re: USC and UCLA headed to the Big 10. Update: It's official

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Let’s end NCAA while we are at it

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I think you can pretty much stick a fork in the NCAA at this point. Super conferences will have no tolerance for sharing the pie with these have-nots. Division One football is being redefined as we speak. They will ultimately decide the size of their coaching staff, how many scholarships they give out, and how many visits athletes can take to any school. To name just a few. These superconferences will be playing by their own rules and the rest of college football will be left to figure out what's left.

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These superconferences will be playing by their own rules and the rest of college football will be left to figure out what's left.

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So basically even more of a glorified minor league to the NFL than it is now.

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It’s obvious Big10 and SEC will eventually be like the AFC and NFC in pros

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Exactly. At this point they should just make it official and break them up into smaller pro style divisions with a respective playoff bracket rather than continuing the charade of using the names of historic conferences. The old days of cfb are officially dead

Purdue lost to Washington in the rose bowl about 20 years ago.

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again, what the hell does the academics of the conference have to do with anything?

Explain to me just speaking in terms of dollars, b/c that's all that matters here,

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I just saw this post, so I'll put this in financial terms you'll appreciate:


A lot has been made about the B1G exceeding $1 billion in athletic revenue soon. That's certainly an impressive number.

However, what the general public doesn't realize is that the precious in-state tuition everyone prizes is generally only funded to the tune of 20%-30% by your friendly low-tax state government. As state budgets tighten over the next few years, higher education is one of the few areas where politicians and policymakers can make cuts that largely go unnoticed by the general public.

Ever since the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act in the early 1980's, the rest of a research university's revenue comes from professors who are busy patenting new inventions, writing a steady stream of research grant applications, and fitting hundreds of students into a single classroom for first-year seminars. To cite just one example, the technological innovations in your iPhone weren't created by Apple. They were created by government funded research. Apple is really a design company that finds attractive ways to package technology.

So while that $1 billion from athletics is a nice - and very welcome - number, it pales in comparison to the $9.8 billion in research grants that the B1G Academic Alliance brings in. USC (an institution I'm very familiar with) has aspired to be viewed as a "peer" institution with universities like Northwestern, Michigan, and Wisconsin for decades. They've now achieved a 40-year plan of transitioning from a sleepy urban university to a research powerhouse that was set in motion in the administration of the late Steven Sample.

I know ya'll think this is all about sports, and a large part of it certainly is. But it's also an example of how elite institutions consolidate resources to recruit talented faculty and doctoral students, keep their alumni donations high, and strengthen their hold on powerful networks. One reason why USC and UCLA were able to keep such a tight lip about this move is that they knew their professors and mid-level admins would be largely thrilled with the B1G.

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believe that the best of the best high school players will be sure they are in one of these super conferences in the future.

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well except for the odd one that Coach Prime pulls

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Are you saying that UW don't have a baseball team? That is odd.

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Nobody cares about college baseball.

Couldn't get the chart to format properly on this site.

The Big Ten members collectively conduct $10B in research, but the BTAA doesn't distribute that money. If, for example Michigan left the Big Ten, they would still conduct the same amount of research.