re: Where do you see the Big10 headed?

Short answer: both.

I had not really thought of it as penalizing the SEC, but I get what you mean. The new rule will certainly cause the average SEC school to have fewer recruits to choose from as they whittle down their class between February and August to meet the NCAA's 85 and 25 limits.

In the 4 years from 2004-2007, Big Ten programs averaged 85 recruiting commitments. In that same period, SEC schools averaged 101 signings. That is a difference of 16. So for a 4 year period, the average SEC school signs practically an entire extra recruiting class.

Now that SEC schools will not be able to oversign quite so egregiously, those extra recruits will have to choose another school if they want a football scholarship. Many of them undoubtedly will choose Big Ten schools.

This will also have an effect on the SEC's use of junior colleges as a sort of farm system. In the past, oversigned recruits would often resort to junior college after being removed from the program of their choice in that program's effort to comply with the NCAA's 85 and 25 limits and/or as a result of their own academic or legal problems. Although not required to do so, those recruits would typically use junior college to prepare for another shot at joining the program to which they originally committed.

Those junior college relationships have been very important to several SEC schools because they can basically pick and choose from their former recruiting casualties who went the juco route to better prepare themselves, physically and mentally, for Division I FBS football.

Another way schools have managed to stay within the NCAA's 85 scholarship limit despite oversigning is to decide not to renew the scholarship of a current player who is unlikely to contribute significant playing time to make room for a new recruit with better potential. That is just another advantage that should be reduced somewhat by the SEC's new rule.