The Uber Conference?

Disclaimer: The views expressed on this particular posting may not be shared by the entire Indiana Lesnet family.
I am up late suffering from allergy induced insomnia. Before bed tonight I spent a little time researching the potential expansion of the Big Ten Conference and read a pretty interesting article written by a student at the University of Texas regarding the addition of Texas to the Big Ten. You can read the article yourself here.

Anyway, since I am a proud member of the Purdue Varsity P Club and a Purdue football season ticket holder I feel that I can let the blogosphere know my thoughts on the expansion of the Big Ten conference. Mr. Jim Delany, if you read this and it helps to sway your thought process, you do not need to give me any credit.

I think that the most important thing is to make sure that any school that is added is an "it" school like the current schools in the Big Ten. All of the current schools in the conference are kind of like that guy in school who is the all-state athlete who carries that perfect 4.0 while dating the prom queen. By that I mean, the current members of the Big Ten are all ranked in the top 75 academic schools in the country and of course they all have big time athletic programs.

Here is my list of "it" schools that are currently NOT in the Big Ten (in no particular order):
1. Stanford
2. Notre Dame
3. Duke
4. Vanderbilt
5. Cal-Berkeley
6. UCLA
7. Virginia
8. USC
9. North Carolina
10. Wake Forest
11. Boston College
12. Georgia Tech
13. University of Washington
14. Florida
15. Miami (FL)
16. Maryland
17. Pittsburgh
18. Syracuse
19. Georgia
20. Clemson
21. Texas A&M
22. University of Texas
23. Rutgers
24. UCONN
25. Brigham Young

In order to be included on my list, the University had to have a respectable athletic program and be rated in the top 75 on US News & World Reports list of National Universities. There are some others in the 76 - 105 range that could be good candidates if the Big Ten cannot fill their expansion efforts with the 25 schools listed above (Va Tech, Colorado, Baylor, Auburn, Iowa State, Alabama, Kansas, Nebraska, Florida State, Mizzou, and Arizona).

Although any of the above 25 schools would be decent fits in the new Uber Conference, I believe that some schools should stay put. I think that the SEC and the ACC should stay as they are and the PAC 10 should grow and add a couple of schools from the WAC. With that said, any school currently in those 3 conferences should stay put.

I think that the Big East and the Big Twelve schools would be open to moving to the Uber Conference. The reason that I feel that the Big East is open is because it is quite frankly a conference without an identity as not all of the schools compete in football. The Big Twelve is a relatively new conference that tried to blend the Big Eight with the Southwestern Conference to create a decent regional athletic conference. The main problem with the Big Twelve in my opinion is that the academic prestige just isn't there as only 2 schools in the conference rank in the top 75 national colleges (with another 6 that rank below the lowest rated Big Ten school but still rank in the top 105, leaving 4 schools in the "Tier 3" or "unranked" category). I feel that the opportunity to align with other prestigious universities would be a better situation for the following schools:
1. PITT
2. Syracuse
3. Texas
4. Texas A&M
5. UCONN
6. BYU
7. Rutgers
8. Notre DameClearly the school that makes the most sense and has been invited before is Notre Dame. I believe that Notre Dame is a great fit for the conference and would easily keep its identity as a national program if they joined the right conference. Do I think that they'll jump? Well, I think if the schools from the Big Twelve in my list would defect, then Notre Dame would be forced to join.

Which brings me to the other 2 schools that would complete the new 14 team Uber Conference:

Clearly Texas is the crown jewel of the Big Twelve and getting them alone would make an extremely strong 12 school conference. Bringing along the Aggies of Texas A&M would make the move more politically palatable and would make at least one of Texas's biggest rivaly games a conference match up.

Here is my Uber Conference
East Division:
Indiana University
Michigan
Michigan State
Notre Dame
Ohio State
Penn State
Purdue

West Division:
Illinois
Iowa
Minnesota
Northwestern
Texas
Texas A&M
Wisconsin

These divisions would keep most of the protected rivalries and may make it possible to have protected rivalries in basketball. This is definitely an amazing affiliation of fantastic universities. The only negative that I see here is the Indiana's football team may never win another conference football game again.

