(05-17-2014 03:50 PM)He1nousOne Wrote: You honestly believe there is a threat of The Big Ten breaking up? I'm sorry but I think you are letting your beliefs hinder your judgement on this one if that is really the case.
The Big Ten would NEVER expand if everyone wasn't on board with it and I mean EVERYONE. So the idea of any expansion causing a split is just silly. We live in a different age. Regionalism at the level that matters is dying. Calls for some of these schools to leave the Big Ten would fall upon deaf ears.
What I think you are greatly underestimating here is the effect of time. You are right that right now, that's silly. How many things in sports would have been impossible in an earlier age, but are happening now. I can tell you that only about 5-6 years ago, I created a post on a different Big Ten message board and set-up a fairly wild scenario to get us 16/18 team conferences. The almost universal response was that's insane, but a lot of what we got went along those kind of lines and would have gone a lot further along those if Texas had decided to leave the Big 12. The fact that expansion has been the theme of the past couple of decades suggests it will be in the foreseeable future too, but it also increases the risk of the opposite happening.
To me, the key to looking at the future is not correctly guessing any one move, but looking at key changes and considering the long term impact those could have. I'm not saying a break-up will happen, but the odds of one increase with a bigger conference as the easiest way out of a big conference is a break-up. There is a great connection within the Big Ten right now, but if you alter a few variables and play that out long enough, it's one of several possible scenarios.
Here's a few scenarios for the next 30 years of college play that I can think of that have a reasonable degree of happening:
1. Merger of conferences: Fewer conferences means that there is much less room for the networks to play one off the other (a big reason you saw ESPN pay the Big 12 more to stop the PAC-16). In theory this means that the best way to make money is not to have 5 major conferences, but only 1. Right now, if you are ESPN, you can accept loosing one of the major conferences knowing there are others. If there is only one, you have to have a contract with them or you get no major football. That means ESPN is probably going to be willing to pay extra.
Now, maybe you keep the existing conference structure for other sports and maybe even keep the base set-up in football, but from a pure TV money perspective, it might not hurt to unite all the major conferences and Notre Dame.
2. Merger of schools: Let's take #1, but instead of conferences merging, imagine schools. Let's say the economy really sucks in 10 years and everyone is desperate for money. Is it really impossible to imagine that the top 40 programs would be willing to leave their current conferences if the new set-up offered 3x the average TV money per school. They might do so reluctantly, but if they are desperate in a bad economy they'll probably be no different than Maryland which reluctantly broke long standing ties with the ACC.
3. Status Quo or smaller expansion: It's possible the basic structure we have now is the best way to make profits and will be steady enough to last decades. Maybe we end up with 16 team conferences too, but the basic framework of 4/5 power conferences remains and a full merger never materializes because the conferences (or at least the strongest conferences) don't see enough benefit.
4. Break-up due to lack of popularity: 60 years ago the biggest sports in America were baseball, horse racing, and boxing. Football will not be where it is forever. Let's say the sport loses a lot of its following, especially at the college level. If college football stops being a big money maker in TV dollars, then all of a sudden smaller regional conferences start to make more sense again and all of this travel is just throwing away money. Now the CIC would probably survive that, but it's more than possible you could see the sports conferences themselves break into smaller units.
5. Break-up due to bigger not being better: Everyone right now is assuming that bigger is usually better and they are probably right. What if they aren't though? I'll guarantee you that in the Big 12, a much higher percent of the teams will be regularly competing and winning championships than in the bigger conferences. It's a lot easier for a program like Kansas State or Baylor to have value in the Big 12 set-up than in a 14/16 team conference. Let's say that after a decade and half of the current set-up, the big schools in various conference realize this. If that's the case, then they'd be better served by leaving their current conference and taking with them the programs they want to associate with in a newer smaller conference.
My actual belief is #3 as the most probable, but we've had very few years with big conferences and I think any are possible.
