It has now been reported that the Big Ten will offer bids to join to Missouri, Nebraska, Notre Dame, and Rutgers. There was plenty of talk about it last night on ESPN. How many teams does the Big Ten want? Rumor is that if Notre Dame accepts, the conference would extend yet another bid to try to get to 16. If Notre Dame rejects the bid (which I suspect would happen), the Big 10 would want to have 14.
If Rutgers leaves the Big East to join the Big Ten, the Big East will be looking to add another member to remain at 8. The Big 12 would also need to either downsize, or add new members. Do these conferences start looking at the Sunbelt and Conference USA teams for bids? Memphis, East Carolina, and Southern Miss could make sense for the Big East. Memphis would make sense for the Big East because of basketball. I’m sure the conference would consider the market size in their equation. UCF would make a lot of sense, taking them out of C-USA.
If all the dominos fall, there could be openings in the Sunbelt or C-USA. Could JSU benefit from this potential realignment? The Sunbelt could be a good fit. Troy and Ga State are great natural rivals. Throw in Middle TN State too. It would be great to end up in the same conference with them, but that would seemingly require alignment of all the planets at just the right time.
A lot of "ifs" have to be sorted out. Just dreaming right now. We’ll have to wait to see what happens with the Big Ten first.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
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I would rather be with UAB than Troy. Troy doesn't bring much of a TV market. GSU and UAB would bring the ATL and BHM markets. CUSA would be the conference of choice for JSU.
ReplyDeleteRumor I'm hearing is that Texas and Texas A&M will go to the SEC. If they leave, plus Missouri and Nebraska leave for the Big 10, the Big 12 will be in trouble.
ReplyDeleteC-USA has a minimum athletic budget requirement of 20 Million. I'm all for C-USA if you will chip in the balance...
ReplyDeleteWe can want to move up all we want to but the "powers that be" at Sunbelt have all told AD Jaynes that we're going no where until we update our athletic facilities most notably the coliseum...sit tight Gamecocks, we'll be in the OVC a while...
ReplyDeleteThats why we have a $40,000,000 renovation of the Pete schedule ford sometime between 2012 and 2015
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ache.state.al.us/Information/Publications/FMP2011-2015/JSU.pdf