Being an Alum from a Big 10 school I can fully appreciate the advantage of this move to add Rutgers and Maryland. It is about the money and it isn't about the money when its all said and done. Although it seems like there isnt an Athletic advantage here, the bigger advantage is Academically and supporting Title IX programs.
1. Last year the Big Ten network paid out close to 300 mill to the 12 teams, Maryland and Rutgers with their footprint and affluent alums, speculations are saying $500 mill + by 2016. This means more money for Title IX programs/ non revenue sports like baseball and soccer.
2. Both Rutgers and Maryland are part of the AAU which as a chancellor means more than having a successful sport program. The billions of dollars the Government pays out to Universities for research and new technologies , well there are only 62 of those AAU universities and they got about 55-60% of all those billions from the Gov't. Although each Big 10 institute competes for those same monies by the Gov't , the Big Ten also shares those resources and "some" break through technologies with each other.
3. Although Maryland is a sad case when it comes to Football, this immediately puts them on the recruiting map when going for top players. In addition , it puts a natural land touching state with Pennsylvania for rivalries.
Just speculation for but look for Kansas and North Carolina to be added in the next 2 years for those same reasons above
btw...The Big Ten is screwing up WIS by causing this domino affect with conferences...pretty soon playing GD will be a joke trying to remember that Notre Dame doenst belong in Big Ten and Rutgers and Maryland belongs ..ugh
11/19/2012 2:21 PM (edited)