It's been a daily soap opera on shaggybeaver, where the moderatation is between slim and nonexistant. The consensus is ACC teams have to wait to see what the courts rule on Maryland's $50 million exit fee.

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the Aggies of the Big Ten.

There's certainly attempts at making this happen going on. But every other week it seems like Twitter blows up with this for 2 hours and then nothing. A couple have stated an announcement was coming Monday morning.

Ummm...this didn't happen.

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It's beyond transparent that he's trying to nuke the ACC to 'get' Notre Dame. There is no other reason to add filler like UNC and Virginia, neither of which bring much in TV money.

The state of North Carolina offers TV markets, decent high school football (better than most of the Big Ten's footprint), and good basketball to boot.

There's very little plausible about the notion of North Carolina going to the Big Ten.

TAMU's success might convince some idiot UNC administrators.

Think of it this way:
A&M/Texas: Divorced couple
UNC/Duke : Happy twin brothers

Their football programs don't represent each other at all. In basketball Duke and Coach K are a much bigger program right now and I think the same is true in WBB.

As schools they've never had more than a zip code in common

1- Add football rich high school talent within the footprint of the Big Ten

2- Feed the monster that is the Big Ten Network

3- As you say, break ND and force them into the Big Ten.

Population growth from 1970 to 2010 (in millions)

PA 11.8 to 12.7 (+7.6%)
MI 8.9 to 9.9 (+11.2%)
OH 10.7 to 11.5 (+7.5%)
VA 4.6 to 8.0 (+73.9%)
NC 5.0 to 9.5 (+90.0%
GA 4.6 to 9.7 (+110.9%)

I'm not sure Delany fully appreciates the direction media is heading, but he does seem to have some appreciation for the direction U.S. demographics are headed.

Basketball is the inventory that justifies the presence of the BTN on TV sets in Big Ten land throughout the year.

Football is only on 12ish Saturdays a year.

NC would really strengthen that.

The BTN is highly profitable, and it generates a lot of that profit from cable subscriber fees. The best way to maximize cable subscriber fees is to be on basic cable packages in large markets.

on anyone's cable. Texas is discovering that their LHN is worthless because it has no football games.

One is a station that has inventory of games from 12 conference members, one is a single team.

While, I agree that football is the straw that stirs the drink in the deals conferences sign with CBS/ABC/ESPN/FOX, I do not think that football is the primary driver in these conference networks.

people's interest in UT. With 8 pro teams and a half dozen other schools playing major D1 football, there's a lot of competition for the Texas sports fan, and I think UT greatly overestimated their pull.

After ABC/ESPN, BTN gets the scraps.

UVa and UNC both have programs.

It will collapse, TV will become a la carte, and the Big 10 will be stuck with low revenue football programs who will take an equal share. In the meantime, rivalries are destroyed and nonsensical matchups are created

I can se why the academicians at Bog 10 schools would find his appealing.

And the more ridiculous realignment gets, the likelier it is in the long run that the who.e thi g comes crashing down.

A la carte cable, Alabama's spending binge, ESpN's monopolisitc behavior, and this balls-in revenue whoring by the athletic directors might combine to cause colleges to dream it all up again.

Delanty is a bad guy.

The ratings are likely so bad that they don't release them.

Their model is all about forcing a channel on the 98%+ of people that have no interest in it.

In the tristate area that will be forced to pay for the big 10 network because of Rutgers actually wants the channel? Once cable goes a la carte, all of that revenue and the entire premise delaney's ambitious plans are based on are gone. It is an unsustainable business model, he is relying on a small obsessive college football fan base forcing it upon the masses. He is buying up tv markets, not real demand like an nd would bring

I have watched one "event" on BTN in three years.
A few years ago I watched an ND hockey game at Michigan
on BTN.....Nobody at the bar has ever said,"I'm
going home and am watching the game on BTN tonight"
either.It just showed up on TWC one day on ch.472.
I spin through the channels every six months just to
see what new channels have been added and came across
it. 472 is a long way from basic and I can assure
you that at least in NYC you will never see it on
basic.....It took 20 years for WGN to be added at
ch. 162 on TWC last year.....

From subscription fees.

