Big Ten and expansion

Sorry for the lack of a post for the last month. Life has been busy. But something has come up that I want to talk about that doesn’t involve golf.

The Big Ten Conference made big news for something that occurred off of the field of play recently. They announced that they would be looking to expand once again from their current eleven members to twelve. Immediately the question that comes to mind is who will be the new member?

What I am going to do is go through a series of essays to look at the possible candidates and what they bring to the table for membership into the Big Ten and see if we can come up with a real answer for them. Though we don’t really know what schools the conference is looking at we can probably compile a pretty good list of schools based on prior flirtations and what schools are in the same geographic area. I will break them down based on what conference the schools are currently affiliated with.

Big East
Notre Dame (Independent in football)
Pittsburgh
Syracuse
Rutgers
Cincinnati
Louisville
West Virginia

SEC
Kentucky

Big 12
Kansas
Kansas State
Iowa State
Nebraska
Missouri
Texas

Others
Memphis
A MAC School

Several of these schools have been rumored or confirmed as having interest in joining the Big Ten in the past. The list may actually be smaller or even larger. There may also be some on here that catch your eye and make you say, “No way!” Well, we will explore all of these in some fashion. But let’s see if we can thin the herd a little first.

The Big Ten is going to want someone that has already shown some level of aptitude at the top level of athletic competition. I believe that will automatically eliminate any school from the MAC. I have seen some float out the idea that the Big Ten could pick a school and groom it into competition, but I think that would be a waste of their time and would not be seen as a legitimate move on their part.

Memphis, I think, can also be eliminated. The school is actively trying to get into a big six conference. But the Big Ten is not the place. Their football program is abysmal and aside from basketball how would they compete with the Big Ten. Also they are under a lot of heat right now with the NCAA for the Calipari years. I doubt the Big Ten wants to bring that into the league. Another factor against Memphis is that it is not located in a state that currently has a Big Ten team or in an adjoining state.

You may look at that last comment and notice that Texas is on the list. Last time I checked Texas was not located anywhere near a state with a Big Ten team. But bear with me on this. Texas was very open about pursuing an affiliation with the Big Ten or the Pac Ten when the Southwest Conference broke up. They were persuaded to join into the Big 12 though. But that may be something to look at. And if the Big Ten were to get them, that would be a wake up call to the rest of college athletics. If nothing else for the WOW factor, let’s leave them on the list.

The next area to look at is the academic arena. You and I both know that athletics is behind this and nothing else, but there are certain things the Big Ten seems to at least pay lip service to, one of which is that their members are part of the American Association of Universities. The AAU is a group of universities that are large research centers. All of the current members are part of this organization. And other than Notre Dame I don’t think there is anyway a school gets into the Big Ten without being a part of this organization. With that being said, we can now tell Cincinnati, Louisville and Kansas State good bye. As with the previous round there is an exception here as well. I think we should keep West Virginia on the list because they are a well-thought of research university that isn’t a part of the AAU. Also, Kentucky is not part of the AAU, but something tells me that if the Big Ten could swipe away a school from the rival SEC, they would love nothing better. So those two stay on the list for now and we are left with 11 possible options. In our next post we will look at the university structures themselves and see which ones fit with the current Big Ten model.

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