Conference Realignment: Why Notre Dame Is to Blame for Expansion Armageddon

Conference expansion is once again stealing the headlines from the actual games.  Pittsburgh and Syracuse appear headed for the ACC, and now the Big East, along with the Big 12, is in peril.

Expansion first garnered national attention in late 2009, when the Big Ten announced it would look to expand to 12 or 14 teams.  However, the problem goes back a decade further, when the Big Ten first tried to expand.

It’s no secret that the Big Ten has had a lifelong love affair with Notre Dame.  There could even be a red telephone in Jim Delaney’s office at Big Ten headquarters in Chicago specifically reserved for calls from South Bend.

Notre Dame’s most serious flirtation with the conference came in the late 1990s.  The Fighting Irish were just entering their on-field downfall that still lingers today, and the Big Ten thought it was their best chance yet to pry the Fighting Irish away from independence.  It didn’t happen, as the Notre Dame administration elected to keep the status quo.

The Big Ten was left with the ill-fated number of 11, which never felt right from both a mathematical and a logistical perspective.  12 teams would have allowed the Big Ten to split into divisions and play a conference championship game 10 years earlier.  The conference would have taken off with Notre Dame on board and never looked back.  The criticism the league took in the late 2000s for falling off the radar during the last two weeks of the season would never have come to fruition, as they would have scheduled games for Thanksgiving weekend and had a championship game on the first Saturday of December.

Fast forward to early 2010.  The Big Ten Network was becoming a major success, and plans to expand the league were again in place.  Tom Osborne, Nebraska athletic director, was paying close attention.  The Cornhuskers were quickly becoming irritated with their status in the Big 12. 

The league did not share revenue equally like the Big Ten and SEC did and continue to do, creating a major gap between Texas and the rest of the league.  In addition, the league was close to naming Cowboys Stadium in Dallas as the permanent home for the Big 12 Championship Game, instead of rotating the game between Dallas, Houston, St. Louis and Kansas City.  Once Texas announced plans to start their own network, Nebraska was all but gone.

A perfect match was about to be made, as Nebraska was looking for a new home, and the Big Ten needed a tenant.  Colorado would soon also depart from the Big 12, and despite a solidarity pact between the 10 remaining schools, Texas A&M appears headed for the SEC next season.  It now appears that the Big Ten will be the only conference whose 2012 members are the same as they were in 2011.

Nebraska complained about the Big 12 state of affairs because they had an escape route in the Big Ten.  If Notre Dame had been in the Big Ten already, Nebraska would have had to grin and bear it.  They wouldn’t have fit in the Pac-10 or the SEC.  Like it or not, they would have been stuck in the Big 12.

Larry Scott would have still added two teams to the Pac-10, but likely would have invited BYU instead of Colorado to join Utah as new conference members, rather than plucking a team from a BCS conference.  Getting to 16 teams would have been too difficult, and it failed even with Nebraska already out of the Big 12.

So, as your football Saturday is overtaken by conference realignment talk, thank Notre Dame for this current mess.  College football reached new heights with 12-team conferences, and there was no reason to go further until the Big 12’s vulnerability was exposed.  When there’s no way out, you learn to live with each other.  Sadly, Notre Dame kept the doors open, and now, for college football fans, there’s no way out of this unfortunate mess.