Big Ten Blame

[cousin oliver]

Penn State has always been a usurper, at least to me.

In 1984 the Supreme Court ruled that the NCAA’s attempt to control individual universities’ college football TV rights was an illegal restraint on trade; while the lawsuit was instigated by the University of Oklahoma, it was conferences that were the biggest beneficiary, as it simply made more sense to negotiate TV rights as a collective of similarly situated schools. This was a problem for independent Penn State; its traditional rivals like Pitt, Syracuse, and Boston College joined the basketball-focused Big East, leaving the football power to make overtures to the Big Ten.

The 1990 announcement that Penn State was joining the conference was a controversial one within the Big Ten itself. A fair number of the conference’s athletic directors were opposed to the move, and most of the coaches (it is university presidents that make the decision, and even there Penn State only received the minimum 7 votes in favor); I was a 10 year-old sports fan of a then-decrepit football team in Wisconsin that had nothing going for it other than Big Ten pride, and resented the idea that Penn State was going to come in and potentially dominate the conference.

It all feels quite quaint here in 2022, and not just because Wisconsin has had more football success than Penn State; the Big Ten added Nebraska in 2011, and Maryland and Rutgers in 2014, in both cases setting off seismic shifts in the college landscape. Both expansions made sense on the edges, both figuratively and literally: Nebraska was a traditional football power neighboring Iowa that, more importantly, gave the conference the 12 teams necessary to stage a lucrative conference championship game. Maryland and Rutgers bordered Pennsylvania — Penn State was a well-established member of the Big Ten by this point, in practice if not in my mind — and, more importantly, brought the Washington D.C. and New York City markets to the Big Ten’s groundbreaking cable TV network.

It is the latest expansion announcement, though, that blows apart the entire concept of a regional conference founded on geographic rivalries: UCLA and USC will join the Big Ten in 2024. They are not, needless to say, in a Big Ten border state:

Read more:  https://stratechery.com/2022/big-ten-blame/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

[meanrob]

It may take a while but this may end up being one big regret. Just like any business that expands hedging on it will increase revenue there are pitfalls to that. 
 

Everybody can’t win in these conferences. When most of these teams are going between 5-7 and 7-5 and attendance and ratings plateau or drop, we’ll see what happens. 
 

Travel costs, unfamiliar teams, losing rivalries, and geographic concerns won’t be what kills this, it’ll be apathy. 

[keith]

2 minutes ago, NT80 said:

I think this was a response from the Big10 Presidents to what the SEC had done the previous year in snagging OU and Texas.   All year long they had to hear and read about the SEC being the greatest and best SuperConference.   So, they decided what were the next best two programs and media markets remaining...and selected USC and UCLA.

According to everything I've read, it was USC and UCLA that initiated the overtures to the B1G.  The B1G was not looking to expand to the west coast and this configuration may have never occurred to them if the two LA schools had not reached out.  No telling if this is really the way it went down, but that's how it's being portrayed in the media.

[NT80]

This was a competitive decision to keep pace with the SEC, regardless of who initiated it.   Arms race and Membership race.    Next will be fights over Notre Dame, Clemson, Florida St...

[southsideguy]

Nebraska joined the big 10 and was never heard of again.  Witness protection program maybe?

[untjim1995]

2 hours ago, NT80 said:

This was a competitive decision to keep pace with the SEC, regardless of who initiated it.   Arms race and Membership race.    Next will be fights over Notre Dame, Clemson, Florida St...

The B1G knows that it has to go West--my guess is that Stanford, UW, and Oregon are absolutes and that ND is their dream for #4. Then, they will work on adding in 4 more. Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and Kansas are all AAU and would represent a full 4 time zone national conference, with 24 teams, from LA to NYC. 

The ACC schools are stuck until 2036 because of their GOR being incredibly steep. The SEC will wait on them and then get the schools they want, namely, Pitt, UVa, Va Tech, UNC, Duke, Clemson, FSU, and Miami.