 6 years).

That is the system used in the ACC and SEC. Penn St would not like to give up the Ohio St annual game. Another gripe might come from Illinois & NW.

If the Big 10 isn't going to have a championship game, there is no need for divisions.

There are simply too many groups that want to play each other every year to split them up evenly in groups of 6.


Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota want to play each other every year. Illinois and Northwestern want to play each other every year. Michigan and Ohio State, Michigan and Michigan State, Indiana and Purdue, Penn State and Ohio State, and probably Penn State and Rutgers would.


How do you work that out?

Maybe they'd just be best off playing all 11 other teams and 1 NC game for rivalry games (Iowa Iowa State, Penn State Pitt, Notre Dame games, etc).

Rutgers is becoming a better possiblity as time goes on after the win last night. If they get tired of waiting for Notre Dame, rutgers is a big possibiliy. THey have better academics than notre dame.

For those of you that haven't seen my extended thoughts on this subject that looks at all of the major 12th Big Ten team candidates, here you go:

Big Ten From Eleven to Twelve?

Speaking as a Big Ten grad, essentially, Notre Dame is the obvious choice with the only true alternative being Syracuse. Since I wrote that post before the new lucrative Big Ten TV deals were announced, Syracuse might not even be in the mix anymore and it's 95% likely the Big Ten will stay at 11 teams as long as the Irish are independent in football. It's easy to jump on the bandwagon of a team that's hot today such as Rutgers, but the real test is how well a school is able to maintain interest when it's in a down year. While Rutgers offers a prime NYC metro area location and I believe that the Big Ten ought to look toward the East Coast if it doesn't end up with Notre Dame, the Scarlett Knights need a whole lot more than one good season to draw the interest of the conference.

Since the Big Ten formally offered ND an invitation to join the conference back in 1999, the schools' lack of AAU membership status is definitely not an issue. Overall national perception counts for a whole lot more and ND is widely perceived to be a prestigious university even though it's not a research school. There's no debate that it's incredibly selective and in terms of the U.S. News rankings, only Northwestern ranks higher than ND among the Big Ten schools.

Also, let's face the facts: if you've got to split a money pie 12 ways as opposed to 11, that 12th team needs to bring a huge amount to the table to make expansion worth it (and with the amount of money that the Big Ten is making at the moment, the simple ability to add a football championship game is not enough). That would require a national team such as Notre Dame or the ability to truly penetrate a new market/region such as Syracuse (Pitt and Mizzou are already in Big Ten markets while Rutgers needs much more than a one-hit wonder to deliver the NYC area).

So, the talk about Rutgers, Pitt, Mizzou, etc. makes for an interesting discussion since I enjoy the Big Ten expansion topic, but in reality, the discussion begins and ends with Notre Dame with a small glimmer of a chance for Syracuse.

Notre Dame needs to join the big ten. Then we can really know how good they are, and they wont get embarassed in bowl games every year. They bring a huge national following, and prestige. They would be a great addition, I wonder if it would ever happen.

Illini Blu Demon, Thanks for your post. Excellent analysis & I would agree that the Big Ten will in all likelihood hold out for Notre Dame.

Let me throw in a "however" with regard to Rutgers. It was the Big Ten's own study which extolled the qualities of Rutgers as a candidate & that was before their football was any good. In their favor when considering more than just footballwas the fact Rutgers offers the breadth of teams that the Big Ten is looking for in a partner.

I think that in evaluating a candidate, a conference needs to have the ability to look into the future rather than into the rear view mirror. A dozen years ago, the same comments you made about Rutgers could have been made about Virginia Tech & the past dozen years haven't been too shabby for Tech football. Before 1993, Tech had never been ranked in the top 20 by both polls in the same year & they had never been ranked higher than #16 on the few occasions that either poll had given them a nod. They were not established as a national program. But one could see it coming. Beamer was there & by '93 the losing seasons were behind him. He had institutional support. All of the ingredients were there for a ainning program.

