Maryland/Rutgers added to B1G –What does it mean?

Yesterday the Big Ten added a 13th member in Maryland and today will add Rutgers.  My first reaction was to get upset as the traditionalist in me hates expansion and what it will do to our traditional rivalries.  If you forget, 14 teams means we have two divisions of 7 and with a six game division schedule.  That leaves 2 games for interdivision and with one protected (Michigan), we will see the other teams in the division once every 6 years.  Even if they add another conference game we will only see teams like Nebraska and Iowa, once every 3 years.  Replacing more frequent matches against these teams with Rutgers and Maryland makes me sad and it is probably going to get worse as I don’t think it is done.

That leads to the question – Why is the Big Ten doing this?

The answer is easy.  Money.

I’m sure many people’s first reaction was …. Maryland? Rutgers? That’s stupid!

At first glance it seems like this as neither school has much of a football tradition.  Neither school sells out their stadium which are half the size of Ohio State’s.  What makes them more attractive than schools with more football history like Pitt, Syracuse, or West Virginia?

This addition isn’t exciting to football fans but college president love this for three reason: 1) TV market, 2) Political access and 3) Research.

1. TV Market – As I’ve written before there are two parts to the B1G fees. There’s the 1st tier games that will be broadcast nationally and 2nd tier that will be broadcast on BTN. 
• 1st tier - The B1G is renegotiating its TV contract for football and basketball and the recent trend is to sign them for 15 years. That’s a long time and the B1G needs to do whatever possible to be attractive to Fox/ESPN/CBS/etc.  Adding teams near the big markets of New York, Washington DC, and Baltimore makes the league more attractive.  It wouldn’t shock me to hear that the TV networks have pushed for this because they know these markets are untapped.
• 2nd tier – The B1G charges $.10 to cable companies in states without a B1G team and $1.10 for states with a B1G team.  These schools are surrounded by huge populations.
• The odds are pretty good that the B1G will be added to basic in Maryland because of the popularity of Terrapin basketball.  At an estimate of 2 million households that’s an extra $2 million PER MONTH.  That alone pays for Maryland’s entry.
• It’s trickier in Rutgers as the pull for that school isn’t great in New York.  The interesting thing is Fox just bought YES which broadcasts the Yankees.  Fox is the majority owner of the BTN and it isn’t a huge stretch to see them pair the two to force New York cable companies to buy the Big Ten Network as well.
2. Political Access – One thing that was mentioned yesterday was that the Big Ten is opening an East Coast office to support the schools in this area.  The location is going to be interesting and will tell volumes of what the league expects from this office. 
• Philadelphia – The midpoint of the three eastern teams is Philadelphia.  This happens to be the hometown of Comcast which is the largest cable provider in the country. 
• Washington DC – Maryland is close to these schools but if they locate here I’d expect it to be a lobbying office which I will get into more in point #3.
• New York – The media companies all have a strong presense here and the home of ESPN (Bristol, Conn) is right up the road.
• Other – I doubt it would be located somewhere else but if the B1G expands elsewhere in the east it could affect the location.
3. Research –
• It is no secret that research departments are going to experience a period of reduced budgets.  Federal and state governments are deep in debt and have to make cutbacks.  That means schools will have to do more with less and cooperation with organizations like the Big Ten’s CIC will be more important.
• I touched on a secondary consideration in point #2.  If the B1G opens their branch in Washington it would be a great place to work on lobbying the government for additional dollars.  It can’t hurt the league to have a presence at the major universities in the states of New Jersey and Maryland.  The political votes in two heavily populated states help too.
• 10 of the current B1G members are ranked in the top 55 of research spending.  Maryland is 39th and Rutgers is 57th.  This represents almost a quarter of the top 50 research universities and the fact they work together means makes them an attractive destination for funds.
4. Olympic sports - The Big Ten has 12 of the top 48 in the Director’s cup standings which measures overall program success (Ohio State is the highest at #4).  Maryland is 27th and Rutgers is 111th.  Both programs have certain programs where they excel but Rutgers is definitely is a dog in this regard but they have lots of potential.
5. Fertile recruiting grounds – Something that I mentioned yesterday on the Ozone forums which Gerd copied and a few other Buckeye columnists copied (/pat-myself-on-the-back).
• 2013 3+ Star recruits per 247 / Rivals
• Maryland - 46 / 35
• New Jersey - 41 / 33
• Indiana - 26 / 26
• Illinois - 36 / 37
• Wisconsin - 9 / 14
• Minnesota - 5 / 5
• Michigan - 32 / 34
• Pennsylvania - 39 / 33
• Iowa - 6 / 6
• Nebraska - 3 / 4
• Ohio - 80 / 91
• The population that runs through New York, New Jersey, Maryland, N Virginia, and E Pennsylvania is one of the largest in the world.  The colleges in this area are mostly private and have de-emphasized scholarship sports.  Rutgers changed this trend in the early 1990s but still have a long ways to go.  The key for B1G schools is they can recruit the east coast and tell parents they can not only see their kids on TV but now see them in person.

