Big 10 Getting Serious About Expansion

Chip Brown mentioned this morning the possibility of Texas moving to the Big 10 for football only, and staying in the Big 12 for every other sport. That seems…. strange.

I see no reason why 12 should be the magic number,. If conferences started to look at 14 or even 16 members then it makes it a lot easier for Texas to move politicaly and financially. If say, tamu, texas tech and colorado went to the old pac 10 along with Texas you’d have some closer road games and a very stout conference. They wouldn’t want tech or maybe tamu but this is about survival and TV contracts.

I am a little leery of chasing the money. It may not turn out to be as big a windfall as we think. Suppose we join the Big Ten, and it adds a conference championship game. Our path to a BCS game and the national title just got a lot harder. Fewer BCS trips goes on the negative side of the ledger. Seasons perceived to be mediocre by the fan base lead to less interest. Does attendance fall off after a couple of 3 or 4-loss seasons? Do we sell less licensed apparel? Fewer BCS trips also increases the pressure to cheat. My concern may be unfounded, but I remember when we chased the TV money and exposure by opening on the road something like 7 out of 8 years in a row. We lost most of those games, which cost us bowl appearances, which cost us money, exposure, and practice time.

Finally, what are we going to spend it on? Athletic departments are the only entities on Earth with a larger appetite for money than the federal governent. There is no amount of money they cannot spend. Will we use this largesse to lower ticket prices, or will we hire an Associate Athletic Director In Charge of Carrying Coach Brown’s Headset and give them a country club membership and a car allowance?

I don’t know. We have things pretty good right now. Besides, if we’re going to jump ship, I’d much rather go to Palo Alto in November than West Lafayette, Indiana.

Texas Tech to the Pac 10. Not going to happen.

So we are way behind the SEC and Big 10 for TV money, but didn’t we generate the most revenue in college athletics by far last year? I don’t understand why we need to change things up for more dollars when we are making the most money. How would this move for TV money impact our already premier earning powers?

I’ll hang up and listen.

When will the Big 10 be relocating their offices to the DFW area?

I’m praying this doesn’t happen…

Nordberg –
 
Is “strange” a code word for irretrievably stupid? That’s a shockingly dumb suggestion even for a journalist.
 
The Clapper –
 
Tech isn’t attractive for the Pac 10. That’s crazy.
 
JUICE -
  
Reread the CIC stuff. This isn’t just about the athletic department. Extending your risk averse reasoning, we should join the Mountain West. We’ll go 13-0 every year and will be guaranteed an at large BCS game. Program success! And I’m not exactly shivering at the prospect of playing Indiana, Illinois, Purdue & Michigan State. ALthough I would be when the games are played on the road in November.
 
I’ve long expressed the idea that a combined Pac 10/Big 12 super conference (essentially the most viable 16 teams from each with a heavy weight towards the Pac 10) is more preferable than the Big 10 long term, but I don’t dismiss what the Big 10 can mean in immediate revenue recognition and CIC money for the University.

Scipio – Who would be your 16 teams from that Pac10/Big 12 super conference?

Academically, the PAC-10 is certainly no slouch either.

While I would prefer trips to the west coast, either conference makes sense and will be a very large step above what we have going in the Big XII. However, we will have to learn that we are not the primary decision maker and driver of the conference if / when we leave the Big XII…that will present a steep learning curve.

That said, I agree we have an easier road to the BCS now, and these changes mean we better win the Big XII in 2010, and then play for it all the following year (winning three Big XII titles in a row).

“Extending your risk averse reasoning, we should join the Mountain West. We’ll go 13-0 every year and will be guaranteed an at large BCS game. Program success!”

Exactly. One of the most tired arguments is the ’we’re really good at every sport right now so we shouldn’t change anything’ mantra that the Geoff Ketchum’s of the world manage to shriek out between gasps of air. It’s just frustratingly short sighted along with being pusillanimous. As if we’re going to revert to Michigan State status under the tremendous stress of a Big Ten or Pac Ten schedule. Some of our fans seem to look for any excuse to sob like CTJ when Casey Hampton fisted him or however that story goes.

