<p>I think the Nebraska fans will travel to away games better than fans of Texas or just about any other school mentioned.</p>
<p>The question, how is the newconference to be partitioned?</p>
<p>WEST
Illinois
Iowa
Minnesota
Nebraska
Northwestern
Wisconsin</p>
<p>EAST
Indiana
Michigan
Michigan State
Ohio State
Penn State
Purdue</p>
<p>The only problem with this scenario is having Michigan, OSU and PSU in the same half.</p>
<p>Ugh, I dislike Nebraska. I really hope the big 10 doesn’t add Nebraska. Stupid Notre Dame. If they keep on doing this then in 20 years that might fade to irrelevance in football.</p>
<p>K&S: The Big 10 would add the 3 BE teams because it would add additional revenue through the Big 10 Network. The Big 10 gets something like $0.70 per household that it reaches on a basic package. The addition of Pittsburgh, NYC and St. Louis TV markets bring in a lot more people and thus, more $. But the more improtant reason why they would do this is to try and dissolve the Big East, thereby forcing ND to join the Big 10 because their olympic sports can’t survive as independents. The addition of ND would help increase the reveune distribution because of ND’s NBC contract (at least until it expires) and the huge amount of revenue that ND football brings in.</p>
<p>Right now ND does not want in. ND will not be the 13th team to the Big 10. The big ten has to pressure ND to join and the only ways to do that are to get more members or to dismantle the Big East. Which is why I think they offer Rutgers next, and then if ND agrees to join, they stay at 14. If not, they offer two more schools (Cuse and hopefully Maryland for the DC/Bmore market) and then they take ND at 16.</p>
<p>So much speculation. Oh well, we will have all the answers in the next couple weeks.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Orangebloods.com: Don’t look for Texas, Texas Tech, OU or Okla St to announce their intentions to join the Pac-10 until next week. </p>
<p>Orangebloods.com: Nebraska’s regents today will announce the Cornhuskers’ plan to join the Big Ten Conference. </p>
<p>Link: [Chip</a> Brown (ChipBrownOB) on Twitter](<a href=“http://twitter.com/ChipBrownOB]Chip”>http://twitter.com/ChipBrownOB)</p>
<p>Texas to the Pac 10 makes sense. The Big 10 and SEC are too competitive as it its. The Big 10 should focus on Notre Dame, Rutgers, Pitt, Syracuse and perhaps Maryland.</p>
<p>I agree with Alexandre with the B10 focusing on RU, Pitt, and Cuse. I’m kind of on the border with UMD-CP joining but they do have good academics and decent athletics.</p>
<p>I disagree with the comments here and in the media that the Big Ten will have failed if it only adds U Nebraska. U Nebraska is a catch in its own right and while the league is unlikely to see a large increase in TV viewers, the overall product of the conference for football will have been enhanced. Maybe down the road there will be more opportunities to add additional teams and maybe even the fabled Notre Dame. But it’s not like the Big Ten is starving without ND or U Texas. The league has a lot of big schools and a pretty big geographic footprint. </p>
<p>And, as I’ve posted before, college sports should be about fun and excitement. Create that and the money will come. But fun first.</p>
<p>I wonder how Joe Pa feels about Nebraska. There are rumors that he has been pushing for an east coast partner in the Big 10. Nebraska does not help with that.</p>
<p>I’ve come to the fairly obvious conclusion that the Pac 16 is an unstable conference that will fail. It suffers the same problem of the Big XII in that the Texas and Oklahoma division will be much stronger than the Pac 8 division. 16 team conferences are also just too unstable, and with only one interdivision game a year, the two sides are destined to form their own conference at some point.</p>
<p>That is why aTm thinking about the SEC is the only smart decision being kicked around. Joining the SEC means stability for the next 100 years. If they were the only Texas team in the SEC, they could quickly become a national power. Texas’ hubris in refusing to join the SEC could hurt their program for decades.</p>
<p>Nebraska’s nice, but ND is real target </p>
<p>Big Ten trying to put pressure on the Irish </p>
<p>June 11, 2010