Is Delaney trying to outflank the entire NCAA and position himself to be running the show?

It makes more sense than some bizarre quixotic fixation on ND.

as a conference game is not nonsensical, it is parody. It is bad enough in football, but for the nonrevenue sports, it is ridiculous.

Most people in New Jersey couldn't find Nebraska on a map, and I would imagine that is true of the Rutgers football team.

Hasn't made the NCAA tournament once since joining
the BE.....not likely to do much better in BiG....

Jeff Ermann ‏@insidemdsports
UNC? Real life, I believe. RT@NYTerp1413 is it a real offer or just a school on the accepted list...

Jeff Ermann ‏@insidemdsports
I'm speaking out of turn, but I'd say the Big 10 likely views GT and UVA as 8s ... And UNC as Kate Upton. Heels are the apocalyptic domino.

Jeff Ermann ‏@insidemdsports
Not sure. But it's churning. RT@mjotwits Anyone else reporting these schools possibly joining Big 10? Big 10 kept things quiet with MD & Rut

all have connections to MD...so it isn't surprising in the least they could break the story ...where would their inside knowledge come from at UNC, VA, Vatech, etc.

With 20 teams you could have four 5-team "pods". You would always play the other four in your pod, and would rotate through the other three pods, playing one each year. The big ten gets their 9th conference game that way. The conference championship would be easy, as the pods that play each other would act as the "division" for that year.

Obviously the issue is some schools might not like only getting a team like Ohio state at home once every six years (or in general only once every three years). But I'm sure the additional tv revenue would keep those complaints down.

There is a point where a conference of that size would collapse of its own weight.

A 20 team conference might as well just be 2 conferences.

Each ACC team plays the 6 teams in its division, its protected crossover, and one rotating team from the other division every year. So each ACC team will have 6 conferencemates that it will play each once every 6 years, at home once every 12 years.

Pitt plays FSU at home this year, but won't see the Seminoles again in Pittsburgh until 2025. They'll play in Tallahasee in 2019.

The commissioners will rue expansion someday. It's poisoning the entire college athletics system.

But I always thought that the point of conferences was to play teams every year and have meaningful rivalries.

I understand it's all $$$ based now, but at some point with some many teams in a league is it even a conference anymore? It's just one giant group of teams that share some pile of money but don't play each other often.

Delaney is just demonstrating his love of Communism.

Especially if one believes a super league of 64 is inevitable.

Any conference with more than 12 members for football is too large.

On top of that, there's a basic flaw in your premise: you assume the move toward superconferences is a collaborative approach. In truth, it's a dog-eat-dog scenario. So it's not out of the question that the B1G might go beyond 16, particularly if Delany's approach is to expand the footprint one state at a time, with the ultimate goal being to get to Florida.

If > 16 proves unwieldy for scheduling purposes (for my money, anything > 12 is unwieldy for scheduling purposes, but nobody ever listens to me), don't be surprised to see the B1G drop a program or two, nor would I say that it's automatically only the newbies that are on the potential chopping block. Among existing members, I could see Indiana, Purdue (although not both of them), Illinois and Sparty all potentially on the chopping block, and add Northwestern to that list (as well as the possibility of both Indiana and Purdue going) in the unlikely event we were ever to join the conference.

And everyone being independent?

By this, I mean those conference officers and bureaucrats who would control the day-to-day stuff, and who would be personally involved in negotiations with networks, sponsors, venues, etc.

Compared to independence, more is taken care of for university administrators (who seem to enjoy their other duties, anyway); much of the sports stuff is farmed out off-campus.

For higher-ups at conference H.Q., representing dozens of schools gives them more leverage in their contracts with broadcasters. The ability to split off from the N.C.A.A. completely has also been mentioned here.

Having oodles of guaranteed inventory gives broadcasters more leverage with cable distributors, whom they'll press for higher carriage fees.

Sure, there's a limit to how far this can go, but for the individuals who are driving this, there's increased control and status on the line.

4 5-team pods would give you 4 pod games, plus one from each other pod would be 3, for a total of 7 games.

A 20-team conference is moronic. But so is the Big 10.

And yes. A 20 team conference is moronic. But I think it works better than 18. And at this point the conferences are getting so big what's the difference.