Big Ten Expansion and the Sexiness of Academia

What do all the Big Ten institutions have in common?

They're all in the Central Time Zone? No, OSU, PSU, Michigan, and MSU are all in the Eastern Time Zone.

They all reside in what would be considered the Midwest? That, in fact, was one of the sticking points when Penn State joined the conference in 1990; PSU is not a Midwestern university.

They are all public universities? No, Northwestern is private.

There are of course, the obvious things such as, they all have a liberal arts program, they have all been to the Rose Bowl, and they all participate in a variety of athletics.

However, more to the point, they are all members of the Association of American Universities . They are the only major athletic conference in which all of its members do belong to the AAU.

Furthermore, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delaney has made it clear that , when considering expansion, this will be a major factor to consider.

Needless to say, the AAU is hardly a "sexy" topic of discussion. Most writers, reporters, bloggers, and fans would rather write and talk about the damage a conference larger than 12 teams could cause, and wildly speculative articles on why Notre Dame faces irrelevancy if they don't join the conference.

However, as the AAU is such a major part of what the Big Ten is, I think it's something of which fans should be very aware.

Firstly, the AAU has nothing to do with athletics. It is strictly academic. Moreover, it has nothing to do with the undergraduates or undergrad admissions, thereby further separating it from the gridiron or hardcourt or baseball diamond or any of the other playing surfaces for sporting events.

The AAU is strictly concerned with the graduate programs at its member schools. Even more specifically, it is concerned with those school's research programs.

In short, a school that is a member of the AAU is a research institution. Intense—and very expensive—scientific research is undertaken at research universities. This includes both the hard sciences and the social sciences.

What this translated to was $17.2 billion in federal academic research expenditures in 2007. That made up 57 percent of all federally funded research provided to colleges and universities. It is also an amount that is approximately equivalent to the Gross National Income of Syria.

If you think every university in the country doesn't want a piece of that, then you are living in Fantasyland.

Of course, entry into the Big Ten does not mean a school would gain entry into the AAU.

If one considers the schools currently rumored to be in consideration for inclusion into the conference, one usually comes up with the following: Texas, Notre Dame, Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, Pitt, Rutgers, Syracuse, UConn, Boston College, Maryland, and Georgia Tech.

There are other names that have been bandied about, but those are the primary ones.

Of those names, the only ones that are not members of the AAU are UConn, BC, and Notre Dame.

In effect, you can throw UConn and BC out of the mix. Without membership in the AAU and no geographic or athletic ties to the Big Ten, those schools will not get serious consideration.

On the other hand, despite not being a member of the AAU, given the Big Ten's previous overtures to the Irish , one would assume the conference would still be open to Notre Dame joining.

In that case, geographical similarities as well as Notre Dame's historical ties and rivalries against other Big Ten institutions would trump their lack of AAU prestige.

As the above article notes, whether the Irish or any school are in the AAU or not, there is a major academic downside to not joining the Big Ten, in 1999 or now.

Any team that joins the conference would automatically receive membership to the Committee on Institutional Cooperation or CIC.

Being a part of the CIC automatically upgrades any school's graduate programs. Moreover, CIC universities engage in $6 billion/year of federally funded research, receiving 12% of the total federal research funds awarded annually.

To put that in perspective, there are over 2,500 four-year universities in the United States. Over 1/10th of the annual federal research funds go to the 12 CIC-member schools.

Furthermore, CIC libraries own more volumes (80 million) than the Ivy League Schools (64 million).

Needless to say, arguments have been made that a move to the Big Ten is about more than money, and for the athletic side to this argument, that may be true.

However, academically speaking, money is in short supply, and there is no larger question that university presidents face than how to get more of it.

If teams wind up joining the Big Ten, they will not only, in all probability, receive an athletic windfall, but they will assuredly receive an academic windfall.

In the end, it is not the alumni or the head football coach or the athletic director that would ask for membership into the conference. It is also not the alumni, head football coach, or athletic director that will vote on whether to invite another team into the Big Ten.

It is the university presidents, and while the presidents are most assuredly concerned with their athletic issues, academia is their top priority.