BY HERB GOULD <a href="mailto:hgould@suntimes.com">hgould@suntimes.com</a></p>
<p>Many Cornhuskers are excited about the prospect of Nebraska joining the Big Ten. </p>
<p>Nebraska would elevate itself academically and financially. It’s a good deal athletically for those who are OK with trading Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas for Ohio State, Michigan and Iowa.</p>
<p>Notre Dame doesn’t appear ready to surrender its national/independent status. (AP) </p>
<p>It’s not as if that world was going to continue to exist, anyway. Reacting to the Big Ten’s ambitious ways, the Pac-10 formally added Colorado on Thursday amid growing speculation that Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas A&M and Texas Tech may follow – unless rumors about the SEC trying to cherry-pick from the Big 12 prove to be true. There are even sketchy reports Texas might be on the Big Ten’s radar.</p>
<p>For Nebraska, the windfall provided by the Big Ten Network, the driving force in the Big Ten expansion that is driving the college sports world into a feeding frenzy, isn’t the only allure.</p>
<p>‘‘It’s as much about academic money as football money,’’ longtime Omaha World-Herald columnist Tom Shatel pointed out. ‘‘The potential for research money in the Big Ten – millions – would put NU on a whole different level. A plain-looking campus dwarfed between a football stadium and downtown Lincoln could blossom, to say nothing of a research park where the old State Fair used to live. They might have to start growing ivy.’’</p>
<p>The question is, if Nebraska joins the Big Ten, which could be announced formally as early as today, what’s in it for the Big Ten?</p>
<p>The league would be adding one of the nation’s most prestigious football programs and would have the symmetry of a 12-team conference. That would allow for a conference championship game. Although Nebraska’s immediate viewing area doesn’t possess a dazzling number of television sets, Cornhuskers football has broad national appeal, which would help on the TV front.</p>
<p>Still, Notre Dame remains the partner that would matter the most to the Big Ten. </p>
<p>Everybody else is pretty much a stalking horse, even Nebraska. I’ve always thought that. And several sources told me that again on Thursday – without prompting.</p>
<p>One even went so far as to say the Nebraska alliance was another attempt to remind Notre Dame that its window of opportunity is closing.</p>
<p>‘‘I definitely believe there’s an ultimatum to the Irish. ‘The train’s leaving. Here’s your last ticket,’’’ he said. ‘‘But I don’t think Notre Dame is going to respond to that kind of thing.’’</p>
<p>A prominent Irish insider agreed, saying ND isn’t ready to surrender its national/independent status. </p>
<p>‘‘I don’t see Notre Dame making a dash for any of the realignments,’’ he said. ‘‘You can’t be arrogant enough to think you can [stay independent] forever. You may be forced into doing something. The landscape is changing. But, right now, I see us staying where we are.’’</p>
<p>The curious part of the Nebraska gambit is that if the Big Ten wanted to put heat on Notre Dame, raiding the Big East, ND’s fallback position, would have been a more direct route. That’s why speculation will continue to mention Rutgers and Syracuse as possible future candidates for the Big Ten.</p>
<p>When the Big Ten goes public with the Nebraska deal – and late Thursday afternoon, a league spokesman said no announcements had been scheduled for today – it will be walking an even finer line.</p>
<p>Notre Dame will be even less inclined to join an unwieldy 14- or 16-team Big Ten than a 12-team league. </p>
<p>No question, spurred on by its innovative and lucrative TV network, the Big Ten has set in motion a major bulldozing of the college sports landscape.</p>
<p>But if Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany doesn’t find a way to attract Notre Dame – and that’s the way things are looking – all the Nebraskas and Rutgers seem destined to fall short of what the Big Ten envisioned. Unless he can pull a Texas out of his hat.</p>
<p>Link: [Nebraska’s</a> nice, but ND is real target :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Colleges](<a href=“http://www.suntimes.com/sports/colleges/2381020,CST-SPT-herb11.article]Nebraska’s”>http://www.suntimes.com/sports/colleges/2381020,CST-SPT-herb11.article)</p>