Texas wields more power right now than any other football program in the country (probably athletic program in the country). Through TV and licensing, ticket sales, etc we make nauseating amounts of money; we have enough left over to give back to the school. The Big 10 + Texas will not compete with the SEC. It just won’t. There may be more money in a jump to the Big 10, but otherwise its a lateral move at best, and a step back at worst. Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.

The Big 12 is breaking, but its not broken yet…especially for Texas. Why would we want to blow our sustantial negotiating position by jumping at the first offer we get? Texas should stay calm and wait for the emergence of a 14 or 16 team “super-conference” not just jump to a declining Big 10 conference. In fact, Texas should pioneer the super-conference. That should be a condition for any negotiation with our program. There is no reason to panic and make a move right now. That will cost the program in the long-run. We can do better than the Big 10.

Pac 10 is a far better cultural fit. The Big XII is a very weak conference overall. It’s members don’t feel much loyalty to each other. Austin and Boulder/Denver are the only two sophisticated modern cities. The major tv markets are in Texas. It’s ripe to be picked apart by other conferences then it’s question of if not when Teas moves.

HipHop -
 
I don’t know if the magic number is 12, 14, 16, but…
 
I’d want to preserve these core 8 from the Pac 10:
 
Arizona
Arizona State
Stanford
Cal
Oregon
Washington
USC
UCLA
 
Oregon State – They probably take a hike in a 12 scenario, not 14 or 16.
  
Goodbye to Wazzou. Mountain West for you.
 
Add Texas.
 
Now choose from:
 
BYU
Colorado
OU
Kansas
A&M
Nebraska
 
Maybe we think about Utah if we’re trying to hit 16.
 
It’s then pretty straightforward to create a BigPac 12, 14, 16 West/East or North/South split.

I don’t think the Pac 10 wants Tech as I said. Once politics gets involved strange things can happen. ASU is not exactly an academic powerhouse. In the end, I expect we’ ll see major conferences for football ,maybe basketball ,and then more regional conferences for the lesser sports.

“However, we will have to learn that we are not the primary decision maker and driver of the conference if / when we leave the Big XII…that will present a steep learning curve.”

We would not need to throw our weight around in the Pac 10 or Big 10. Those conferences do not have jacknapes like NU who cry over losing partial qualifiers.

ASU is a better school than Tech. Washington State would have been a better comparator. That’s not particularly relevant anyway. They have resources and TV sets that are 3X Texas Tech.

“Is "strange" a code word for irretrievably stupid? That’s a shockingly dumb suggestion even for a journalist.”

Chip Brown has been eating moron brownies recently. Must be something in the air at Orangebloods, because he used to be good.

It seems that we have more interest in the Big 10 than the Pac 10. I think the CIC plays a big part in this. I could envision a Big 12 breakup that would look like this. Texas, Mizzou and Notre Dame to Big 10. A&M, OU to the SEC. Nebraska, Colorado, KU, Utah or BYU to the Pac 10. Tech, Ok. St., Iowa St., Baylor and Kansas St. to the Mountain West or CUSA.

Eventually, something is going to happen. Whether it’s in 2 years or 10. The Big 12 and Pac 10 will have to change in order to keep up with the Big 10 and SEC. Unless they can work out some sort of merger, as Scipio mentioned, it doesn’t seem like the Big 12 is in a real good spot as far as attracting teams for expansion. Other than Arkansas, I’m not sure any other big schools would have any interest. Least of all, ND, who along with Texas are the two that every conference wants the most.

What’s best for us? Who knows? I’d like to see an Arky swap for Baylor and a Utah, Louisville or someone else swap for Iowa St. Of course we’d still need our requisite private school. BYU or Cincy, maybe? Regardless, without a Pac 10 merger, you can see that expansion for Big 12 doesn’t offer a lot of major positives.

This bears watching. Change is coming eventually.

“A&M, OU to the SEC.”

God I hope not.

I don’t want anything to do with that academic wasteland.

What JUICE said.

The CIC is a confederation that does add value but is not as integral to winning research awards as some have made it out to be. The $6 billion figure is the sum of the R&D awards from member orgs. CIC might facilitate multi-university applications that “but for” the CIC would not have happened, but it is not that big an organization.

