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I havnt seen this posted yet. But I think Nebraska really wants to get out of the Big12

For the rest of the offseason, last week's BCS mini-convention in Arizona will probably stand as the high point of hypothetical conference expansion buzz and the moment the speculation began to wane: By now, all of the potential scenarios for Big Ten and Pac-10 growth have been explored ad nauseum, and both conference's commissioners went out of their way to pour cold water on the runaway gossip, Larry Scott by openly questioning the need for Pac-10 expansion and Jim Delany by denying reports that the Big Ten was accelerating the timetable for announcing its plans (or lack thereof). As it stands, the Big Ten probably won't move until December, if it decides to move at all.
One school apparently willing to keep its doors open, though, is Nebraska, which made clear in February via athletic director Tom Osborne that it was willing to listen to overtures from other conferences trying to lure the Huskers away from the Big 12. Chancellor Harvey Perlman reiterated to the Omaha World Herald over the weekend that the Huskers are "in the swirl of things," and the door is still wide open to, you know, whoever:

Perlman wants Husker fans to know one thing — the first hat he wears in any conversation about conference realignment will be red and white with an N on it. He and Nebraska Athletic Director Tom Osborne are solidly together on potential courses of action. “My instinct and Tom's instinct isn't just to sit around and wait to see what bad things happen to you," the chancellor said. “We're certainly talking about what options we have."

[...]

Perlman said he wants the Big 12 to succeed. But that doesn't mean a move by Nebraska to any other power conference has been ruled out.

"I don't think anyone can dismiss anything out of hand," he said. "If you take the wildest predictions about mega-conferences — 16 is the number you see most, but 24 has been floated though not publicly — we certainly have to act in the interest of Nebraska."

(Note that, yes, the notion of a 24-team conference has been raised -- publicly -- by a directly interested power broker, and lay there like a bomb waiting to blow all previous assumptions to smithereens. I'm not going anywhere near it.)

In this case, "what's right for Nebraska" may almost certainly be translated as "whatever makes the most money for Nebraska." On that front, the Big Ten seems like the obvious winner, offering to potentially double the Huskers' annual conference take-home from roughly $11 million in the Big 12 to $22 million or more in the Big Ten, just like that.

Perlman insists there are other considerations -- academic fit, travel costs of sending the field hockey team to Penn State, or even to Rutgers if the conference expands to the East Coast, etc. -- but the general impression is that only a strong backlash by "the American public and forbearance of the congressional folk" re: a colossal superconference could keep him from leaping into Delany's arms if the Big Ten extends a formal offer at some point in the not-too-distant future. When it comes down to the bottom line, Nebraska couldn't afford not to leap at Big Ten money -- and that's even more true for potential expansion targets Missouri, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, et al, which stand to gain even more from a move than Nebraska.

That, in a nutshell, demonstrates the wild success of the Big Ten Network, beyond what anyone outside the conference imagined when the idea was floated in 2006 -- the general reaction then, if I recall, ran along the lines of "Who wants to add 60 cents to their cable bill to watch Purdue volleyball?" Less than four years later, the BTN is already the giant in the room in the Expansion Chronicles, without which the likes of Nebraska and Missouri (and Notre Dame, to the extent the Irish even remain in the discussion at all) would have no practical incentive to abandon their century-old rivalries in the Big 8/12.

In fact, the BTN is in all likelihood the catalyst for the Expansion Chronicles, because a growing beast must be fed new cable markets to ensure its annual allowance of revenue. Whether or not it was founded with imperialist ambitions, the network was a farsighted, far-reaching stroke that has already put the Big East essentially at the Big Ten's feet and cast much longer shadows than anyone could have imagined across the Big 12, a demographic lightweight when it comes to potential television audiences. Talk about exploiting a natural resource.

Of course, with the glacial pace of the "investigation" process and Delany's studied refusal to toss the media any scrap of news, rumor or speculation, the exact reach of the Big Ten's imperialist push is uncertain, potentially vastly overblown and possibly, in the end, much ado about nothing. But it is safe to assume that we wouldn't be reading Nebraska's top brass so insistent on keeping its options open, or Missouri's head coach describing his conference's uneven television plan as "staggering" and "a problem" five years ago.
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http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/blog/dr_saturday/post/Nebraska-will-still-take-that-expansion-call-if;_ylt=ArObNepqIZBbhZMeubwSW1scvrYF?urn=ncaaf,236834

 
Perlman wants Husker fans to know one thing — the first hat he wears in any conversation about conference realignment will be red and white with an N on it. He and Nebraska Athletic Director Tom Osborne are solidly together on potential courses of action. “My instinct and Tom's instinct isn't just to sit around and wait to see what bad things happen to you," the chancellor said. “We're certainly talking about what options we have
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This is exactly what I want to hear. At this point just for the university to weigh all the options and make the best choice for the Huskers.

 
kansas husker said:
Perlman wants Husker fans to know one thing — the first hat he wears in any conversation about conference realignment will be red and white with an N on it. He and Nebraska Athletic Director Tom Osborne are solidly together on potential courses of action. “My instinct and Tom's instinct isn't just to sit around and wait to see what bad things happen to you," the chancellor said. “We're certainly talking about what options we have
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This is exactly what I want to hear. At this point just for the university to weigh all the options and make the best choice for the Huskers.
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i like that too, because if we do just sit around, we will be left behind, but i guess some people think that is a better course of action (i.e. Dan Beebe).

