BCS leagues expanding - yeah?

I said years ago that Maryland in the Big Ten would be an interesting fit.

-- Penn State is only 3 hours up the road, about the same distance now as your closest league rival.

-- It's the only way your football program would be relevant, because ACC football blows.

-- D.C. has alums from all over, but the Big Ten alumni group there seems larger than most (based on anecdotal evidence).

If you're the Big Ten, you're all over it. If you're Maryland, I don't know what you get out of it other than football, although you could argue Big Ten hoops is closing the gap (or has closed it) with the ACC.

Who would be the 14th Big Ten team?

 

Rutgers.

And UConn moves over to the ACC to replace the Terps.

 

Good point, I was mentioning schools the Big 10 might have any interest. I don't think there is any doubt the grant of rights secures all the Big 12 teams for the foreseeable future. Plus, the dirty little secret of the league is that KU is among the Big 12 teams that likes the Tier 3 rights setup as much or more than Texas. For the most part the schools that really had a problem with it are all gone now and KU was making millions with basketball games on "The Jayhawk Network" for at least a decade before the Longhorn Network was anything for Mack Brown to complain about.

 

I still don't get how the West Virginia - Big 12 dance is good. W.Va. has no rivals. I figure this was all predicated on a certainty that Louisville or Cincinnati would follow and then the Big East upped the ante with the higher exit fees.

What ever happened to Florida State and the Big 12?

 

Well, they played Indiana -- not exactly a national power -- at home in 2004. And lost. So, that might have something to do with it.

 

The ACC upped its exit fees when Notre Dame came on board, although if Maryland really does feel those fees are illegal, that would also bring Florida State back into play.

 

Oregon should probably get credit for a home-and-home with Boise State in 08-09, even if it technically wasn't a BCS conference matchup.

 

I think that Florida State had something of a collective realization that it would be no fun to play in the same sandbox as Texas. Four schools have left the Big 12 in the past couple years to move to three seperate conferences and there are pretty good reasons that they did. The President of FSU wrote a memo to that effect after Fisher made a couple comments.

 

Oregon also played Oklahoma at home in 2006, in that infamous botched onsides kick game. And they get Tennessee next season and Michigan State in 2015. So things are about to even out some.
Still, an impressive stat considering some the AQ teams they've played on the road in the past few years (Michigan, Purdue, LSU, Boise State and Tennessee).

 

I pit this out as total, wild-assed speculation. But this thread has hundreds of posts just as speculative.

I think Florida State more sense than Maryland in the Big 10. FSU does not have the emotional attachment to the traditional ACC basketball rivalries that Maryland does. Florida State has a big following in a state with a larger population than any Big 10 state. And Florida State is a bigger football draw than Maryland. And Florida State would come up with the 50M exit fee if necessary.

 

I doubt anyone is going anywhere anytime soon.

Maybe Colorado will come begging on the Big 12's backdoor after their next 70-14 ass-whipping in a Pac-12 game. But that's about the extent of it.