<p>Teddy Greenstein of the Chicago Tribune, who usually has pretty good sources on the business side of college football (I believe he was the first to break the Nebraska story), reports NBC is increasingly unhappy with its Notre Dame TV contract because they’re losing money and getting killed in the ratings, especially when ND is playing a lesser opponent (at least half their games). NBC is reportedly thinking about moving those little-watched lesser-opponent ND games to Versus, their cable sports channel. If that happens the games would likely be even less watched, and the money NBC is willing to pay for the TV rights would shrink dramatically. Conceivably NBC might drop ND football entirely once the current contract expires. Whether Texas ends up in the proposed Pac 10 superconference or in the Big Ten, the attention in college football—and the TV money–is clearly going to be on a handful of conferences: the SEC, the newly expanded Big Ten, and the expanded Pac 10 (if their gambit succeeds). That means ND’s days as an independent with its own TV contract may be numbered. In short, ND arrogance aside, they may be forced to play ball with the Big Ten, but now bargaining out of a position of weakness, not strength.</p>
<p>[Big</a> Ten expansion: Conference realignments could force Notre Dame’s hand quickly - chicagotribune.com](<a href=“College Sports News - Chicago Tribune”>http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/college/ct-spt-0611-big-ten-expansion--20100610,0,3686062.column)</p>
<p>I wasn’t very happy with the Big Ten landing Nebraska at first, but the idea is growing on me. Nebraska is a tiny market, but the Cornhuskers add enough football cachet that the Big Ten Network is now coming very close to being a must-have on virtually every cable network in the country. Land either Notre Dame or Texas and I think they may be there. The Big Ten adding Nebraska at the same time the Pac 10 lands Colorado busts up the Big 12 and puts Texas in play. At the same time it puts more pressure on Notre Dame because it makes clear the future of college football lies in a few superconferences, not in ND’s old go-it-alone model. The train is leaving the station, and the Domers now need to decide whether they’re going to be on or off.</p>
<p>NU is a good get for the Big 10. Nebraska fans will travel anywhere because let’s face it, they’re looking for any excuse to get out of that ****hole they call a state. Any team playing them at home will automatically sell out their stadium.</p>
<p>My dream Big 10…</p>
<p>West:
Minnesota
Wisconsin
Iowa
Nebraska
Illinois
Northwestern
Notre Dame
Kansas</p>
<p>East:
Ohio State
Penn State
Michigan State
Michigan
Purdue
Indiana
Maryland
Rutgers</p>
<p>It would maintain geographic continuity, add some huge media markets, add and maintain the AAU-only status. The football would be great, and the basketball would be incredible.</p>
<p>Y’all should stop hating on UNL. They spent more on research than Indiana; had higher SAT Math 75 %ile scores than MSU, Purdue, and Indiana; higher ACT composite than MSU and PSU; higher 6-year grad rate than UMN; higher full-time retention rate than Iowa; and had higher full-time yield than all the existing Big 10 members.</p>
<p>I absolutely agree that Nebraska will be the weakest member in the Big 10 - maybe even by a significant amount. However, I wouldn’t exactly call the move a “tragedy” or allege that Nebraska is “all sports and [no] academics”. An AAU member and USNWR top-100 school with stats on par with the bottom end of the existing conference does not exactly represent a catastrophic shift downwards.</p>
<p>Nebraska-Iowa is an instant rivalry. The residents of the two states already have a healthy dislike for each other, and no pro sports to distract them from their collegiate loyalties. Last time I was in Nebraska (it’s been a while), someone told me that Nebraskans know what the letters I-O-W-A on a license plate stand for: “Idiots Out Wandering Around.”</p>
<p>
Notre Dame is not in the AAU.</p>
<p>“Notre Dame is not in the AAU.”</p>
<p>Well, then they can get their own personal AAU, and have its proceedings televised by NBC.</p>