To me, at this point, college football has turned into a complete cluster that isn’t really about an earnest attempt to find the best team in the game, and more about making money. In an era where some leagues could do well to consolidate, (NHL, maybe MLB), college football has successful teams beating down the door to join the ranks of Division 1, and presidents are working to make sure they can’t. They want to prevent other teams from taking a piece of their pie. College football is consolidating, and with so many worthy institutions out there that should have a chance to compete, that’s bad. The only thing that I am interested in with football, is how the divisions will now break down (I vote for a turn to geography: Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Northwestern, Illinois and Michigan in the west, Michigan State, Ohio State, Purdue, Indiana, Penn State Rutgers and Maryland in the east, to preserve the Ohio State-Michigan championship game possibility).
On the other hand, I find the basketball related possibilities to be very interesting. Each school, Maryland and Rutgers, offers their own possibilities. Maryland’s are obvious: They have a strong history of athletic success, winning the NCAA Tournament as recently as 2002, and making the Big Dance 8 times since 2000. They will lend a little more legitimacy to an already talented conference, and a different style of basketball for teams preparing to make their way deep into the tournament.
Rutgers helps in a different way. They aren’t very good on the basketball court, and outside of a couple of random seasons, never really have been. They are, however, located in northern New Jersey, halfway between New York and Philadelphia. This will ease in recruiting, I have to believe, for the rest of the conference. The entire region is very ripe for basketball talent, and the promise of at least one trip a year back home for recruits might mean the extra boost that a player needs to go to Michigan or Wisconsin or wherever they may not have been willing to go before.
While this is probably a sacrifice for most programs in terms of football (revenue, after all, is now split 14 ways, and the teams don’t really make the product better) in order to get into a couple of bigger markets to the Big Ten Network fold, I have to think that this makes Big Ten basketball better. The product will be stronger on the court, and a little bit more national attention will be a positive when it comes to tournament time.
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