A few years ago there was an initiative where the Big 12 sought to create a CIC type organization. It fell apart for a variety of reasons, but I will say that culturally it was very difficult to get university leaders from low-ranking research universities to think about collaborating with Texas and Texas A&M and Colorado. Quite frankly, the majority of presidents and VPRs at Big 12 universities were paranoid that they would get the short end of the stick in any deal involving Texas or Texas A&M. At least on the football field they hold onto the belief that on any given Saturday they can win. In a competitive R&D arena, the resource disparaties and depth of talent is far greater between a K-State and Texas A&M than it is in the athletics arena.

The Big 10 gives Texas and Texas A&M like-minded peers (again, from a research perspective, which has nothing to do with the Corps). I could see Nebraska and Kansas coming along because they have national brands in football and basketball, respectively, and have medical schools tied to the main campus in a manner that amplifies their research profile. They are not Big 10 quality today but they could get there. Mizzou also could fit, if for no other reason than to get to 16 and preserve/accentuate their natural rivalries with Kansas and Illinois.

I would anticipate the PAC-10 making the first move by getting to 12 with Utah and Colorado. Losing the Denver market will give Texas the moral authority to lead a small group negotiation with the Big 10. Any small group will include A&M, both for political and research purposes (forget about the Texas Legislature…when $36 billion of federal R&D dollars eminate from Washington DC, Aggies and Longhorns leverage their 2 Senators more effectively when they are on the same page and not squabbling over conference affiliations).

A “Big 10 West” with 8 teams would have nominal impact on travel and all situate in the central time zone. Take Texas, A&M, Nebraska, Mizzou, Kansas, Iowa, Illinois and Northwestern in the west and play seven divsion games annually. Add two interdivision games per year and you end up playing the remaining Big 10 schools once every 4 years (with a road trip to the shoe, the big house and happy valley once every 8 years). This allows for three nonconference games, which could include the RRR in Dallas.

IMO, there is no way whatsoever that OU and Texas stay in the same conference if there is any kind of major realignment. Culturally, OU belongs in the SEC, and not just because they treat NCAA rules as obstacles rather than principles. With the exception of Florida, Georgia and Vanderbilt, OU’s research peers are in the SEC. The UT administration did not respect how Boren handled the Oregon game aftermath, where he acted in a manner that should have been beneath a university president. UT certainly didn’t appreciate how the conference handled the 2008 officiating and tie-breaker situation. This isn’t firsthand knowledge, but I have no doubt that Bill Powers believes he can reason more effectively with Big 10 presidents than the majority of his peers in the Big 12.

“Geoff Ketchum’s of the world”?

I’m not sure I’ve ever been insulted on an Internet site. Until now!

In the event of a merger of some kind, what do you we do with Oklahoma and A&M? Playing OU as a non-conference game every year was fine when Rice, TCU, and SMU were guaranteed wins. Do we want to play in a stronger conference and also lock up two non-conference dates with an annual game against a perennial power and a season-maker/coach saver jihad game? For me, preserving the OU game, where it is played now, is the number one priority in any scenario. Do they have to move with us for this to happen?

Horn In Exile:
 
Some good stuff from you, though I take exception to a couple of assumptions…
 
“would anticipate the PAC-10 making the first move by getting to 12 with Utah and Colorado.”
 
People who champion Utah may as well champion Boise State or TCU. This is about dollars, resources, tv sets, being “big time” – not having a scrappy football team. Even a BYU makes more sense, whatever the cultural implications.
 
The rest of your Big 10 argument makes perfect sense to me. Well done. Though a Nebraska to the Big 10 does attack their academic exclusivity argument.
 
OU and Texas can share a conference if that league (it could only be an expanded Pac 10) decides they need a super-conference format. The notion that a Utah gives you more than OU is pretty tough to argue. As for culture of cheating, USC laps OU currently. And Oregon is now participating in that race. And the Pac 10 – unlike the Big 10 – already has some academic weak sisters.
 
No question that when Bill Powers picks up the phone to call the Big 10, he’s going to be dealing with an adult. That has to have some appeal to Texas.

