DCDuck

Both Montana and Montana State have said repeatedly that they are happy playing in the Big Sky. As I said... The point was they are the two top teams in the Big Sky - biggest draws, best facilities, etc. They aren't moving up. It'd be a joke to move up someone like Sac State or PSU. They'd be Idaho, but worse. Might even kill their programs entirely. Almost as big of a joke as West Virginia in the Big XII or Colorado in the Pac-10... oh wait. My point is that "logic" and "reason" and "common sense" take a back seat to money when it comes to realignment.

Hawaii is going to trade an upgrade in football for a downgrade in every other sport. @ spleen: Student enrollment has nothing to do with student support or suitability for an athletic conference. Take the state of Virginia for example. VCU is the largest school in the state by undergraduate enrollment (32,000+), followed by George Mason and Old Dominion. Virginia Tech is fifth in the state by enrollment, while UVA is eighth. Yet those two schools are the only relevant ones when it comes to college football (which is the only thing that matters, otherwise we'd be talking about Baylor to the SEC or Tulane to the Big XII or something).

Both Montana and Montana State have said repeatedly that they are happy playing in the Big Sky.

I could see the Big Ten being interested in Kansas State if they are looking for a 16th team, assuming Maryland, Rutgers, and Notre Dame have all agreed and Texas or Oklahoma are off the table. K-State isn't (and has never been) an AAU Member Institution - and their ranking of 143 by US News & World Report isn't exactly inspiring for a conference that actually takes academics into account. K-State's getting a multi-billion dollar federal biowarfare research facility. The CIC would want in on that. Good facilities aren't what separates great universities from good ones, it's exceptional tenured faculty and a track record of having alumni who go out into the world and make big things happen (read: having things published in stuffy research journals). And without research money you don't get either. If you get the money, the starving PhDs will come. ... or you get tons of money and remain a Tier 3 school unranked by US News and World Report (just like Oklahoma State and Texas Tech).

I could see the Big Ten being interested in Kansas State if they are looking for a 16th team, assuming Maryland, Rutgers, and Notre Dame have all agreed and Texas or Oklahoma are off the table. K-State isn't (and has never been) an AAU Member Institution - and their ranking of 143 by US News & World Report isn't exactly inspiring for a conference that actually takes academics into account. K-State's getting a multi-billion dollar federal biowarfare research facility. The CIC would want in on that. Good facilities aren't what separates great universities from good ones, it's exceptional tenured faculty and a track record of having alumni who go out into the world and make big things happen (read: having things published in stuffy research journals).

So in other words, it's business as usual.

I could see the Big Ten being interested in Kansas State if they are looking for a 16th team, assuming Maryland, Rutgers, and Notre Dame have all agreed and Texas or Oklahoma are off the table. K-State isn't (and has never been) an AAU Member Institution - and their ranking of 143 by US News & World Report isn't exactly inspiring for a conference that actually takes academics into account.

Notre Dame is only going to be looking for a home for its non-football sports. Remember: they had ample opportunity to join the B1G but declined, even though every B1G school makes more money from the Big Ten Network than ND does from their NBC deal plus their Big East contract. Also it's worth noting the B1G is the one conference that still pretends like academics mean something, which narrows the list of possible expansion candidates to AAU Member Institutions (or at the very least schools with reputable academics). That eliminates about half of the Big XII right off the bat, and limits the ACC to Maryland and Georgia Tech. (Virginia is joined at the hip with Va Tech, UNC and Duke are joined at the hip with Wake Forest and NC State.)

Yeah, cuz their primary concern should be "how will it make Kansas feel?" Mizzou wants to continue the rivalry. It's KU who's whining and saying they don't want to play em. Well when Mizzou's departure raises the threat of the Big XII's collapse and your team having to play in the Mountain West or Big East or Missouri Valley then yeah, I'd be a tad bitter too. Make no mistake: if Texas or OU leaves the Big XII, KU (along with K-State, ISU and Baylor) are going to be left out in the cold.

And college sports dies just a little more with that press conference. Goodbye, Civil War. Hello, Missouri selling its soul for $EC cash.

In other words, Kansas State, Iowa State and Baylor make the Big XII more "legit" than Cincinnati, South Florida and Louisville in football? ... meh, I'd call it a "push".

Virginia isn't going anywhere without Virginia Tech, and vice versa. Mark Warner might not be in office as Virginia governor anymore, but there are still powerful political forces keeping those two schools together in the ACC.