The same can be said about Rutgers today. Schiano has turned the corner with this program. The university has made a commitment to him & he in turn has made one to the university. This is a rare major flagship university in a large state. Facilites are very good. But there is a difference between Rutgers & Virginia Tech. Rutgers has no instate competition from another BCS university. Not only that, Rutgers has no competition from a state flagship in the state right across the Hudson River.

Of course Rutgers needs more than one good season to establish itself. But right now Rutgers brings far more to the table than most of the current Big Ten members on the football field. And it brings a better market than most of the current members & one that is potentially better than any current Big Ten. And it is a peer with Big Ten members as a major research university. What it's missing are 80,000 fans in the stadium - or even 60,000.

What does the future look like at Notre Dame? Well, they just set the record for bowl futility - 9 straight losses. Their talent on the field is simply not able to compete with the talent being fielded at other top programs like Ohio State & Michigan. The key question is why this is the case. Bad coaches? More likely it's the admission standards. So, the key question is whether the future at Notre Dame more like Michigan or more like Northwestern.

I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that the Big Ten could do a lot worse than Rutgers.

Probably not.

Sadly its not really Notre Dame's fault for remaining independent and for not joining the Big Ten where the school clearly belongs.

Its the Bowls and TV, which is what the BCS is really all about. Spare us the "BS" the BCS is trying to get the best two teams play in the same championship bowl.

Why is Boise State not playing Ohio State?

Notre Dame not only embarrassed itself last night in the Sugar Bowl, however, embarrassed the BCS or better put embarrassed the current major college football post season structure more than any time in the recent past.

It should embarrass any of us die hard college football fans for watching such a bad deal that TV has created for us.

Of course the BCS as usual may turn its back depending on the TV ratings and we will get to that in the last part of this post. I am a die hard college football fan and this game was just not fun to watch regardless if you hate Notre Dame and want to see them lose. I actually turned this game off in the second half the first time ever for any BCS game. There have been some dude BCS games in the past and managed to watch the entire games in the past.

I don't like or dislike Notre Dame and do not want to find my self filling sorry for any team playing in an over-matched game especially if the bottom line was for money.

Maybe it was the great BCS Fiesta game just two days early with such a great finish that made the next bowls more accountable or we are just looking at the other bowls with more expectations to create some form of life or excitement in a game.

I think Notre Dame is probably ready for the Big Ten and needs the nudge to get there.

The only way Notre Dame is going to ever join the Big Ten is by actions of the college football fans.

Turn the TV games off when Notre Dame is playing and we willl soon find Notre Dame needing the Big Ten.

Happy New Year, Lash.

How much longer will the Notre Dame glow last? How long 'til the bloom is off the rose? Too many more games like last night's & the Big Ten won't even want them.

It's been reported in New York that Urban Meyer turned down Notre Dame not for money but because ND refused to give him 6 waivers a year on admissions. This is reportedly from an inside source, someone who was in the negotiations meetings with ND & Meyer. If that's the case & if ND does not change that policy, ND's days as a top ten program are over.

I actually enjoyed last night's game for the first half. Had Weis not gambled for a first down when he should have punted, it probably would have been tied at the half. Who knows, that could have changed the entire complexion of the half & there might not have been time for LSU to get that quick TD at the end of the half. And there was the pass in the end zone that Samardza lost in the lights, or dome, or something. Should have been a ND TD.Had ND gone in with the lead at the half, things could have been different in the second half. I thought that Weis forced the the action on offense too much, putting too much pressure on his offense & undermining any confidence his defense might have had coming into the game.

Having said all that, it did seem to be just a matter of time before the bigger, faster LSU athletes wore ND down. LSU obviously made adjustments during half time to stop ND's runs to the outside. Once they did that, ND couldn't do anything but pass. They certainly couldn't run up the middle, given the superiority of LSU's defensive front 7 over their offensive line. Quinn had a bad game, so that was the end of the passing game. ND's defense was on the field so much in the third quarter that they just wore down.

Which brings uys full circle. Without better athletes, ND will not be able to compete. And if they can't compete, they will go the way of many other private schools with high academics. Thye may rue the day that they turned down the Big Ten's offer for membership. The money looks good today, but it may not be there long term.

