Big Ten Expansion

[suitanim]

Nope...but it will offset the basketball losses.

Latest is that Texas A&M wants to move to the SEC and take Texas with them...which actually makes more sense than the Pac 10. Texas is balking because some of the SEC schools are sub-par academically. So that gums up the works on that...but since I haven't heard a peep about Notre Dame, I have to assume Nebraska will move ahead and officially sign on with the Big Ten today.

[oneforthetoe]

I am all for conferences adding teams to get to 12 to have a conference championship game but screw the super conferences. i am a SEC guy but i enjoy the fact that there are regional confernces. So OSU will play Michagan once every 2 or 3 years if OSU is in Big 10 east and Michigan is in the Big west? If the super confernce has 16 teams do you still schedule out of confence games? or is just limited to OSU scheduling akron (everybody needs a cup cake)? so you throw away the USC (or other big time game) to play Missouri?

I do understand you point about the "super conferences." However, to me, that is the only way we get a reasonably workable a national championship.

[MasterOfPuppets]

i'd luv to see WVU join the ACC ...the WVU / MD rivalry is a pretty heated one. especially right here on the border.

[venom]

Wow , the Big 12 is gone. It will be nice to see a Nebraska vs Michigan if the Huskers are accepted

[SteelMember]

it's officially official...


Nebraska to join Big Ten in 2011

Friday, June 11, 2010
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Big Ten has approved the University of Nebraska as its newest member, and the Cornhuskers will officially join the conference in 2011.

The vote was a mere formality after the school's board of regents passed a resolution this afternoon stating their intentions to join the conference.

Nebraska will become the 12th Big Ten member and first to join since Penn State in 1990.

But that does not mean the Big Ten is done. Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said Sunday the conference could "act and act again" on expansion.

[SteelersinCA]

At the very least the Big 10 has to have a conference championship now.

[MasterOfPuppets]

so do the teams leaving these conferences have to wait till the TV contracts are expired ? you would think the individual teams would have some sort of obligation to the conference. i mean if i was the head of a network and wanted the ACC basketball TV rights, i'd wanna know that includes the games between duke and NC for the duration of the contract. i'd be a bit upset if one or both teams moved to a different conference partway thru out the contract and i lost rights to those match ups.

[BigNastyDefense]

Welcome Nebraska!

[st33lersguy]

Wow , the Big 12 is gone. It will be nice to see a Nebraska vs Michigan if the Huskers are accepted

Not neccessarily, they will probably search for schools in the midmajor conferences, like what the big east did

[BigNastyDefense]

That depends on what Texas, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, and Oklahoma State do. If those guys all leave, or even three....then the Big 12 is dead.

[Texasteel]

it's officially official...


Nebraska to join Big Ten in 2011

Friday, June 11, 2010
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Big Ten has approved the University of Nebraska as its newest member, and the Cornhuskers will officially join the conference in 2011.

The vote was a mere formality after the school's board of regents passed a resolution this afternoon stating their intentions to join the conference.

Nebraska will become the 12th Big Ten member and first to join since Penn State in 1990.

But that does not mean the Big Ten is done. Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said Sunday the conference could "act and act again" on expansion.

There a few people down here that talk like Texas is a done deal.

[suitanim]

Delaney all but announced a Big Ten conference championship game in 2011...and there's no reason, not even more expansion, why it should not occur.

Hopefully that extra game will help with the insane lay-offs between the last conference games around Thanksgiving and the premium bowl games New Years day and after...this is a win-win-win for the Big Ten.

By the by, the Buckeyes will have a BRUTAL schedule in 2012...they'll play Cal, Cinci, UAB, Miami (OH) and almost certainly Nebraska in-conference.

[BigNastyDefense]

I don't see why we shouldn't have a conference championship game in 2011. The extra revenue, the Big 10 wouldn't be so "forgotten" because they'd also be in the limelight of a conference championship game. If you're not going to have one, then why expand to 12 teams?

[suitanim]

I don't think you read what I said correctly. It's pretty much a done deal They just need to dot the "i's" and cross the "t's".

And now any Big Ten team making the NC game will have run the gauntlet. It's still a tough conference to run the table in, but a Bo Pelini led resurgent Cornhuskers team added into the mix, PLUS having to play another tough in-conference game for the conference crown will remove any stigma the Big Ten has been carrying around for the last few years.

