Nebraska To Big Ten: A Potentially Great Move for College Football
Chip Brown of OrangeBloods.com is reporting that Nebraska has informally agreed to leave the Big 12 in order to join the Big Ten. This is great news for fans of expansion and fans of college football.
It looks like Nebraska accepting this deal to go to the Big Ten will be the first chip to fall, causing a landslide of other moves. Mizzou could also move to the Big Ten. Will the six Big 12 schools that were invited by the Pac-10 accept that offer and ruin the Big 12 forever? How about the rest of the schools that could join the Big 10? Rutgers? Notre Dame? Pittsburgh? How will it end up?
This is an exciting time to be a college football fan because the landscape of the sport is changing dramatically right in front of our eyes.
Specifically, the move to the Big Ten for Nebraska is a great move for the university because they will make more money in the Big Ten and they fit in as a "Big Ten" type athletic program. Their football team and basketball team both play at slower paces that are commonplace in the Big Ten, so maybe they will be even more successful in the new conference.
For college football, this move is great. It looks like the Big 12 is on it's way down the drain, so the Big Ten needs to do it's best to secure some good football schools in order to have a competitive conference in the major money-making sport on campus.
Nebraska fits right in to the Big Ten football scene with their tradition and recent success (five national titles and a 10-win season last year).
If the Big 12 disintegrates (it looks likely that it will), Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Colorado will join the Pac-10 to make it the Pac-16, and Mizzou will join Nebraska and some other teams outside of the Big 12 to create the Big 16.
After all that happens, the SEC will be challenged to make a 16-team conference, as will the ACC or Big East. If it all settles at four 16-team conferences, we could be well on our way to a playoff or something resembling a playoff in college football. How epic would that be?
With the first domino falling, it looks like all the speculation is about to come to reality, and our view of college sports will never be the same. I look forward to it as a Mizzou fan because of the newness for my school, but all college sports fans should be excited about conference expansion because of the good symmetry it will bring the the major conferences.
