Is 16 Team Big Ten In Violation Of Sherman Antitrust Act?

Before the Big Ten Conference and its Big Ten Network expands to 16 teams—and I don't know if they will—the powers to be might want to figure out if they will be in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 was the first legislation passed by the United States Congress to deal with monopolies.

Would a 16 team college athletic conference fall under the term monopoly?  Probably not.  The Big East has 16 members in their basketball conference and nobody has compared it to a monopoly.

Would the expansion of the Big Ten Network throughout most of the Northeast make it a monopoly?  I don't know.  Maybe!

The Big Ten Network currently reaches 40 million households and is available to 73 million.  Add Rutgers, Syracuse, Pitt, and possibly Connecticut to the Big Ten Conference and suddenly the Big Ten Network would be looking at an extra 20 million possible households.

With the addition of one more team, regarless of its location, the Big Ten is looking at nearly 100 million potential households, or close to 40 percent of all households in the country.

What is a monopoly and why are they dangerous

A monopoly, in its simplest form, has been defined as, "a situation in which there is a single supplier or seller of a good or service for which there are no close substitutes."

Economists have generally considered  unregulated monopolies dangerous because they tend to charge high prices, provide inferior goods and services, and they suppress competition.

Suppressing Competition--that's what the Big Ten should be concerned about.

Why might the Big Ten be a monopoly?

The Big Ten football conference is not currently, nor with the addition of five schools, will be considered a monopoly.

They won't have the market cornered on college football.  They will still be 16 of approximately 200 division 1 college football teams.  Many of these 200 teams are located in the same area as the Big Ten.

The Big Ten Network might be in a different situation!

With such a large potential audience, it might be a real possibility that the influence the network would wield might push it into the category of a monopoly.

The Big Ten Network would certainly not be the only network broadcasting college football.  The three major networks and ESPN are still going to be around, but the Big Ten Network might lift the Big Ten Conference to a dominance that would overwhelm every collegiate football conference in the Midwest and Northeast United States.

It's clearly possible that no conference network would be able to compete with them from either a numbers factor, or a financial factor—this might be considered a suppression of healthy competition.

Is Jim Delaney's Ego Expanding faster than the Big Ten Conference?

Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delaney is pushing for expansion.  Delaney was interviewed on ESPN's "College Football" this week and he evaded John Saunders questions like a trained politician.

Saunders asked him whether or not the Big Ten had made any decisions regarding expansion and Delaney Danced around this question and everything else Saunders threw at him.

Delaney has created a legacy as Big Ten Commissioner.  He's been in power to see the conference expand to 11 teams with the addition of Penn State, and he's overseen the development and success of the Big Ten Network.

Does Delaney want to add to his legacy and be the commissioner who creates the first super conference by adding 5 more teams, and subsequently making it possible for the Big Ten Network to dominate college football?

Will Delaney, who grew up in South Orange, NJ, take the lead in what many experts predict will be the ruination of the Big East, the very BCS conference that represents this area?

Was he bullied in high school, or is he convinced ravaging a growing conference—a conference that was raided as recently as 2003—is the right thing to do?

Will he decide that this is not the time to raid the Big East?  All good questions!

Does the Big East have options?

Does the Big East have any options that might preserve their conference?  By the non-action they have taken since the raid of 2003, one would think not.

Only as late as this week was former NFL Commissioner Paul Tabliabue  hired by a heavily criticized Big East Commissioner to bring validity to a rather weak public relations campaign—one designed to take shots at the Big Ten.

If the Big East rallies like it did in 2003, when the conference was on a real death watch, they can seriously explore developing their own television network, adding  football teams, and improving the quality of its football.

Improving quality would translate into higher ratings and more revenue the next time they negotiate a television contract with ESPN.