Lash,

You're right about it not being Notre Dame's fault for remaining independent. Any school, whether it's Notre Dame or Boise State, is going to do what's best for them and will go where the incentives are.

The inherent issue is that for better or for worse, the BCS bowls are geared toward the casual fan that might not watch college football until the very end of the year as opposed to those of us that follow the entire season closely. Anyone that's paid attention to college football knows that Notre Dame has been overrated for the last two seasons when you examine how they've performed against their top opponents. I'm sure most of the people on this board would have rather seen Rutgers or, if conferences were allowed to have more than 2 teams in the BCS, Wisconsin as opposed to Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl. However, it's the average "Joe Blow" off of the street that drives national TV ratings, and that guy usually only tunes in when a big name such as Notre Dame is involved.

Also, the BCS's job is to find the top 2 teams to play in the championship game. While I firmly believe that it does an awful job of doing this, it's important to note that, other than the rule that compels a non-BCS team that finishes in the top 12 to be invited to a BCS bowl, the final BCS standings serve little purpose to the other BCS bowls. Each of those BCS bowls consider the ability to sell tickets to be nearly as important as the TV ratings, so the Sugar Bowl has a built-in incentive to pick the "marquee" teams such as Notre Dame that will guarantee a sellout.

On that note, I don't blame the Sugar Bowl for choosing Notre Dame. Whether we're talking about college football or life in general, it's all about "risk vs. reward". If I'm running that bowl and I'm virtually guaranteed to make the maximum amount of money by picking a proven commodity such as Notre Dame while there's no financial upside that justifies the risk of taking a less well-known team, it's hard to fault the bowl's choice.

It's easy to say that a bowl (or in terms of expansion talk, a conference) should take a risk on an up-and-comer as opposed to going back to the same handful of power schools, but in terms of business the only reason why you would ever take such a risk is that you'd get an even higher return in the end. At your own job, if you're taking a bigger risk yet there's no chance of you receiving a higher return than if you had just made the "safe" pick, you'd be fired pretty quickly.

Friar Fan,

I definitely believe that any conference needs to look toward the long term as opposed to looking at immediate gratification. Rutgers certainly has a lot of huge advantages on paper on the academic and location side while its football program appears to be on the ascent. What I'd like to emphasize, though, is that the Big Ten is not the ACC - that is, the Big Ten is incredibly stringent about its membership composition almost to a fault. It took years to get Penn State into the conference and that's a school with an undeniable football tradition which also sells out a 100,000 seat stadium every week. Think of it this way: before the Big Ten brought Penn State into the athletics conference in 1993, the conference hadn't changed its membership since the addition of Michigan State in 1953, which was the same year that the ACC was created in the first place. I understand what you're saying about Virginia Tech, but the way that the Big Ten operates is that they will require a 12th team to be an exceptionally proven commodity that will provide huge dividends right away, no questions asked. Apply the smell test here - the Big Ten is only going to pick a school where there's not going to be a single debate as to whether it was right decision (at least on a financial and exposure level). It has to be such an obvious choice that no one would question it.

Rutgers has a lot going for it right now, but it will seriously take a least a decade of success before the Big Ten would consider it for membership. As a practical matter, the size of Rutgers Stadium is huge detriment. It has 7,000 fewer seats than Northwestern's Ryan Field, which is the smallest stadium in the Big Ten but is serving a university that is 1/3 the size of Rutgers. The 60,000-seat number that you alluded to is probably the bare minimum for membership consideration. Showing that Rutgers can truly deliver the NYC media market on a consistent basis (not just in years when there are bandwagon fans) is the other big step. As of right now, saying that Rutgers delivers the NYC market is about as inaccurate as saying that Northern Illinois delivers the Chicago market. It's going to take awhile for Rutgers to gain a solid traction on the NYC sports scene.

The perceptions of colleges are based so much on tradition and history that it takes a whole lot longer to overcome preconceived notions (or in the case of Notre Dame and a few other schools, they have the opposite ability to catapult itself as a result of its tradition and history) than it does in pro sports.