“For me, preserving the OU game, where it is played now, is the number one priority in any scenario. Do they have to move with us for this to happen?”

Playing OU annually won’t even be in the top 3 to 5 priorities. Personally, I’d be perfectly content to flip them the middle finger and stop giving them annual exposure to the DFW area that has fueled their program for decades.

Scipio -

I’ll concede the TV sets analysis on Utah, and that is probably a dealbreaker for the PAC-10. It all depends on how they prioritize research reputations vs TV revenues.

In defense of the Utes, it is a competitive, respected research university, especially in engineering. They’re doing some very innovative things in tech transfer (led by a former UT-Austin tech transfer guy) and have a very progressive state program for venture capital investment stimulus. BYU, on the other hand, suffers from the Baylor syndrome in the research world – private university, conservative religious affiliation.

By the numbers, the U of Utah has more R&D expenditures than Mizzou and more than K-State and O-State combined. They have 3x the R&D expenditures of Notre Dame and 10X the R&D of BYU. They would rank 4th in the Big 12 behind A&M, Texas and Colorado.

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf09303/content.cfm?pub_id=3871&id=2

JUICE Geoff was oafishly parroting that line of thinking on the radio here in Austin yesterday which is why I phrased it that way and probably why I’m as exasperated over the argument as I am.

It does not get too cold in most of Big 10 Country until mid-November.

The paranoid reaction of the OU fanbase to the Big 10’s overtures to Texas tells me that it is a great idea for Texas.

Horn in Exile –
 
I get that Utah may be doing some interesting specialized things, but I think you’re viewing this with a narrow lens. They’re the #2 TV draw in their own state and their stadium seats 35K.
 
3x R&D expenditure of Notre Dame is an interesting stat, but given that Notre Dame laps Utah 15 times in terms of student quality and academic reputation that’s a bit like KSU always championing their # of Marshall Scholars or OU and their National Merit Scholars statistics. They’re purposefully strong in one area to mask weakness across the board, hoping that you’ll make generalized assumptions about the university that match their one outstanding trait. The old Soviet Union had a space program but couldn’t manufacture razor blades, toilet paper, or shoes that fit.
 
BYU is different from Baylor in a number of areas, but I’m not interested in the sidetrack.
 
Anyway – the bottom line is that Utah isn’t ready for prime time.

Scipio – the judges are ringing your bell like a cash register at the Burlington Coat Factory (except when DeMarcus Granger is shopping), so I’ll concede my defense of the Utes in exchange for an honorable PAC-10 mention and an occasional BCS game.

Priorities
1. Win
2. Fuck OU
3. More parking?

Scipio,

I get that Utah is not ready for prime time and agree with your points, but why do think BYU is?

The immediate Big10 dollars are certainly attractive. However, these dollars are driven by TV sets and the rust belt states populations are relatively static (Mich is actually falling) whereas Texas is the fastest growing of the larger states, which makes it even more attractive for the future.

Dunno if the school leaders look too far forward, but we might be better marrying higher growth states in the south and west, if the union is to be for many decades.

t1climb1
 
35,000 students. Bigger and better progam infrastructure (real stadium etc), linked to a fast-growing religion, Salt Lake market, secondary market appeal in the West due to LDS diaspora, solid academics, massive financial commitment to school’s success by their alums (who link its health to the health of the church).
 
They’re also sitting in a sweet spot of demography: Western USA, heavy influence in Polynesia (arguably the best per capita football players on the planet), religion growing by leaps and bounds.
 
BYU may be seen as stodgy and conservative – and it is – but Mormonism is self-preserving and evolutionary. It’s a revelatory religion and the Prophet can change the LDS direction on a key issue in the time it take to issue a press release.
 
If you chart BYU’s positive attributes (for our purposes) on a trend line, it’s a steep rise.

Scipio – I would love to be a part of that conference. Make it happen.

US News etc has conference academic rankings.

The top 5 in the pac 10 are: Stanford-4, Cal-21, UCLA-25, USC-27, Dub U-41. After that it drops off precipitously.

The Big Televen is pretty solid all the way down with a lowest ranking of 71.

