Big Ten Expansion Could Leave Notre Dame Out in the Cold

It seems that the future for the Big Ten and the world of college football is fairly self-evident.

The Big East and the Big XII will get swallowed up and the remaining four BCS conferences—Big Ten, SEC, Pac-10, and probably the ACC—will become 16-team super-conferences.

Some traditionalists will fight this, and some will say that it is not "self-evident." However, those people are fighting a losing battle.

Modern college football, like all modern businesses, boils down to money, and monetarily speaking , it makes sense to expand to super-conferences.

The only real questions are who, how, and when?

At this point, we do know that the first domino that will fall will be the Big Ten.

Rumors have been circulating for quite a while about the Big Ten adding a 12th team. Those rumors eventually turned into the Big Ten becoming a 14-team league and then a 16-team league.

It is entirely possible that neither of the super-conference scenarios will play out right away. The Big Ten is notoriously slow when it comes to making changes. However, the super-conference scenario will play out.

Furthermore, while Big Ten expansion talk has been all the rage, Pac-10 expansion is also somewhat fait accompli, and also boils down to who, how, and when.

Most of the probable Pac-10 scenarios seem to include Utah and BYU, as well as Colorado out of the Big XII.

Both of these scenarios will force the hands of the other conferences.

In the Big Ten realignment scenario, some of the Big XII North schools would unhesitatingly join as the Big XII, in its modern incarnation, does absolutely nothing for teams not named Texas or Oklahoma.

The most notable of these schools include Nebraska and Missouri, both of whom border Big Ten territory and would and do have natural rivalries with established Big Ten institutions. The Kansas universities are also notable.

Furthermore, a number of Big East schools would also join in a heartbeat, as the Big East is the least financially lucrative conference in the country. Any Big East institution that joined the Big Ten would see its revenue go up immediately.

It has been no secret that the Big Ten is extremely interested in Rutgers and expanding the Big Ten Network into the New York/New Jersey area.

Other institutions that have been bandied about in the expansion rumors have been Pitt, Syracuse, and UConn.

Finally, Boston College and Maryland, out of the ACC, are also names that have been active on the rumor mill.

Needless to say, if the Big Ten did pursue these teams and expand into a 16-team conference, and the Pac-10 expanded to 12 teams and added the aforementioned institutions, that would effectively finish the Big East. Moreover, the Big XII would be whittled down to its core Texas panhandle teams, as well as Iowa State.

This would in turn force the SEC to expand to 16 teams in an effort to stay at the top of the pack.

I have left one team out of all of this talk and that is Notre Dame.

It would appear that Notre Dame is probably the first team on the Big Ten's wish list as it was in the 90's, the last time the Big Ten approached Notre Dame about joining their conference.

At that time, Notre Dame was adamant about remaining independent, not only to please its alumni, but to maintain its exclusive television deal with NBC.

However, this time around, the Big Ten is in a decidedly more powerful situation.

If Notre Dame does not join the Big Ten, let alone any other conference, when the conferences realign it is highly likely that the Big Ten institutions will refuse to maintain their annual contests against the Irish.

Notre Dame plays a yearly game against Michigan, Michigan State, and Purdue. Furthermore, they play Penn State on an occasional basis, and were looking into scheduling a series with Wisconsin .

On top of that, in the aforementioned scenario, the Big East will effectively be dismantled.

Not only does the Big East geographic area have the most Notre Dame alumni outside of the Big Ten region; it is also the conference with which the Irish are affiliated in basketball.

While it is entirely possible that the Big East may still exist as a major basketball player and a mid-major football conference, it is highly unlikely that ND would want to play football in a mid-major.

At the very least, it is unfathomable that NBC would continue to give a lucrative contract to a team that plays in said mid-major.

In effect, consider the teams on Notre Dame's 2010 schedule that are not in the Big East or the Big Ten: Stanford, Boston College, Western Michigan, Navy, Tulsa, Utah, Army, USC.

Further consider that it is entirely possible that Pac-10 teams, post-expansion, might also not be too keen on regularly scheduling an independent.

If that is the case, that effectively nixes Stanford and USC, as well as Utah in the most likely Pac-10 expansion scenario.

What you're left with is a schedule that would make Boise State blush. Moreover, it is a schedule that NBC, once again, will not pay big bucks for.

In short, Big Ten expansion will cause a lot of changes within the college football world.

Will Notre Dame lose revenue if they join the Big Ten?

In the short run, possibly, but in the long run it's either move forward or go the way of the military academies.