 
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Exactly and Tom knows that. I think in the next year or two, the big 12 is just going to have teams and schools picked right out mainly Missouri, Nebraska, Texas, A&M, and Oklahoma and Colorado. Then the big 12 remaining schools will be left with these other added schools that probably are not very noticeable.

 
I think the stove is a lot hotter than most people realize. I can remember just a month or two ago people here on this board getting their panties in a bunch because they didnt believe dr tom and co were paying enough attention to these possibilities. With perlman osborne and nebraskas return to the big boys table frankly i find it hard to believe there is another school out there in a better position to not be left behind. Perlman is the head of the bcs itself for crying out loud. Talk about having friends in high places.

 
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This is all amounting to a political chess game; every move you make is dependent on what everyone else does. But if Tom sees a vision of the future that involves a move to the Big 10 in order to secure greener pastures for NUs continued success, I trust him to make the right call.

 
I really think the big 10 will call us and Missouri. I think both schools go and when that happens Texas will go soon after and if all goes well (bad) oklahoma goes Independent. I just don't see Okla joining the SEC.

 
Also is it just me or is CF no longer about Greatness, Tradition, and Excellence? It seems to be all about Money, just like everything else in this Money hungry world

 
Rep The 402 said:
Also is it just me or is CF no longer about Greatness, Tradition, and Excellence? It seems to be all about Money, just like everything else in this Money hungry world
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Tradition was given up when the big 12 was formed. Just read a article where it stated the big 12 does not claim the BIG EIGHT history even though all of the teams in the big 12 are made up of all the former BIG EIGHT schools along with 4 texas schools.

The Big 12 was formed because of money. “You can’t put the genie back into the bottle”

 
Rep The 402 said:
Also is it just me or is CF no longer about Greatness, Tradition, and Excellence? It seems to be all about Money, just like everything else in this Money hungry world
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doesn't really matter does it? You still watch, and the market for college football is bigger and better than ever.

I'm soooooo for a move to the big10...I just did a research paper and power point presentation on the subject and the longer I worked on it, the more I thought to myself that this would probably be in the best interest for the UNIVERSITY not just football...but the entire system.

 
FWIW, two things that I've seen repeatedly come up in discussions regarding qualification into the Big 10 are the following:

1) The institution must be a member of the AAU.

2) The institution must have a respectable Total Research Expenditures (TRE) ranking.

Nebraska is already a member of the AAU.

In regards to TRE, the Big 10 is collectively the highest ranked conference. The latest report from 2008 shows the following national rankings of Big 10 schools in TRE:

Wisconsin - 2nd

Michigan - 4th

Ohio St. - 11th

Minnesota - 13th

Penn St. - 15th

Illinois - 23rd

Northwestern - 33rd

Purdue - 36th

Mich. St. - 40th

Iowa - 42nd

Indiana - 105th

Interestingly enough, Nebraska ranks higher than Indiana, coming in at 75th. NU also ranks higher than Mizzou (77th).

With this in mind, Nebraska does pass the criteria. The only thing we lack is the TV sets but that doesn't appear to be the end all, be all in this scenario from the latest reports that I've read. It'll be interesting to see how this unfolds over the next year or so.

 
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Nexus said:
The only thing we lack is the TV sets
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Are you basing that on our population? We are a small state, ranking 38th in population. But if we're measuring eyeballs on TV screens, I don't think we can just look at population. Nebraska is perhaps unique in that we have fans across the country that watch our games when on.

If anyone knows where to find neilson ratings for individual college football games, I'd love to see them.

 
Pulled this out of an article on Husker max: Link on huskermax

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They should have included revenue generated by each athletic department. I will guarantee you that Nebraska ranks higher than any of the other six schools listed.

It's not surprising that we lead this group in television viewers. We command a lot of eyeballs across the nation.

The "living graduates" number isn't necessarily indicative of anything, at least not in Nebraska's case. We're not a traditional school in that only our alums pay attention to our sports teams. Most of the state, and most of our Nebraska expats across the country/world follow Husker football avidly.

Not sure the significance of the Forbes list. US News & World Report provides a ranking of every college & university, a ranking which (I thought) was the benchmark for such things. On that we're ranked 43rd among public schools. The other schools on this chart are ranked:

UConn - 26

Colorado - 34

Mizzou - 48

Pitt - 20

Rutgers - 26

Syracuse - 58

Of course all of those numbers are nice to throw out there for the general conversation, but the primary motivating factor for Big 10 expansion (or for Pac-10 or SEC expansion, for that matter) will always be dollar revenue generated. And in that category, I think Nebraska is the top candidate, without question.

 
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