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