BCS leagues expanding - yeah?

Nebraska is still a nationally-recognized football brand. Missouri isn't.

Because of that brand, Nebraska is attractive to TV networks. Missouri isn't.

Nebraska will fill an 80K football stadium 4-5 times a year for conference games. Missouri doesn't.

Nebraska fans will travel by the thousands to Purdue, Northwestern, Indiana, Minnesota, etc., to help fill those stadiums that don't always sell out like Michigan and Ohio State.

If Nebraska can ever break the cycle of playing every non-conference game against Sun Belt Conference patsies, any intersectional game it plays is virtually guaranteed for national TV. Missouri can't do that.

It's all about football. And in football, Nebraska is a far better fit for the Big Ten than Missouri.

 

At least they have a med school, which brings them into line with
91% of the conference as currently constituted.

 

Land-grant university, like Ohio State, Michigan State, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Purdue and Penn State.

I'd expect the academic side is excited about joining the Big Ten research consortium as well.

 

Huskers are damn annoying, but they come in waves — RVs as far as the eye can see.

Missouri struggles to sell out its own venues outside of rivalry games, doesn't it?

 

Nebraska is also in the AAU. So is Pittsburgh, Rutgers and Syracuse. Notre Dame is not, by the way, and would be the first Big Ten member not to be in the AAU if it joined.

 

Attendance and TV ratings for the non-BCS bowls is way down and understandably so. There are just too many of them, sometimes five or six on a given day, with too many mediocre teams. When I was much younger, going to a bowl game was a big deal. Now, not so much. About the only ones watching the non-BCS bowls are fans of those competing teams.

 

More like eff them for thinking they deserve home-and-homes -- with a 32,000-seat stadium -- with whoever they want because of one bowl game four seasons ago.

 

You're the one who brought up the "weak-ass" schedule. You may have missed Boise State basically saying sometime last season that they'd play anyone, anywhere, any time. Ole Miss was apparently the best offer they got. I don't know if the Virginia Tech game had already been arranged before they made that declaration or not.

So how does Boise State improve it's "weak-ass" schedule when BCS schools don't want to play them because if they were to lose to Boise State, it puts a severe crimp in their national championship hopes? Boise State would love to take on these teams, even knowing they'll never get them to come to Boise.

If I'm a contender in any BCS conference, I sure as hell ain't playing Boise State, anywhere, any time, because the consequences of losing are too much to risk. I'm not playing Utah or BYU, either. I don't want to give any more credibility to the WAC or MWC and give them any chance to take my cash. And we all know this is about cash.

 

In actual what-the-thread's-about news,

Big 12 Commish is apparently trying to sell that he can get the remaining 10 schools SEC money ($17M a year) all while maintaining the unequal distribution.

Be interesting to see how he could pull that off.

 

I'll have to ask Mr. Beebe to show his work on that. Only half of the league's TV contract comes up for renewal anytime soon (the Fox half, IIRC), and how much TV money will be left once the bulked-up Pac-whatever gets its new deal?

 

You're the one even suggesting that they've done anything to deserve a home-and-home with Alabama.

And your point about Utah and BYU, and by extension Boise, might have some validity if Utah and BYU didn't have five BCS-conference opponents between them lined up for next year. So, you know, apparently it isn't as difficult as it seems. It's probably more difficult, however, if you don't actually WANT to play those games, and until they decided to join the MWC, I hadn't seen any evidence that Boise wanted to do anything more than beat up on a dozen patsies and Oregon State, then sit back and play the sympathy card to great effect.

 

Georgia Tech wrapped up its half of the national title in the 1990 season by beating, oddly enough, Nebraska in the Citrus Bowl.

As for the minor bowls -- as long as someone comes to the table with a sponsorship deal, they'll keep existing. And the bowls were never explicitly about determining a national champion -- it's always been a money grab, just divided 30 ways instead of five.