The Big 12 is pathetic. UT-47, A&M-64 and it goes down fom there. OU is in 9th place at 108. Mizzou may not look that good at 96. Maybe the Big Televen is faking interest in Mizzou to stampede the horns.

Scipio loves the Mormons up until a polyg attempts to murder him in his sleep based on a revelation he had that was in response to a Scipio post entitled “The Ghost of Joseph Smith calls the 2015 Texas-BYU Game”

This article is worth reading:

http://fantake.com/forums/topic.php?id=747#post-4698

Seems like this may be the crowning achievement in DeLoss’ career or at least viewed as such by the man himself. He’s playing both sides (Pac 10 / Big 10) vs. the middle (Big 12).

It’s good to have the most financially successful athletic department with assurances of upside irrespective of choice. Just optimizing.

We go one of the other places (Pac or Big) and create a new kick ass conference or we stick it to these Big 12 yokels for a further unbalanced rev share, using the cudgel of a threat of departure.

All the while we keep ourselves available for the Scipio 16…

It’s good to be the belle of the ball.

The Big XII was a life boat, no more. It’s boring, the cities are dull, the academics are non-exceptional.

People have no idea of the financial crunch that’s about to hit major universities. State support is down and will stay down. Endowments are hurting. Universities are operating on business models the Soviets would admire. The good times can’t last. They have to chase revenues and cut costs. It might be time for a version of the old SWC for baseball and other sports. Academic pedigres are important to faculty but in a football super conference, TV revenue will drive the train.

Have the Big 10 take UT, A&M, and Notre Dame to form the first 14-team super-conference and call it a day.

I’m with Scip’s plan, anything to get more Somoans on our team…preferably on the o line.

If the Big 10 is looking forward and wants to eventually expand to 16 teams — which I believe is the case — then maybe Missouri is the stalking horse that makes taking Texas easier to accomplish.

Then go get Syracuse and UConn from the Big East. And as much as they like to posture about their independence, Notre Dame has to notice how they are being leveraged out of relevance.

Maybe NBC/Comcast encourages Notre Dame to join a Big 16 as the centerpiece of their all-sports network.

Despite the argumetns made by Scipio, the Pac 10 aint taking BYU, bad cultutal fit. They are a good target for someone though.

Declining midwest or not, adding Texas (and A&M) along with Missouri to the Big X(11) to make a Big 14, would make for an incredible TV draw and the networks would be willing to pay huge money for a deal with the conference. According to Nielsen, you would have the following (the number is the US media market ranking according to Nielsen)

Big 14

2 Chicago
4 Philadelphia
5 Dallas
10 Houston
11 Detroit
15 Minneapolis
18 Cleveland/Akron
21 St. Louis
23 Pittsburgh
25 Indianapolis
32 Kansas City
33 Cincinnati
34 Columbus
37 San Antonio
39 Harrisburg/Lancaster, PA
41 Grand Rapids/Kalamazoo
49 Austin

Right now the SEC has:

8 Atlanta
10 Houston (LSU)
14 Tampa/St. Petersburg
17 Miami
19 Orlando
36 Greenville, SC
40 Birmingham, AL
47 Jacksonville
50 Louisville

The Pac 10 has:

2 Los Angeles
6 San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose
12 Phoenix
13 Seattle/Tacoma
20 Sacramento
22 Portland
28 San Diego

Fascinating discussion—thanks, everyone. Clapper is right about the economics of big schools tightening as well as the temporary role of the Big XII. I am glad to see Texas taking an active stance in looking ahead.

The Clapper hits on a very important point: How this stuff relates to funding the university system as a whole. We already have to fight the Leg tooth and nail for every single penny. What’s more, alumni donations are going to be dropping pretty steadily over the next couple of generations.

For one, there just aren’t as many Gen Xers and younger as there are Baby Boomers.

For another, we’re facing long-term structural economic issues that are going to limit ability of the post-Boomers to donate money in any way approaching the current or recent-past rates.

If the University – and the Legislature – have any pretensions to continuing Texas’ role as a prime driver of innovation and economic activity for the state, they’re going to have to get really damn creative and ruthless at finding new streams of money.

You said it better than me, Davola. Sorry for the preemptive pushing of the button before spell check on the last post.