As a Buckeyes fans, I welcome it. I WANT the strongest possible schedule to play, both in and out of conference...

[BigNastyDefense]

I don't think you read what I said correctly. It's pretty much a done deal They just need to dot the "i's" and cross the "t's".

And now any Big Ten team making the NC game will have run the gauntlet. It's still a tough conference to run the table in, but a Bo Pelini led resurgent Cornhuskers team added into the mix, PLUS having to play another tough in-conference game for the conference crown will remove any stigma the Big Ten has been carrying around for the last few years.

As a Buckeyes fans, I welcome it. I WANT the strongest possible schedule to play, both in and out of conference...

I just reread what you said....yeah I read it wrong lol.

I love adding Nebraska and the fact that the Big 10 will have a CCG.

Ohio State, Penn State, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Iowa....the best teams in the Big 10. Once Michigan gets rid of DickRod after this season, they can become a top team again. Michigan State can also get into that conversation in the near future. There is no way people will be able to deny that the Big 10 is a power conference, and we won't be "forgotten" about when Conference Championship Games get played.

[suitanim]

With OSU, Michigan and Nebraska in the conference, you now have 3 of the top 5 all-time winning programs in college football history in one conference. If they can snag Notre Dame, they'll have 4 of 5. If they would have grabbed Texas AND ND, they'd lock up the whole top 5.

[xX-TSK-Xx]

I'm still hoping for Notre Dame. Maybe the Big Ten can grab them and a Big East/ACC team.

[BigNastyDefense]

I would love for ND to come to the Big 10. I mean hell, they play a lot of our teams in the football season anyhow. And they can still schedule USC every year if they wanted to as a OOC game.

[xX-TSK-Xx]

It appears the Big Ten's name will not change.

Big Ten seems unlikely to change name

By Adam Rittenberg

The Big Ten has some big-ticket items to tackle later this summer: division alignment, conference scheduling and a potential conference championship game, to name a few.

To me, these topics carry far more weight than deciding the name of the conference. But there's significant interest among fans and others about whether the Big Ten will still be the Big Ten when Nebraska joins in 2011. You've heard the jokes about the Big 11 for two decades, and as lame and unoriginal as they are, they're not going anywhere if the league keeps its name.

Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany has gone on record as saying he was willing to change the league's name when Penn State joined in 1990. He's still open to a change, but the decision rests solely with the Big Ten presidents and chancellors.

And it sounds like those folks have no plans to scrap the Big Ten brand.

Here's Minnesota president Robert Bruininks in a recent Q&A with The Minnesota Daily:

Any talks of a name change?

Bruininks: No, I think it’s quite certain that we will keep the brand of the Big Ten, and that’s a historic reference to a conference that has been remarkably stable.

Longtime Michigan sports broadcaster Tim Staudt recently talked with Michigan State president Lou Anna Simon, the chair of the Big Ten's Council of Presidents/Chancellors, who had this to say:

She does believe the name Big Ten will stand no matter how many schools are in the field eventually. She doesn't say it's 100 percent certain but she thinks the branding of the name will keep it "Big Ten."

The marketing community seems to agree with the Big Ten keeping its name, despite the mathematical inaccuracy in number of members.

Chuck Piper, who was a longtime vice president in charge of strategic services for Bailey Lauerman marketing agency, said the Big Ten brand has established too much equity to change names now.

“I think it really has nothing to do with how many teams are literally part of it,” Piper said. “You can’t be changing the brand every time you add or subtract. The Big Ten brings to mind a certain kind of entity, and that entity remains intact even though the players might change from time to time.”

I tend to agree. There's so much history in the Big Ten brand name, and you would lose something if it changed. Not to mention that the league's greatest new asset, a television network, has the Big Ten brand attached to it.

The logo has to change, but the brand shouldn't.

"The 'Ten' signifies an ideal, a way of conference life, more than it suggests the number of schools in the league. A name change is unnecessary."

Let the tired and annoying jokes continue, and keep the name in place.

http://espn.go.com/blog/bigten

[SteelCityMan786]

They will find a way to place a 12 in the logo probably. Much like they did with Penn State by placing the 11 in the name.

[Nadroj 20]

They will find a way to place a 12 in the logo probably. Much like they did with Penn State by placing the 11 in the name.

Whoever designed that was a genious, the Big Ten logo was always one of my favorites because of that lol