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God. Philippians 1:9-11

Big News - New Lesnet Coming "Soon"!

The Indiana Lesnets are due to grow by one on or around October 25th! Stephanie is in her 14th week of pregnancy and everything seems to be going well. This pregnancy is eerily similar to Stephanie's time with Kai as she has had the same severe nausea and fatigue. The big difference this time is that we have the Energizer Bunny of 2 year olds running around so it is difficult to find time to rest (or make it to the bath room for throwing up).We have also fenced in the back yard. Kiki is trying to figure out how to escape from it and Kai enjoys throwing stuff over the top and making daddy go and get it.


I took Kai up to Purdue for the Dave Rankin Track Invitational. There is a reunion each year at the meet so Kai and I headed up there while mommy went to work. Kai loved running on the track and although I don't want to admit it, I really enjoyed chasing him.

While we were at Purdue we went over to Ross-Ade Stadium to check out some of the football team's spring game festivities. They had a giant Drew Brees bobblehead doll. Pretty neat!

Mommy works a lot in April and so Kai was forced to live with a lot of daddy duty. This evening Kai really wanted his mommy. Such a sad little boy!Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has strife? Who has complaints? Who has needless bruises? Who has bloodshot eyes? - Proverbs 23:29

Wicked Awesome!

This past weekend we went up to Northwest Ohio to visit family and go see the musical Wicked. As always, we had a great time and Kai got to see both sets of grandparents as well as some other friends and family members.

We left on Friday at a little before 1, which is Kai's nap time. It took a while for him to fall asleep but eventually he dad and woke up right before our first stop at the Lesnet homestead in Edon, Ohio. While we were there Kai not only got to see grandpa and grandma Lesnet, but got to see his great uncle Gary and a whole bunch of baby lambs.

Here is Kai feeding a lamb out of the bottle. Sure bet you didn't know that lambs drink Dr. Pepper!
Feeding lambs sure is fun!
Here's me (Chad) bottle feeding a lamb when I Kai's age. I know that you can't tell from the picture, but I believe that lambs drank Mountain Dew when I was a kid.
Real men (Lesnet men anyway) drive red tractors. Here's Kai getting his first alone time on one. Maybe grandpa or daddy can take him for a better ride this summer.
Until Kai gets a little older, he will have to settle for driving this red tractor around.
Kai with Grandma Lesnet.
Here is Kai with his great uncle Kris and great aunt Bev. They hung out with Kai while the rest of us went to see Wicked.
Here's Kai showing grandpa and grandma Eridon the cool fort that he and great aunt Bev made. I think that they used 5 chairs and several blankets. It may have been the best chair and blanket fort that I have ever seen!
We had a great weekend and we really enjoyed the time with family. The Wicked musical was fantastic and the story line for it was pretty smooth (although it became beyond predictable once I saw Nessarose's socks about 2/3 of the way through). I would highly recommend that everyone goes and sees it performed by an extremely talented professional company as it could be awful if performed by a lesser group than the one that we saw.

We had an action packed weekend but we still made it home in time to catch the entire Sunday coverage of The Masters.

Do not spread false reports. Do not help a wicked man by being a malicious witness. - Exodus 23:1

Bad April Fool's Joke

Ok, ok, ok, I'm awake! It's nearly 2 in the morning and I am sitting here at the computer instead of staring at the inside of my eyelids.

I have not been making the time to get on here and blog awesome stories about the Indiana Lesnets lately. Frankly, I've just been too busy and the thought of adding something to the weekly to-do list doesn't excite me very much. There is a temporary light at the end of the tunnel coming up on the busyness so there should be more blogging.

Spring is in the process of springing here in Central Indiana and we have been enjoying it to the fullest! I have already played 2 rounds of golf and even got to wear shorts on the round that I played yesterday. I need to knock a lot of rust off of my very rusty swing and the winds need to simmer down a bit.

Kai did not want me to take his picture while we were at the playground but I learned that rapid fire pictures with the camera will eventually result in some good shots. Thank the Lord for digital photography!



Do not love sleep or you will grow poor; stay awake and you will have food to spare. - Proverbs 20:13