From a strictly personal opinion, I would vastly prefer the Poon of the Pac-10 over the Poon of the Big 10.

That was obviously not getting serious about expansion, but that has to be considered from a fan’s perspective.

First question — is there any way the legislature lets Texas go somewhere without the Aggies? (And to a lesser extent, Tech and Baylor)? So let’s assume we are a package deal with the Aggies.

I like Scip’s idea. Kind of a reverse ACC raid of the Big East. A Norman invasion of the West Coast which allows us to set up camp and recruit out of California too. UT, A&M and Colorado with a 4th (BYU?) raid the Pac Ten and make it a 14 team conference. Nice.

I don’t see the Pac 10 kicking out only one or two schools, screwing over a Wazzu or Oreg St. The only way that happens I think is if UT, A&M, and CU merge with the southern 6 schools in the Pac 10, and the Oregon and Washington schools merge with parts of the Big XII North with the dregs ending up in the Mountain West.

Although a 12 team conference of:
Stanford, Cal, UCLA, USC, Arizona St, Arizona, Texas, Texas A&M, BYU, Colorado would be pretty sweet.

And Pac 10 over Big 10 every time.

Exactly. A state school is not going to be booted from the Pac 10 unless an entirely new conference is formed. The Washington and Oregon legislatures would never let that happen. The members would resist that as well.

I’m fairly confident that A&M will be able to go with Texas wherever UT lands. I don’t think it’s a requirement, but that they’ll pass the review as well.

HoustonHorn,
I don’t think just listing the market size is germane… I can tell you that I lived for a long while in the Bay Area, where two of the Pac10’s teams reside, and although it’s definitely a huge media market, college sports was barely a pimple on the collective consciousness. To be honest, I don’t think Bears football is even all that big a deal on the Berkeley campus itself.

It’s kind of like that Big10 expansion commentary where someone touts Rutgers as bringing in the NYC market. Or like Rice/UH delivering the Houston market. Just cause you’re from there don’t make ’em care.

That’s the big advantage the SEC has – in its markets, whether large or small, they really, really care. And that’s what Texas brings to the table, huge markets with really good interest/enthusiasm levels.

The difference with the Big10 is that they have their own network. So they get paid when regions have to add them to the cable lineup. So even if Chicago as a whole doesn’t care about Northwestern (not familiar really, but I’m guessing that the Windy City is a huge hotbed for Notre Dame), as long as they have to carry the Big10 Network locally, the ratings are not as huge a factor. Don’t know really how much difference all this makes, but I think it begins to explain why the Pac10 and Big12 TV money pales in comparison to the SEC/Big10.

The Bobs said:

February 12th, 2010 at 5:38 pm

HoustonHorn,

Big ten is really big in Chicago, besides the University of Illinois has so many alums in Chicago, most of the other big ten schools send many graduates to Chicago. Northwestern is not the important part, as you point out Texas delivers Houston not Rice.

.

I come late to this thread, but as somebody who works in the non profit science world, I’m already seeing UT expand it’s horizon’s in DC on research funding, and I think Exile makes a good point about A&M: they have to come with Texas from a political unanimity standpoint in DC. In some ways, the state delegation is only now getting over the loss of the SSC almost two decades ago and the anti-intellectual bias of the last decade. It’s like the delegation woke up in the last three years and realized that while UT might be full of egg headed liberals, it creates insane amounts of jobs, and treating it like shit is not in a Member of Congresses best interest. Plus, the A&M grads in Congress already have a difficult time doing anything on behalf of UT, so further alienating them would be a very, very bad move.

I thought A&M more culturally aligned with the SEC in football matters, but from a political standpoint in bringing home federal pork, you simply can not split the two schools.

The Bobs

I think that Midwest attitudes towards football more closely mirror the attitude in Texas/Oklahoma than they do the west coast/LA/SF. The SEC states are definitely more passionate, but you can’t deny the huge number of television sets a Big 10(11) + Texas + Missouri would have. The Big 10 currently has some huge schools, Michigan, Penn State, Michigan State, Ohio State, Minnesota, Wisconsin – all are very large universities. Illinois, Purdue, Iowa, and Indiana aren’t small. This by itself dictates that a large number of graduates in big midwest cities are going to care about college football. This in turn leads to local coverage for Big 10 football which increases interest among the local population.

