BCS leagues expanding - yeah?

My understanding is that the sides have been talking for months and UT is getting impatient. The leak started out of Austin as a means of accelerating things. And you're right about ATM. Once they heard it was on, they and Stillwater Tech joined forces to push back.

 

These are great questions. A guess here: Big 12 TV extension talks got stagnant and UT started looking to protect itself. Had to be willing to sacrifice supremacy etc in order to handle the next wave of whatever college sports entails.

 

I doubt there will be votes.
When the ACC thoroughly debased itself by taking in University-6, there was no vote. The faculty athletic reps, who, according to the bylaws had to approve such things, learned about it when they read the press release like everybody else on campus: less than an hour before the public announcement.

 

As a fan and alum of an ACC school, that was my first thought when I read this earlier today. If the SEC is going to 16, the ACC needs to protect itself from another B1G incursion. The argument against West Virginia went out the door when they brought Louisville in. Just bring Cincy with 'em and be done with it.

 

I pulled up Arkansas' roster. I counted 26 players from Texas, 9 from Oklahoma and 41 from Arkansas. They've always recruited Texas hard and OU is getting the cream from out of that state already, so I doubt that factors into whether UA wants UT and OU to join.

In fact, I think the Hogs would love to play one more game every other year in each of those states for the exposure. Arkansas vs. OU will be a great rivalry once the Hogs get good again and should be played more often than a bowl game once every couple of decades. And old-timers in Arkansas (and there are a bunch) might draw their last wood at the thought of playing Texas again.

 

What was Rutgers picked for, and an answer of New York City does not count.

 

Because 13 wouldn’t work so a bunch of schools’ names were thrown into a hat and that’s the one Jim Delany picked.

Aside from the distance, which didn’t matter once you added Nebraska, UConn arguably brought more to the table re: basketball and you still had the fringe New York interest.

 

Lawrence is pretty much an exurb of Kansas City, despite being a different media market.

Two freeways can get you to the Johnson County suburbs (where probably half of KU’s students are from) in 30 minutes and downtown KC in less than 45. I’ve worked with a fair amount of commuters from Lawrence. Even some from as far away as Topeka (60 miles or so).

 

Except that it did help the Big Ten Network's subscriber base. Nobody's clamoring for Rutgers per se, but the school's membership in the league almost mandates BTN's presence on a lower tier of cable service. Every subscriber in what's defined as a core member market counts $1 per month or something like that for the network. Doesn't matter if anybody watches.

When it was mulling the moves that resulted in Pitt and Syracuse, the ACC sent emissaries to Rutgers. When one of them saw tenured faculty members standing outside and talking on the phone because their land lines had been cut off in a cost-saving maneuver, the spy reported back to Greensboro that the league should take a hard pass on the Scarlet Knights.

 

The Big East Commish fainted when Syracuse and Pitt left??