Big Ten Expansion

[patrickgpe]

i personally hate all of this realignment that is ignoring certain geographical areas. WVU doesn't belong in the big 12. Combining the MWC and the Big East is stupid.

 

That being said I think the Big East should try to get A-10 schools like Xavier and Temple, and C-USA schools like Memphis and Central Florida. I don't see the value of adding Texas schools like Houston or SMU.

Houston is a huge market for their TV network. Why they aren't going after UCF is beyond me.

I believe they are. I thought they were looking at schools like Boise St, Army, and Central Florida.

[MJLiverock]

i personally hate all of this realignment that is ignoring certain geographical areas. WVU doesn't belong in the big 12. Combining the MWC and the Big East is stupid.

 

That being said I think the Big East should try to get A-10 schools like Xavier and Temple, and C-USA schools like Memphis and Central Florida. I don't see the value of adding Texas schools like Houston or SMU.

Houston is a huge market for their TV network. Why they aren't going after UCF is beyond me.

Houston may be a huge TV market in general but it may not be so much for their network. I would imagine most of the college football fans in Houston are Texas, Texas A&M, LSU, etc. fans and Houston and the Big East isn't going to be must see TV. I looked back at the NYT article I linked on the previous page in this topic and they identified Houston as having about 100,000 fans, which is pretty low in comparison to WVU at around 900,000 because they are watched by their whole state.

They should even be able to call some mash up of the Big East , Mountain West and Conference USA a super conference, more like a mediocre conference.

 

[patrickgpe]

i personally hate all of this realignment that is ignoring certain geographical areas. WVU doesn't belong in the big 12. Combining the MWC and the Big East is stupid.

 

That being said I think the Big East should try to get A-10 schools like Xavier and Temple, and C-USA schools like Memphis and Central Florida. I don't see the value of adding Texas schools like Houston or SMU.

Houston is a huge market for their TV network. Why they aren't going after UCF is beyond me.

Houston may be a huge TV market in general but it may not be so much for their network. I would imagine most of the college football fans in Houston are Texas, Texas A&M, LSU, etc. fans and Houston and the Big East isn't going to be must see TV. I looked back at the NYT article I linked on the previous page in this topic and they identified Houston as having about 100,000 fans, which is pretty low in comparison to WVU at around 900,000 because they are watched by their whole state.

They should even be able to call some mash up of the Big East , Mountain West and Conference USA a super conference, more like a mediocre conference.

 

i agree, i see no benefit to the few remaining big east football schools to allow a bunch of average teams from small conferences in. It increases the number but its not going to be remotely close to how the big east has been since the c-usa schools joined the big east a few years ago.

[DuWayne Steurer]

Geography plays absolutely no role in how conferences are aligned now. None. Boise St in the Big East?

 

I'm actually kind of glad the Big 10 (appears to be) is happy to stand pat with 12 teams here. They added one quality program, to allow themselves a conference title game, and that's it.

 

The rest of the BCS conferences have rumors near daily about comings and goings. This morning ESPN says the WVU to Big 12 move is 'on hold' now as well.

[igor67]

To the extent that ESPN now holds undue influence over college football 'realignment' is the perfect microcosm. Lot's and lots of hyperventilating, rumor, speculation, weeks and weeks of news stories ridiculously overpromised impacts. Yet at the end most of these moves amount to a lot of reshuffling of deck chairs. And frankly by largely staying out of the fray and staying to an actual strategy the Big Ten looks a lot better.