Lately, conference expansion has been a hot topic. There have been reports and additional speculation that the Big Ten is looking to grow and the Pac-10 may not be far behind. Plenty of possibilities have been bandied about, from individual schools that could change conferences to just how many teams one of the conferences ultimately ends up with, as well as what the aftermath means for the conferences whose schools move on.
Count me as one person who hopes it all stops right there. And count me as one who figures it won’t.
The biggest reasons for the Big Ten wanting to expand are obvious: more money, and football as the driver for that. The Big Ten needs one more school to have divisions in football and a championship game, along with the revenue it would bring. It also would like more markets for its Big Ten Network, which seems a little odd considering I get the Big Ten Network here in metropolitan Boston as part of my cable package.
Speculation is that the Big Ten may not add just one team for an even dozen. In fact, the thinking is that the Big Ten might try to go to 16 schools, at which point one must wonder if the conference will change its name (although that never happened with the now-14-school Atlantic 10 Conference). It’s at that point where utter insanity would really begin to set in, and I’m not alluding to the fact that most, if not all, of the five schools it would add would likely be poached from the Big East.
No, the insanity has been going on for a while in this respect. In the 2009-10 season, 15 conferences in Division I had more than 10 schools. Most have 12 schools, while the Atlantic 10 has 14 and the Big East has 16. They are also getting more spread out geographically, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. The Atlantic 10 and Big East now stretch from New England as far south as North Carolina and Florida and as far west as Missouri and Illinois. Conference USA stretches from near the east coast of North Carolina to the far west end of Texas; the Sun Belt stretches from Miami to Denver. The Colonial Athletic Association stretches from Boston to Atlanta.
The move to expand conferences has by and large been first and foremost about football. Having 12 teams allows a conference to have divisions and ultimately a championship game, which brings in even more revenue. In basketball, the conferences already have championship games except in the Ivy League, which doesn’t have a tournament. Football was already a breadwinner for the major conferences, but that has become the case to an even larger degree now.
Basketball is hurt by an unbalanced schedule that results from this, which would only get worse with further expansion. In the first year of the 16-team Big East, each team had two schools it did not play at all. That changed once the conference expanded its schedule to 18 games, as they now play all 15 schools, three of them both home and away. The Pac-10 is the last of the big boys with a true round robin regular season, and if they add two more teams you can be sure that will be a thing of the past as well, which would be unfortunate.
Just by virtue of having an unbalanced schedule, calling one team a champion in the regular season becomes something of a misnomer. While that hasn’t yet happened in football, that could change if the Big Ten goes to 16 schools. While it would certainly have divisions, the eight-game conference schedule means each team will barely play half of its conference opponents. Can you really call the team that wins the championship game in such a scenario a true champion of the conference? At most, the champion will have played nine of the 15 other schools in the conference. It’s one thing to play nine of 11, as can happen in the SEC or Big 12, but it’s a little more significant in the Big Ten scenario.
The unbalanced schedule makes conference records not mean so much now. Former Seton Hall head coach Bobby Gonzalez once said that if a team goes .500 in the Big East, they should be in the NCAA Tournament. But the reality is, a 9-9 team might have played three teams behind them in the standings twice, while an 8-10 team might play three teams atop the standings twice. A 9-9 mark in the Big East doesn’t tell you as much as a 9-9 mark in the Pac-10 does because of the Big East’s unbalanced schedule.
In addition, the unbalanced schedule can also mean that great rivalries take an unnecessary breather or basically go away altogether. The ACC did the right thing in designating teams as primary partners, meaning they play twice every season, so that Duke and North Carolina will play home and home every year. But not every conference has done this, and frankly, it’s unfortunate that it would even have to be done.
A few big rivalries could go by the wayside if the Big Ten plucks some of the teams it is reportedly considering for expansion. Just imagine if Syracuse and Pittsburgh leave the Big East to join the Big Ten: with that, the Big East would not only lose two powerhouse teams, but they would also lose their signature rivalry in Georgetown-Syracuse and one of the best rivalries of late in Connecticut-Pittsburgh. If Missouri were to leave the Big 12 for the Big Ten, the Border Wars with Kansas would be a thing of the past.
Making more money is great, and it’s no secret that it’s the primary motivator here. But sometimes, the pursuit of the almighty dollar leads people to do things that might pull in more money but makes changes that aren’t very good in other respects. That’s why chasing dollars isn’t always a practical thing to do. Further expansion of conferences that in some cases are already too big is one such example, and that’s why we should hope that this doesn’t come to pass, no matter how inevitable it seems to be.
