NCAA Conference Realignment: Hazards For Future Big Ten Expansion

Big East and Big Ten fans have been excited the past few days by a recently uncovered 2005 newspaper report regarding the rules governing how schools may leave the former conference: http://www.projo.com/pc/content/projo_20050224_24beast.23704bb.html 

The fact regarding possible Big Ten expansion at the expense of the Big East that has certain fans salivating is: "The group has amended the conference's constitution and agreed to withdrawal and dissolution clauses that allow the group to break up with no penalty after five years."

July 2010 is the culmination of that five-year period. In less than one month, any Big East school may leave with no penalty.

Naturally, Big East fans who want to be gobbled up by the Big Ten and Big Ten fans in love with the thought of their conference creating the brave new world of super-sized BCS Automatic Qualifier leagues are both downright giddy at the prospects.

There are, however, a number of potential pitfalls for the Big Ten in any additional expansion. 

Nebraska adds another major football name to the Big Ten, one that has national appeal when it is highly competitive. But Nebraska is quite small, and the Big Ten Network requires more programming and more local cable companies that will agree to pay the highest fees for the Big Ten Network. 

Rutgers is the only school located in the NYC TV market that is, or can be, a BCS league school. NYC is the largest TV market in the country. There is no doubt that Fox Sports, which owns 49 percent of the BTN, wants the Big Ten to make a play to own NYC, as much as that market can be owned for college sports.

The problem is that college basketball is much bigger in NYC than college football, and Rutgers has a floundering basketball program with minimal fan support. As northeasterners tend to see Midwest/Big Ten basketball as even more stodgy and dull than Southerners see Midwest/Big Ten football, there is scant chance that Rutgers playing a Big Ten basketball schedule could excite any hoops interest around NYC.

But the Big Ten could also take Syracuse. Though Syracuse is located 250 miles from NYC, 'Cuse basketball holds good interest in NYC.

The first problem that the Big Ten must address is whether adding Rutgers and/or Syracuse advances its main expansion goal: secure Notre Dame. Quite simply, Notre Dame would mean much more to capturing the NYC TV market than Rutgers and Syracuse combined.

That gets us to this dividing line: the Big Ten must decide if it is ready to expand to 14 or 16 to add to the potential profits of the BTN even if it is certain that Notre Dame will not join. 

That is the key decision, because the only way that the Big Ten can maneuver Notre Dame into feeling as if it has to join the Big Ten is if the BE is destroyed as a BCS AQ league and four super-sized (14 or 16 members) BCS AQ leagues have agreed to have two automatic BCS teams per league, with a third league member possible for an at-large berth.

The Big Ten can kill the Big East by taking any two members, but would that help push Notre Dame into Big Ten arms?

If not, is the Big Ten willing to tolerate a private school like Syracuse that is a quintessential Eastern school, right down to lacrosse emphasis?

Worse for the Big Ten, could its wooing of Syracuse, and/or of Rutgers turn into a replay of the SEC assuming it had Florida State only to discover too late that the ACC was preferred? After all, while the Syracuse athletics department and entire university would fit into the ACC easily and naturally, both would be out of place in the Midwestern conference of gigantic land grant schools.

Rutgers is a land grant school, but its academics and athletics are tied to the east, to a line from Boston down through NYC, past Philadelphia to DC. 

Here is an even more settling thought for Big Ten people: if the Big Ten is trying to take NYC and destroy the Big East, will the SEC make a move for Missouri?

The Big Ten took Nebraska first, but Missouri has much better basketball. And Kansas City is in MO. 

If Mizzou is in the SEC, the state will go nuts for SEC football. As MO borders three Big Ten states (IL, IA, NE), Mizzou in the SEC would be a perpetual spitting in the Big Ten's left eye.

Can the Big Ten risk that? 

Can the Big Ten take both Missouri and NYC and land Notre Dame?

Perhaps, but trying to do all of it could be the hubris that invites nemesis into the parlor.