USC and UCLA to the B1G

VectorVictor said:
There was already talk some time ago of Fox adding a second B1G channel during basketball and football season, and the channels would split broadcasts by division. 
 

There’s more than enough content to justify a second channel…but I could see Fox just relegating more stuff to BTN+. 
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Guess I missed that talk some time ago, already.  

My bad.

 
nic said:
They were AAU when they joined the big10 and then got voted off the island sometime later. It was a very tight vote and ironically two big 10 institutions voted NU out. Wiscy and Michigan I believe…if you need some pompous a-holes to hate.  :bang   Plus NU has a much better brand than TCU. ND is not AAU and either is OU, but the big10 would let them both in. Miami is in the same boat.
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I believe it all boiled down to the fact that UNL does not have a medical school. Tightly affiliated with UNMC, but that is its own university. It's a unique quirk to how the university system is setup in Nebraska. I've never heard of any other state separating its medical school as a standalone institution.

Acting like UNMC is part of UNL would be about the same as saying Iowa and Iowa State are conjoined because they are part of the same system. I get why the AAU decision was made.

 
mrandyk said:
I believe it all boiled down to the fact that UNL does not have a medical school. Tightly affiliated with UNMC, but that is its own university. It's a unique quirk to how the university system is setup in Nebraska. I've never heard of any other state separating its medical school as a standalone institution.

Acting like UNMC is part of UNL would be about the same as saying Iowa and Iowa State are conjoined because they are part of the same system. I get why the AAU decision was made.
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UNL and UNMC are closer tied than that.  For instance, the Dental school and nursing school for UNMC are already on UNL's and UNK's campuses.  They work closely together with their undergrad at UNL and graduate schools at UNMC.  Even my daughter who is about to graduate in Speech and language pathology (technically at UNL) spent a semester at UNMC in Omaha.  It really is just a technical anomaly that has caused this. 

It's frustrating that we were kicked out of AAU because of we don't have a research hospital, while at the same time, UNMC is one of the leading research hospitals for contagious diseases.  

 
To expand on what @mrandyk said, AAU membership is based heavily on how much the school brings in for competitive research grants. The easiest way to have a large total for that is to have a large medical school and research hospital. But since UNMC is separate from UNL, its research grant money isn't counted. IIRC there was one AAU member that has its med school on a separate campus, but was organized as a single unit, so they count their grant money there.

On a side note, Iowa State 'resigned' from the AAU just a couple months ago. Five members have left the AAU to date. UNL was the only one actually voted out, the others saw the writing on the wall and left on their own.

 
Toe said:
To expand on what @mrandyk said, AAU membership is based heavily on how much the school brings in for competitive research grants. The easiest way to have a large total for that is to have a large medical school and research hospital. But since UNMC is separate from UNL, its research grant money isn't counted. IIRC there was one AAU member that has its med school on a separate campus, but was organized as a single unit, so they count their grant money there.

On a side note, Iowa State 'resigned' from the AAU just a couple months ago. Five members have left the AAU to date. UNL was the only one actually voted out, the others saw the writing on the wall and left on their own.
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And, at the same time, they don't count the agriculture research that UNL is heavily involved in.

 
@BigRedBuster That would be the 'competitive' part I mentioned above. The government awards agriculture research grants by a formula - schools don't really compete with each other for that grant money. So the AAU's formula is kinda tilted against Land Grant schools like UNL, which are rooted in agriculture and engineering.

 
Which, is evidence of what's frustrating about what is used as data for making these decisions.  For instance, yes, UCLA and USC are in a major metro area that supposedly has a lot of TVs for viewers.  However, midwestern programs that are in smaller metro areas probably garner way more actual viewers on any given Saturday because people here care more about college football, on average, than population of Los Angeles.  It's the same reason why the NFL keeps failing every time they try to get a team in LA.  People there just don't care.

 
BigRedBuster said:
Which, is evidence of what's frustrating about what is used as data for making these decisions.  For instance, yes, UCLA and USC are in a major metro area that supposedly has a lot of TVs for viewers.  However, midwestern programs that are in smaller metro areas probably garner way more actual viewers on any given Saturday because people here care more about college football, on average, than population of Los Angeles.  It's the same reason why the NFL keeps failing every time they try to get a team in LA.  People there just don't care.
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I would argue that fandom had nothing to do with the exaggerated ratings. It had to do with the game potentially having an impact on the CFP. If OSU had won, decent chance they'd have gotten in over Cincinnati.

 
I really hope the Big Ten doesn't just stop at USC and UCLA and wait for Notre Dame. 

You can't have two schools over a 1,000 miles from their nearest conference member, got to add some more schools out west. Forget Notre Dame, stop keep giving them chances. 

Notre Dame will need the B1G more. 

 
Micheal said:
I really hope the Big Ten doesn't just stop at USC and UCLA and wait for Notre Dame. 

You can't have two schools over a 1,000 miles from their nearest conference member, got to add some more schools out west. Forget Notre Dame, stop keep giving them chances. 

Notre Dame will need the B1G more. 
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I agree. It certainly seems like they are waiting. We may as well add two of Stanford, Oregon or Washington soon. We may be able to wait a bit on ACC teams.

 
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College Football and it's identity/separation from being a professional sport are literally crumbling in front of us.

Money talks, to hell with the brand. 

Atmospheres and gameday experience are keeping this thing together.

 
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