The huge television market, along with the academics/research make the Big 10(11) a natural fit, and I think it makes more sense for them to add three teams instead of just one, especially since I don’t see Texas being able to leave without taking A&M with us.

The biggest issue, in my opinion, is travel costs for secondary sports. Football and Basketball would be no big deal, but when you are paying for the Baseball team, Softball team, Track Team, and everyone else to fly to Pennsylvania/Ohio/Michigan it really adds up. The Athletic Department would still come out ahead in the deal, but the individual [secondary] sports would lose quite a bit more money than they already are.

srr50 has the right idea. Big 16 paired with NBC/Comcast sounds like a winner. Add Texas, A&M, ND, Pitt and Syracuse. Would that be sexy enough to draw ND? Best financial, athletic and academic grouping, imo.

The best-case scenario is for Texas to join the pruned Pac-8 that Scipio outlined above. You will then have a true counter-balance to the SEC in terms of recruitment opportunities, TV viewership, attractive places to play (from a player & fan perspective), and some very well stocked recruiting grounds. A big network (Fox Sports – which is LA based) would love to pony up $$$$ to tie up that conference and gain a sizeable footprint in college football. Opening up the Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, and Seattle markets to Texas is quite attractive for recruitment – yes, I know that Texas makes annual forays out west to poach a few recruits – but that is different than going out west with a consistent recruiting team making the pitch that you will get to play IN FRONT of family and friends at Texas when we travel home to CA, AZ, or WA. What also is missed if you do not mention tertiary sports (read: basketball, baseball, track, etc.) is that the Pac-10 has quite a few national champions in the "other" sports and thereby bolsters the low profile sports at Texas. (What is interesting is that if you look at the Pac-10, Big-10, and Big-12 in terms of national champions for all sports, the distribution of schools winning titles is far more even in the Pac-10 and Big-10 than in the Big-12, where Texas appears to dominate.) Surely if I am leading the Texas baseball and softball teams, I am clearly hoping to join a Pac-XX versus the Big Ten. I’d want my players to face ASU, Stanford, UCLA in baseball during conference.
I mention viewership above, and while I find the Nielsen market index to be interesting, I think it misses the point. A new Pac-XX conference would in effect draw the casual college football fan to buy walk-up admission to a Texas – Cal or Texas – UCLA event. This is not measured in Nielsen’s methodology for market potential. No, what I proffer is that seeing Texas paired with a USC, UW, Cal, USC, or UCLA, will provide the stimulus for the casual, non-invested observer to pay money on game day to see a nationally relevant game.

As an alum of UW and a fan of Nebraska, I don’t see a scenario where the PAC-10 ditches WSU or OSU. Heck, even moreso than the Big-10, the Pac-10 has held onto traditions such as the Rose Bowl. I’m not sure that Oregon and Washington would ditch their rivalry games in favor of a better conference. The Pac-10’s starting position will be to add some schools to their existing 10.

What has only been glossed over in all this discussion is the Texas politics. The B12 includes Baylor because of those politics. Texas and ATM have always been tied at the hip. I can’t imagine a scenario where the power brokers let Texas leave ATM in the dust.

Which is why I think this is simply UT posturing to force the B12 to react and create their own network and let the Longhorns have an enormous slice of that average pie. Since the rest of the B12 schools need UT more than vice versa, they’ll likely acquiesce like all other rules Texas wants. It’s that type of power that Texas won’t get in any other conference which is why I think UT is bluffing.

Rivalry games are great – once a year. They continue to have residual value, regardless of whether both teams play in the same conference. Frankly, no one cares about UW – WSU or OU – OSU outside of the PacNorWest – nor do they care about VaTech – VA outside of Virginia. That is not a slight, its just a simple reality. Oklahoma v Texas will always be a draw despite that fact that neither may reside in the same conference five years out.
The list of non-conference rivalries that make big $$ at the ticket booth is quite long:
Georgia – Georgia Tech
Florida – Florida State
ND – USC
Etc, etc, etc….

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