On Big 10 and Pac 10 Expansion

This picture is largely irrelevant to this "article." I just enjoyed it. via

As you may have heard, the Big 10 and Pac 10 are talking about expansion. Again. This is important, if for no other reason than it gets us one step closer to the dmk playoff plan (championed since Spring of 2003, and yes I have proof, in the form of an paper submitted for a class, a paper which received an A, thank you very much, and was recycled three times by three different people, all of whom also received A's, because Carleton professors are lazy and wouldn't know the difference between a good football-related argument and a Sid Hartman-quality football-related argument) which would finally eliminate the fucking idiotic ZOMG ONLY TWO TEAMS ARE EVER QUALIFIED TO PLAY FOR THE NATIONAL TITLE!!!11!!ONE!!! setup we currently have. The Big 10 would need to add one team in order to reach the magical twelve team mark necessary for a conference championship game, while the Pac 10 would need to add two.

This is roughly the 874th time the Big 10 has talked about adding a twelfth team to the conference, and roughly the 874th time that Notre Dame will inevitably reject the invitation to become that twelfth team. Notre Dame's not coming. Let's get that out of the way.

The Big 10's also making a stab at luring Texas to the Big 10, in the same way I'm making a stab at luring Megan Fox to my bedroom for some casual Friday night reverse cowgirl. Sure, it's a cute thought, but it doesn't make a bit of goddamn sense for Texas (or Megan Fox). Texas would be giving up a top-heavy revenue sharing scheme in the Big 12 - a revenue sharing scheme that works to their advantage - and all of their traditional rivals in order to join....what, exactly? An academically superior conference that would be spread from Pennsylvania to Minnesota to Texas (travel costs for the non-revenue sports would be fun)? The football and basketball aren't any better in the Big 10 than in the Big 12, and the Texas baseball program, a perennial power, would suffer in a conference switch. Yes, having Texas, Michigan, and Ohio State in the same conference would be cool from a potential rivals perspective, but it's not a practical solution, and the benefits coming to Texas don't outweigh the costs of switching conferences.

Outside of Texas, the Big 10 seems to be focusing on poaching either Pitt from the Big East or Missouri from the Big 12. Pitt's a natural fit, because of the geographic proximity to Penn State, the natural rivalry with Penn State, the Pitt academics, the solid football and basketball teams, and the opportunity for the Big 10 to expand into what is surely an extremely lucrative Pittsburgh television market. Pitt also doesn't have many traditional rivalries they'd be eschewing by leaving the Big East, so that's a plus.

Missouri would also have the academics and athletics that the Big 10 is looking for, and also allows the Big 10 to get their manifest destiny on and expand westward. But Missouri has all of those pesky Big 12 rivalries, including the Kansas-Missouri Border War (or Civil War, whatever it's called). Missouri also does a lot of recruiting out of Texas, and that recruiting would be hurt by any move to the Big 10.

Meanwhile, the Pac 10 has a plan to get to twelve teams, and that plan also may involve poaching a Big 12 team (the Big 12 has a shitty TV contract, the and revenue sharing deal isn't great if you're not one of the top teams). The Pac 10 is nearly picky about academics as the Big 10, despite what the inclusion of Arizona State and Oregon State may lead you to believe. The Pac 10 only takes large "research universities," which is why Boise St. won't merit consideration, despite what would seem to be a good fit football-wise (also: Boise St. doesn't play non-football sports well, and their academics are essentially on an Augsburg Tech level).

Instead, the Pac 10 wants to add Colorado and Utah. Utah is an excellent match and probably would (and definitely should) jump at the opportunity to join the Pac 10. The Utes have the academics to join the conference, play all the little (non-revenue) sports reasonably well, and have basketball and football teams that could, at the least, be competitive in the Pac 10 (and, personally, I would have liked to have seen the '08 Utah team vs. the '08 USC team in a Pac 10 title game).

Colorado....well, that's a little tougher. Colorado seems more like a Pac 10 school than a Big 12 school, at least student body wise (i.e. hippies/douchebags who like snowboarding and playing an acoustic guitar at parties fit in more with Pac 10 BRAHS than Big 12 bros). And Colorado would probably have an easier time recruiting in the Western states than trying to pull kids from Texas (again, because of the student body, although Texas kids may be more down with getting all rapey). But moving to the Pac 10 would mean that Colorado would abandon their longtime rivals in the Big 12 - most notably, Nebraska. Sure, Colorado-Nebraska could be scheduled as an annual out of conference game (just as Utah-BYU and Missouri-Kansas could), but that's a little big tougher to pull off, and the secondary rivalries (i.e. Colorado-Kansas, Colorado-Oklahoma, etc.) are still a little tough to leave.

Anyway, the word is that if Colorado and Utah will join the Pac 10, then the Pac 10 is expanding to twelve teams. But if both won't join the Pac 10, then the Pac 10 may not expand at all, because otherwise the Pac 10 is in a tough spot. Nevada doesn't bring much to the table in terms of competitive sports or media market, UNLV's football team blows almost as much as their academics, New Mexico...well, they add nothing whatsoever, unless you believe the Albuquerque media market is lucrative, and Idaho and Wyoming make less sense than any of the previous three schools mentioned. I actually like the idea of the Pac 10 adding Colorado State, if Colorado wants to stay in the Big 12, but I don't see the Pac 10 going for CSU.

Oh, and, of course, there's the opening in the Big 12 that's created by a potential departure from either Missouri or Colorado. If Texas leaves the Big 12, then the conference should probably just disband. They're completely fucked, and not in a fun way. If either Colorado or Missouri leaves, I'd hope that TCU gets the Big 12 invite, but I don't know that TCU fits academically. BYU is rumored to be under consideration if the Big 12 has an opening, but BYU isn't a great academic institution, and, like the Lions, they don't play on Sundays.

If both Colorado and Missouri leave, I suppose the Big 12 could invite both TCU and BYU, but that seems like an awfully big step down in terms of prestige. I'd like to believe the Big 12 would try to lure Arkansas back, because Arkansas always had more traditional rivals in the Big 12 than in the SEC and would have a better shot of actually winning the Big 12 than the SEC, but I'm not sure the Razorbacks would leave the SEC anymore.

Anyway, that was kind of a rambling mess. If you're keeping score at home, here's what's quasi-likely to happen, if the expansion goes forward.

Big 10	Big 12	Pac 10
Illinois	Baylor	Arizona
Indiana	Iowa State	Arizona State
Iowa	Kansas	California
Michigan	Kansas State	Oregon
Michigan State	Nebraska	Oregon State
Minnesota	Oklahoma	Stanford
Northwestern	Oklahoma State	UCLA
Ohio State	Texas	USC
Penn State	Texas A & M	Washington
Purdue	Texas Tech	Washington State
Wisconsin
	Departures (0-2):	Departures:
Departures:	Missouri	None
None	Colorado
Additions (1):	Additions (0-2):	Additions (2):
Missouri	TCU	Utah
Pittsburgh	BYU	Colorado
	Arkansas, New Mexico, Rice, ???
		New Mexico, BYU,
		Nevada, Colorado St, UNLV, ???