I think realignment has taught us not to take anything that anyone says at face value. Virginia Tech is the one school in the ACC that I'd consider "safe" as long as UVA is still in the conference. There are unfathomably powerful forces at work keeping the two of them joined at the hip. Miami and UNC face upcoming NCAA sanctions too. If you want to talk about the viability of the ACC as a football conference, they have VT and they have whoever the "flavor of the season" team happens to be (this year it's Clemson). In a couple of years you might see people question whether the ACC deserves a BCS bid when they only have two teams out of fourteen that appear to be anything north of mediocre. I still believe there's going to be something that comes up creating a schism between Cuse, Pitt, BC and the other nine schools. The ACC built itself as a southern basketball conference and although adding northeast schools adds revenue, I don't know if they'll all fit together (nothing says football rivalry like Syracuse vs. Wake Forest!). Or maybe I'm one of the few who still believes that tradition actually means something in this day and age.

No it doesn't. If it had stability, why would they go and raise the exit fee to $20m? Obviously the folks in ACC-ville are paranoid of the B1G raiding Maryland (though I have no idea why they'd go after a basketball school with an Athletic Department that's flat broke) and the SEC raiding Clemson and/or Florida State. Compared to the Big East though it's the rock of Gibraltar. Yes there is a chance certain schools might bolt if specific conferences came calling, but all of the ACC's membership isn't actively looking for an escape. You can't say that about the Big East. Just because the ACC is more stable than the Big East doesn't mean the ACC is actually stable. That's like comparing Danny DeVito to a garden gnome.

Maryland = a basketball school in a market that already has Georgetown as direct competition and the Big Five just two hours north of them. They also have to compete with the CAA schools, who grow in profile every year (Mason is 30 minutes away, VCU is two hours away). Gary Williams brought the basketball program back to relevance but if Mark Turgeon can't take the Terps to the NCAA Tournament within two or three years, they may fall back into the dregs of irrelevance. Maryland football is already irrelevant. Ralph Friedgen took them to five bowl wins in ten years and won National Coach of the Year in 2002. Not even that could spur season ticket sales in a market that, as you said, is right between the stomping grounds of the Redskins and Ravens - two of the more passionate and devoted fan bases in the NFL. The ACC is a league built around the Carolinas. Maryland is to the ACC what Arkansas was to the old SWC. Their biggest rivals in football play in different conferences (Penn State, West Virginia) and their biggest rival in basketball was more about Gary Williams facing off against Mike Krzyzewski than it was really about Maryland and Duke. What I could see happening is that the three Northern schools (BC, Cuse, Pitt) realize that the ACC is, has been, and always will be about the five schools in the Carolinas. After experiencing a couple seasons in the ACC, they might break off and find some other northeastern schools to band with after realizing that no matter how much noise they make, they will always be seen as inferior to any school south of Virginia Tech. Or they all get gobbled up by the B1G.

No it doesn't. If it had stability, why would they go and raise the exit fee to $20m? Obviously the folks in ACC-ville are paranoid of the B1G raiding Maryland (though I have no idea why they'd go after a basketball school with an Athletic Department that's flat broke) and the SEC raiding Clemson and/or Florida State.

Score another one for "tradition". ... oh wait.

Maryland offers little in football. It's a basketball school located right in the middle of two passionate pro football fan bases (Redskins and Ravens). Buffalo? Let's add Central Connecticut State, Wagner and Eastern Kentucky while we're at it.

FYP Has it been confirmed that they'll be playing in the East? Even so, they'll have to compete with the likes of Georgia, South Carolina and Florida on a yearly basis. Those might not be on the level of LSU, Alabama or Arkansas but they are still definitely not teams that will lay down for Mizzou by any means.

An honest question for all the Mizzou fans out there: Do you really believe your team can be competitive in football playing in the SEC West?

Yes, they are. I understand you hate Coach Cal, and I hate him too, but give Josh Pastner some credit. Memphis is a Memphis city, at least for basketball. When Louisville and Cincinnati were in C-USA they were able to recruit Memphis more easily than any SEC school is able to now.

And yet Memphis manages to snag all of the best in-city talent year after year. The same can't be said of Chicago (when's the last time DePaul, Loyola-IL or UIC were relevant?), Washington DC (Georgetown has looked rather un-Georgetown-like ever since their Final Four run, same with GW since they started that one season 27-2), or New York City (Seton Hall, Fordham, Manhattan have all been mediocre at best, St. John's had one good season last year but mainly haven't been worth watching either). But this thread is about football. Memphis is a distinctly different region than Nashville (Central TN) or Knoxville (Eastern TN). And truth be told, I can't imagine Memphis being a stomping ground for Hog fans, Rebel fans or Tide fans.

That's assuming there isn't another program in the immediate vicinity. Why travel six hours to Knoxville when you can travel sixteen minutes to Memphis?