The regular New Haven Register columnist pretty much aligns with what's already been stated on this board.
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http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2010/05/12/sports/112_solomon051210.txtSOLOMON: The Big picture is about to change in college sportsPublished: Wednesday, May 12, 2010
By Dave Solomon, Register Sports Columnist
From every indication and response, Monday’s radio report that Rutgers had been offered a place in the Big Ten, along with Notre Dame, Missouri and Nebraska, is premature, if not totally fabricated.
But there’s tension in the air in big-time college athletics as we’ve not seen it before, so spines shiver around the country at every mention of Big Ten expansion and its inevitable repercussions.
Some of the shrewdest administrators in college athletics sit helpless and numb in major conference offices like Providence and Dallas and Greensboro, N.C., awaiting some clarity ... and its fallout.
Most of everything we know at this point is speculation, but in virtually every scenario – depending on whether one, two or three Big East teams join the Big Ten – there is major collateral damage for the league. And as money drives Big Ten realignment toward a new college order over the next several weeks and months, the Big East is powerless to stop Rutgers and Syracuse and Pitt from grabbing a far greater chunk of the pie.
Put yourself in the shoes of Rutgers athletic director Tim Pernetti and president Richard McCormick. The Big Ten now generates roughly $22 million — mostly in TV money — for each member institution, compared to the $7 million that each member of the Big East inherits.
Does Rutgers jump at the chance to align with a superior football league and triple the money in millions, or stay in an eight-team football conference that is boxed in by economics and reality?
The Big East was founded more than three decades ago on these very same tenets of big
money and greener pastures.
If Rutgers does go to the Big Ten, which seems to be the smart money, it devalues the Big East football property even further. The next Big East TV contract would reflect an even greater disparity in revenue than currently exists.
The Big East could, in theory, take the hit of Rutgers and replace it with a Central Florida, as an example. But it could never withstand the loss of Rutgers and Syracuse or Pitt, let alone all of them.
Losing Rutgers in basketball would have very minimal impact, but whatever the Big Ten chooses to do, it’s being generated in large part by football money from its lucrative Big Ten Network. What they’re seeing is an untapped New York market with Rutgers and Syracuse driving millions of dollars in added revenue per school.
If you think the Atlantic Coast Conference raid on the Big East in 2003 was apocalyptic, just wait until the Big Ten adds multiple teams from the Big East, and perhaps one or two from the Big 12 as well.
Why would UConn, or West Virginia or Louisville want to stay in a league that almost certainly would lose its BCS affiliation and significant conference bowl tie-ins – assuming these schools even have a chance to go elsewhere?
It would be ideal if the Big East could act in a pro-active manner and fortify itself against Big Ten expansion, but the truth is, it’s powerless to stop the Big Ten from reworking college alignments across the country. There’s no BCS-level football institution that would jump to the Big East and, frankly, how appetizing do Central Florida, East Carolina and Memphis sound as prospective fill-ins?
As mentioned here two months ago, every member of the Big Ten belongs to the Association of American Universities, an association of 62 leading research universities in the U.S. and Canada. Rutgers, Pitt and Syracuse are members. Because UConn is not, we think it’s not a serious candidate to join the discussion of the Big Ten expansion.
But if you’re UConn AD Jeff Hathaway and president Michael Hogan, would you then not try to endear yourself with the ACC – the conference that was once vilified for its covert raid? ACC schools take in approximately $11 million from TV revenue, a 60 percent bump over the Big East.
For argument sake, if UConn, and/or Pitt/West Virginia went to the ACC in the corresponding domino fallout from Big Ten expansion, not only is the Big East football league a memory, but it’s a completely different basketball league as ell – one dominated by non-football institutions like Georgetown, St. John’s, Marquette and Seton Hall.
There’s no end to the speculation and permutations from Big Ten expansion. In the Big 12, they’re not only hoping to keep Nebraska and Missouri from skipping over to the Big Ten, the SEC would love to steal Texas and the Pac-10 is said to have its eye on Colorado.
But no one potentially stands to lose as much as the Big East ... and its remaining institutions. So schools like UConn try to position and brace themselves as best they can for the repercussions.
As we said, there’s tension in the air in big-time athletics like we’ve not seen before. And people are understandably jumpy.
Dave Solomon, the Register sports columnist, can be reached at dsolomon@newhavenregister.com.