exswoo

Is this source different from MHVer3? It's hard to tell if these 'insiders' are just aping what other rumor-mongers are saying or if they have actually heard something from a third party source.

One theory I have is that if Delany is looking ahead to the near future when the 4 conferences do break off from the NCAA - that will mean Basketball schools within this structure will be worth a lot more because they will be able to monetize the national tournament. If he feels that that the B1G has enough "Kings" in football, it makes sense to shore up additional basketball schools for that inevitability.

The weird thing about UVA is that although they are a 'public Ivy', they're actually not that much of a research giant - I think Virginia Tech actually does more research year in - year out. One more FB power add will be great - but I'm not sure how realistic that may be given where those targets are located and the profiles for all of them

As I understand it, the long term average payouts are the same across the different expansion teams (Nebraska, Maryland, Rutgers) but Maryland's is frontloaded so that they get the majority of the current payouts immediately. However - their payouts will escalate at a slower rate compared to the other teams so I don't think really this is really that much of a sore point between the different teams.

This article talks about it in detail and the most likely division alignments : http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/college/ct-spt-0106-northwestern-football--20130106,0,244829.story?dssReturn Most interesting tidbit in this article? "Some sources within the Big Ten believe the conference won't stop expanding until it hits 18."

Woody, do you know how the typical OSU fan feels about having to play most of these expansion teams yearly? Unless the Big Ten expands past 16, OSU is most likely the 'power' school that will be put on the east division - most of the other traditional Big Ten members won't be affected as much as OSU.

...10 Conference Games?

Where are you hearing Kansas? That seems like an odd pairing for UNC - if UNC was seriously in play I would think it would pull either UVA or Georgia Tech

Texas + Kansas would be awesome - probably not very realistic but if the Big 12 was broken up between Pac 12 + B1G that would make it as national of a conference as I would be interested in.

Didn't see this mentioned here yet but News Corp closed its deal on the YES Network yesterday - a few hours after Rutgers became official. http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/hiestand-tv/2012/11/20/michael-hiestand-big-10-fox-expansion/1718311/ The Big Ten Network being a bundle deal with the Yankees and the Nets explains why Rutgers was valuable after all.

Just for the sake of argument, here's the FBS AAU list filtered by Conferences that's not already in the B1G or Pac-12 ACC Duke University (1938) Georgia Institute of Technology (2010) The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1922) University of Pittsburgh (1974) University of Virginia (1904) Big 12 Iowa State University (1958) The University of Kansas (1909) The University of Texas at Austin (1929) SEC University of Missouri-Columbia (1908) Texas A&M University (2001) University of Florida (1985) Vanderbilt University (1950) MAC University at Buffalo, The State University of New York (1989)

You need to link to the Avenue Q song!

This is pretty surprising - I watched most of the B1G games yesterday and I thought Nebraska had a real strong showing. Your offence looks a lot better than last year

FYI, the article in OffTackleEmpire is using a non-standard methodology in counting the medals, which is why the latter article (and other articles in news channels) are reporting more medals per school - for some reason OTE did not count medals awarded to athletes who did not participate in the finals.

I thought the whole theme around 30 for 30 was to create documentaries for B-side stories that would be forgotten otherwise...not sure if the Huskers' run would fall into that category

From what I gathered the 'tradition' of B1G conference mates rooting against each other is a holdover from the olden days when a MNC was even more mythical and a strong case can be built for why the Rose Bowl winner is the true national title winner. Nowadays the system requires everyone's SOS to be high (even in the current BCS system) so it doesn't make sense to root against your conference mates as much and I think people are coming around the idea.

I agree except for Michigan being the only team in the race - I think any one loss team has a great shot at the title game.

I found a really fun site today that goes over the transitive property of Football http://www.myteamisb...om/tpncpoll.asp It makes a very compelling argument as to why Indiana (or any team from FBS all the way to D3) is better team than Alabama Here's the Huskers : Div I - FBS Nebraska beat Ohio St 34 - 27 Div I - FBS Ohio St beat Wisconsin 33 - 29 Div I - FBS Wisconsin is better than Alabama because Wisconsin beat Penn St 45 - 7 while Alabama only beat Penn St 27 - 11 Therefore, Nebraska is better than Alabama in 2011 as shown in 3 rounds by a combined score of 123 - 90.

I would say tie goes to SOS. Two 11-1 teams. One with SOS of 15 and the other with a SOS of 98. give it to the one with 15 I think the only way teams start scheduling harder is if a 10-2 team with a SOS of 15 gets the nod over a 11-1 with an SOS of 98...we'll see what happens

The problem is that no one knows exactly how much SOS will be weighted in the new playoff world for another 2 years - given historical precedent it's safer to assume that wins will trump SOS until the results show otherwise...so my answer to that question will be that no major changes will occur until 2020 or so

Yeah, this probably would've been a bigger deal for non-revenue sports than football...it's too bad that it didn't work out. I think a similar setup with ACC would be fun, but the B1G may be giving up too much leverage by treating the ACC as an equal partner

I like how he gives the Big Ten Legend's division winner a 1 in 4 chance to win the MNC

Not sure I'd say "earn his way back in." According to Urban, the only way he would be considered is if something happens with the charges, so if it ends up being less of an actual issue than it currently is (e.g., his side of the story checks out during proceedings) then he could be reinstated, but he can't really do anything about that. Ah - true. I'm actually expecting the charges to be less serious than expected so I was mentally comparing this response to a long term suspension/missing games during the season...depending on what happens after the facts are out Urban's response in this situation can be viewed as being either be less or more harsh.

He can earn his way back in though, so I guess the jury's still out on how harsh of a punish this is.

Just nit-picking here but I don't see how, if OSU goes undefeated, Michigan can only have one loss to Ohio State with the same amount of games played. Wouldn't Michigan have to play OSU again in the CCG? I'm surprised that you're not also bringing up the fact that the regular season is 12 games now, not 11