Jeff: Big 10 Adding a 12th School?

Just doing some late night "blousing"- I mean browsing (that's a movie quote from one of my favorites, but as I proved yet again with jer the other day when I misquoted Caddy Shack, I'm not too good at movie quotes- you know what? It's my blog and I'll quote and misquote as much as I damn well please! You shut your mouth when you're talking to me!) and stumbled across this headline on ESPN.com: Big Ten Might Expand to 12 Schools. Now of course you have to take anything you see or read on ESPN with a grain of salt since they've been the E!SPN Sports Gossip Station for quite some time now. Still, intrigued I read on, and indeed Commissioner Jim Delany, while hyping his new Big 10 network that debuts this fall (call your local cable operator now and the Indiana/Northwestern football game and all women's sports are absolutely free!), he said the following;

"I think we need to look at it in the next year," he told the Des Moines Register on Wednesday. He offered no specific candidates.

"The broader [the network] is distributed, the more value [expansion] has. We have eight states. With expansion, you could have nine," he said.

"Any television executive would do whatever they could to be able to air a game like the Big Ten championship," said Mark Silverman, Big Ten Network president. "It would be worth a considerable amount of value."

I guess I shouldn't be surprised anymore. The Big 10 and Pac 10 were the last remaining holdouts for 12 team leagues and conference championships games, and now it looks like the boys out west will be the only ones left standing in the department as the Big 11 is now looking to get it's grubby hands on even more money with the highly lucrative conference game.

Personally I hate 2 division conferences and conference championship games. Seriously I do. I love that the Pac 10 plays everybody in their conference every year, and that the Big 10 plays 8 of 10 opponents. I also like it because the conference games mean more, and really conference title games only hurt your best team's chances of going to the Title Game instead of helping them. And before you say "well look at Florida last year!" remember that if it wasn't for Oregon State's monumental upset of USC, the SEC would have been shut out of the Natty Champ game yet again.

However, it was really only a matter of time before the Big 10 decided it wasn't making enough money off its athletes, so why not say to hell with tradition and add a 12th team. I'm really interested to see how they can sneak the number 12 into the logo like they did with 11. And seriously, maybe you can call yourself the Big 10 with one extra team, but two? Isn't that getting a little ridiculous?

So two "Big" questions arise for me then: 1) who is the 12 team and 2) how do you align the divisions?

First things first: the 12th team IS NOT NOTRE DAME. It's not. I hate Notre Dame and yet would love to see them in the Big 10 and they are the only school that makes sense...but it ain't happening. Not a chance. Now that Notre Dame's "back" why would they give up the obscene amounts of money they're making just because everybody in the Big 10 wants them there? Not only do they have their own TV network, but if they finish in the top 12 in the polls, they get into a BCS game. Think they'd still get that deal if they were part of the Big 10? Think again.

So if not the Irish then who? Delany mentions adding a 9th state, but there's not many that would seem to make much sense. It would have to be a major institution with a good academic rep (a nice way of saying the U of Cincinnati won't be joining anytime soon) in a state that would attract a bigger TV market than they already have. Teams like Pitt, UConn, Rutgers (soley for the hopes of getting into the Big Apple's TV market) and maybe even West Virginia could be possibilities but there seems to be only one logical choice: Syracuse, although with their shoddy record and mediocre hoops performances of late they're not quite the glamorous school they once were. Still, with a whole new market of people in New York State, and considering how willing they were to bolt the Big East for the ACC before Boston College beat them to it, the Orange (why aren't they still the Orangemen? Oh that's right it's degrading to women or something. I hate political correctness sometimes. Well ok most of the time) have to be the front runners.

Then there's the issue of aligning the divisions. The only thing that makes sense is to do it geographically East and West, but of course the conference would want Michigan and Ohio State to meet in the Title game every year, so you can't have them in the same division EVEN THOUGH IT MAKES PERFECT $^%&ING SENSE FOR EVERYBODY ELSE!!! Jackholes.

Anyway, they'll still play every year but put them in different divisions and then it just can't be about geographical anymore because how would divide it? North and South? That makes no sense either. Here's the divisional format that's most plausible:
"Midwest Division": Ohio State, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and Northwestern

"Great Lakes Division": Michigan, Penn State, Michigan State, Indiana, Purdue, and Syracuse

The Minnesota/Iowa/Wisconsin, Illinois/Northwestern, Michigan/Michigan State, and Indiana/Purdue matchups would remain intact and Penn State and Syracuse actually have a history that goes back a long ways. The divisions are also pretty well balanced for football and hoops (and hopefully for softball and women's soccer).

I'd rather see them stick with the Big 11, but since money always wins out, then if it's going to happen this is how it should happen.