Mailbag question: What is your take on adding another team to the Big Ten conference or should they?

Hello,

Have not seen your guys take on the JoePa and "needing to add another team to the Big Ten conference" and also what Delaney has said about it.

What is your take about adding another team? Do you favor it? Would it help the conference? Would we compete with the SEC now?

Also what are the bad things with adding another team if any?

Do you favor the 11 teams now and could they tweak it better? Add more weeks? Play more teams, etc.?

Interesting to hear your side of this argument that has been debated on the message boards for awhile now?

Greg

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Thanks for the question.

Here is the biggest problem we see with adding a twelve team to the Big Ten conference.

If you divide conference into two divisions (such as a East / West) with Michigan State, Penn State, Ohio State, and Michigan all in one division you have the biggest draws and toughest teams all beating the crap out of each other. Who are the other two teams that get placed with those four? How do you divide it fairly enough to where all the conference teams agree without feeling like they have been thrown into the tougher division?

Do you separate Ohio State and Michigan? What happens to "The Game"? If both sides agree they still want to play on the last weekend of the regular season, is it fair that they would possibly have a rematch in the conference championship game? Does it cheapen the rivalry if the regular season matchup loses its luster? There are a lot of questions, and right now nobody really knows the answers. One other thing to consider is if both Ohio State and Michigan are having good seasons -- would the loser in the conference championship game be out of the BCS? Factor into that scenario that a non-participant in the championship game could have just one loss, as with Texas and Oklahoma last year. Would the one-loss team jump over a two-loss loser of the Big Ten Championship game?

Ohio State, Penn State, and Michigan are guaranteed to fill their stadiums and bring in big television ratings. This is important to the conference and to college football.

We do think that The Big Ten conference, with eleven teams, needs to come up with a way to stage a conference championship game in early December -- but there is the 12-team rule for conference championship games. One alternative is to somehow extend the season into the first week of December with bye weeks. The extra exposure is good for the conference (the Big Ten falls off the radar with its early conclusion to the schedule). The extra practices would be great for Big Ten teams as well, especailly if they are headed to bowl games. That would be a great first step to gaining on the other BCS conferences.

We think they could keep it the way it is (with 11 teams) and just play every team in the conference (Ten Big Ten games -- two non-conference games) to claim a true champion of the Big Ten conference. But money is involved, and most of the Big Ten conference teams do not like this idea because they believe they need to play easier teams to get to the magical six wins to be eligible for a bowl. Playing more games in conference would make that goal harder to achieve. Our take is that if you cannot get to .500 in conference play, you don't belong in a bowl anyway.

The logical choice, and one the Big Ten should wait for, is Notre Dame. They bring more than football to the table. They bring prestige, ratings, and a rabid national fan base. The addition of Notre Dame gives the Big Ten more national appeal beyond Michigan - Ohio State.

Since Notre Dame turned down the Big Ten before the only other teams in the area we would feel comfortable with would be Pitt, Cincinnati, and Missouri. The problems with teams such as Syracuse, Rutgers, and those type of teams people discuss are their locations. The Big Ten is a Midwest based conference and by adding another eastern team you would really stretch the boundaries of the conference.

This is more than just a football conference. Most of the conference travel is done by bus for most of the sports teams (Michigan who has twenty-five sports programs), so the desire to add a team must factor in the extra cost to each university for each sport and game.

Think of it this way: One weekend Iowa plays Ohio State in baseball, the next weekend Rutgers, the following weekend Penn State -- the travel cost, especially in these tough economic times, would really put a strain not only on the universities, but also the fan bases that would want to travel to these events. It is one thing for football and possibly basketball, but a completely different story for other sporting events.

Again we think Notre Dame is the best choice, but we're not sure they will ever want to be part of a conference in which they are not the "big fish." They would be on equal footing with Ohio State and Michigan. Do they want to admit they are on a level playing field as those teams and admit they are not elite anymore? Penn State used to be a "big fish" before they came into the Big Ten -- now they are one of the "other teams" in the Big Ten conference in most sports.

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Written by CoachBt and ErocWolverine