Jeff MacGregor on why expanding the Big 10 is stupid

I see the above criticisms (and praises) falling right along the predictable political fault lines. Nothing new under the sun.

 

That's just a stupid fucking post. The column is well-written, but doesn't make a good argument. Only one person seems to be making it political.

 

Problem is, it doesn't really tell us WHY the Big Ten expanding is a crime, except perhaps against nostalga. It's great to draw the analogy to fat Americans McMansions and Starbucks and Walmart, but in what ways are they similar, other than their eyes towards getting bigger?

And what traditions are getting frittered away? You might not play everyone in the conference every season? You're already not doing that. Tradition of not having a conference title game? I'm confused.

 

Just an observation. You don't have go all Laz Diaz.

 

I think the point is that too often entities getting bigger makes everyone think that as a result they will automatically get better.

But the bigger things have gotten, whether in business, life, or sports, the quest for getting actually better has diminished because of the assumption that bigger is better.

 

If he had written an ode to a hamburger, it would have made more sense. There is no THERE there in this column. There is no meat, aside from "Big Ten expansion bad because Big Ten good as is."

Just a lot of pretty words signifying nothing.

And it's a shame to see how many find value in that.

 

Which would be a fine component to a grander argument that he teases but never delivers. Adding a team isn't a panacea (just ask ACC followers), but it doesn't follow that expanding means the end of the innocence, either.

Sound and fury, signifying nothing new.

 

I don't know if the argument is FOR tradition, I just don't see the Big 10 conference needing a handout anytime soon, yet money and late season exposure seem to be the prime motivations for expanding. They could easily do what the Pac 10 has done and shifted back some of their games into December. Dump the stupid ban on night games after October. Schedule some "big" games in their big stadiums early on. The Pac 10 and the Big East were both "in the mix" without championship games.
And having a Diet Pepper promotion at halftime isn't really all that.

 

I like that sentence much more than the one it's describing.

Just because you can string together a lot of big words, that doesn't mean you should.

Not to mention the thinly veiled race-based imagery present in that sentence. All it's missing is a reference to 'athletic' running backs.

 

Simple it's Jeff being Jeff. Always the anti establishment guy.

 

How is this piece anti-establishment?

 

On second thought, I would like to read Jeff's take on tuna casserole. I was too quick to dismiss it earlier.