The overriding theme in every one of these points is that by adding these two schools you lock down more of the country than you would with many other more successful programs.

• There are many ways to look at areas with the propensity to support a football team but the best is possibly to look at the NFL.
• Currently the B1G has Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, Indianapolis, Chicago, Green Bay, St. Louis and Kansas City.
• Adding these two teams is like adding Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, and Washington.
• If the NCAA ever consolidates to make a league like the NFL they’ve already locked down these markets.
• As a side note, Syracuse and Boston College makes some sense to get Buffalo/New England but I’m not sure either make sense academically and no other schools are much better.
• To the south Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia Tech only add Atlanta and Carolina which would be split with other schools.

In essence, these two schools have the greatest potential to lock down more fans and biggest payback for the Big Ten that are also great research institutions and close to the financial, media, and political power in the country.  That’s why the decision was made to add Rutgers and Maryland.  Only time will tell if it was a good one.

I"m so tired of the Gene Smith apologists

I'm talking about the people that say if we self accessed a bowl ban last year we would have gotten another year.  Here's an argument I've fought repeatedly:

I stipulate that Gene Smith is an idiot & should be fired. However, there was always going to be a 2012 bowl ban...There is nothing Smith could have done to prevent it...with the possible exception of banning Bobby Di from the program the day he (Smith) was hired.

My response:

You don't know this and it is most likely it would have been 1 yr. Why? USC got 2 years for LOIC. We were barely FtM.  The NCAA doesn't go against precedent and while Gene Smith thought there was no precedent for a 1 year ban there definitely wasn't precedent for a 2 year ban. They'd need a LOIC charge and that didn't happen.

His response:

You (and a lot of others don't get it). Ohio State was a REPEAT OFFENDER w/that FTM. The hammer was coming down. 

I clarified my statement as I hate getting into specifics with the NCAA as it always takes paragraphs and still isn't enough because all of their cases are messy.

The only case where a school got a two year ban without a LOIC was the Alabama Albert Means case in 2002.  If you don't remember that's where it was proven that multiple Alabama boosters were giving money to Alabama recruits a few years after they'd been caught doing the same thing in the mid 90s.  The only thing that saved the school was the NCAA couldn't prove a direct link to the school in directing the payments.  That saved them from a LOIC but the NCAA charged them similarly.

 Ohio State's football program was only repeat offender because an individual football case that was promptly dealt with (Troy Smith's $500 payout) was included with the O'Brien's scandal.  The Compliance Group felt the football program would be exempt from repeat violator penalties because cases against players are handled differently than cases against programs.   

Even though BobbyD gave us a FtM the two combined pale in comparison to Alabama's situation that was lucky to not get a LOIC.  You can look at the penalties to see how the NCAA viewed the severity.

• Alabama lost 21 scholarships and a two year bowl ban
• OSU lost 9 scholarships and a one year bowl ban. 

Are we to believe that because we self imposed a bowl ban last season that the NCAA would have upped the bowl ban out of spite?  The scholarships give a clue about how the NCAA felt about the severity of the two cases and they just don't arbitrarily give longer sentences because we proactively gave ourselves a bowl ban during a bad season and they didn't feel it was harsh enough.  It would create precedent they'd need to live with forever.

A good example is the USC situation.  They took 2 years pre-emptively while protesting the scholarship reduction.  This season they are bowling while the scholarship reductions started this year.

I understand people wanting to believe this as they want to see the NCAA as an arbitrary monster that needs to be struck down. It is really a bunch of lawyers using a set of overly complex rules to govern something that is impossible to govern.  They have little authority to actively police the schools and I'm sure they feel helpless at times.  College sports is tailor made for abuse and while the penalties can seem arbitrary when you look at case law there is precedent and a methodology for every thing they do. That leaves little room to give Ohio State another year 'just cause they felt like it'.