Big Ten Expansion – The Big Ten Model

As the Big Ten exists today, there are ten large publicly funded state schools and one small sectarian private school (Northwestern). The larger public schools are also considered for the most part members of the public ivy unofficial group and several of them are land grant institutions. So that will more than likely be the type of school the Big Ten will bring in. Here again are the candidates we still have on the list.

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

SEC
Kentucky

Big 12
Kansas
Iowa State
Nebraska
Missouri
Texas

The only two schools that fall into the public ivy category are Rutgers and Texas. Ironically, these are the two that are the farthest from the center of the conference geographically. Pittsburgh has also been occasionally mentioned at this same level of academic standing, so we can probably lump them in this group for now.

Four of the schools are also land grant institutions; Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa State, and Kentucky.

The three with private affiliations are Notre Dame, Syracuse, and Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh became publicly affiliated in 1966 but prior to that it was a private institution.

One of the things that the Big Ten publics have is that all of them are part of a system of universities throughout their state. All of the public schools on this list meet that criteria. When you factor in all of these qualifications with the AAU item from the first essay the following schools have the most similarities to the current Big Ten model:

Rutgers – AAU, Public Ivy, system school
Texas – AAU, Public Ivy, system school
Iowa State – AAU, system school, land grant
Nebraska – AAU, system school, land grant
Missouri – AAU, system school, land grant
Pittsburgh – AAU, Public Ivy

After that we are just reaching. So we need to look at the others and see which ones realistically are going to be interested in leaving their current situation and coming to the Big Ten. Otherwise they are a waste of our time.

Notre Dame is the golden ticket according to the upper people at the Big Ten. If they can get them, they will. So they stay on the list.

Syracuse is a private institution and doesn’t fit the model at all. Plus when other schools left the Big East recently they publicly vilified the “offenders” and even sued them. I don’t think they are leaving the Big East, but it wouldn’t be the first time that dollars trumped loyalty in athletics. I’m going to take them off the list.

Kansas and Kentucky are very similar. Basketball schools in football conferences. They get a boatload of cash from their conference for the exploits of other teams and then dominate a very thin conference on the hardwood. Presumably they would get fairly equal dollars from football in the Big Ten, but their basketball teams would not be nearly as dominant and have much greater competition. Doesn’t sound like a great idea to me either. They’re both gone.

West Virginia is a wildcard in my mind. I could easily see them leaving the Big East because they just don’t have the ties to the conference that a lot of the other schools have. It was rumored they might leave for the ACC a few years back. But if they leave surely their football team would not have nearly the success, but they would have a larger dollar pool to draw from with the Big Ten. I could see it either way with them, so they stay for now.

Then there were 8.

Advertisement