While football is the driver of tv dollars and therefore the driving force behind expansion, basketball will be greatly affected no matter the result (unless it is only Notre Dame to the Big Ten and nothing more, a highly unlikely scenario.
Scenario 1 – The Big Ten expands by one taking Missouri from the Big 12 and the Big 12 replaces Missouri with either BYU or Utah. The Mountain West replaces the loss with Boise St. for football reasons and the WAC stands pat after losing the Broncos.
Effects:
1. The Big Ten gets slightly more difficult. While Missouri is a strong basketball program, the unbalanced schedules that we already have in college basketball mean the schedules don’t get significantly tougher. Maybe the league gets a small RPI boost.
2. Either BYU or Utah are the equivalent to what Missouri already is in basketball: a consistent middle of the pack tourney team capable of a higher seed and decent tourney run every 3-5 years. The only thing lost in the Missouri move are the rivalries played twice a year against Kansas and, to a lesser extent Kansas St. that would be a once a year game.
3. The Mountain West is significantly weakened in basketball terms without one of the Utah schools who, along with UNLV, are the bellwethers in basketball.
Read more after the jump including the completely crazy scenario.
Scenario 2 – The Big East in saving its own existence in football somehow forces Notre Dame out forcing them to join the Big Ten to save its other sports. The Big Ten stays at 12 and the Pac-10 swipes Colorado and Utah to become the Pac-12. The Big 12 grabs BYU to replace Colorado and the Mountain West and WAC merge forming a 16-team league not too much unlike what the WAC was from 1996-98.
Effects:
1. Just as with Missouri before, the Big Ten gets slightly more difficult with Notre Dame in the fold.
2. The Big 12 North gets more difficult with BYU replacing league minnow Colorado.
3. The now Pac-12 loses its round robin scheduling replaced by the 16 game conference schedule its coaches have wanted since the institution of the conference tournament in 2002.
4. The MWC/WAC generally is a two-bid league with the possibility of up to four depending on the year. In other words status quo for MWC schools and an upgrade for WAC schools.
Scenario 3 – Total Chaos (except in the Pac-10). The Big Ten becomes the Big 16 adding Notre Dame, Syracuse, Rutgers, Nebraska and Missouri. The ACC responds first adding West Virginia, Louisville, Connecticut and Pittsburgh. With eastern expansion off the table, the SEC takes Texas, Texas A&M and the Oklahoma schools. At the same time, the Pac-10 is unable to expand because the vote must be unanimous and Stanford and/or Cal balk at expansion on an academic level. The Mountain West, seeing opportunity grabs Colorado, Kansas, Kansas St., Texas Tech, Baylor, Iowa St., and either Nevada or Boise St. Others are forced to scatter all over the place and the Big East somehow continues to exist in a basketball only smaller framework after raiding the Atlantic 10 for some of its better programs.
Effects:
1. The ACC resumes its place as the best league in college basketball after a few years of second banana status to the Big East. While football market driven, Louisville, West Virginia, Pittsburgh and Connecticut add a lot to ACC basketball.
2. The Big Ten is the second best league. The current core isn’t bad and Missouri and Notre Dame won’t hurt that. While Rutgers and Nebraska are bad, they generally are good enough to win their guarantee games and then get beat in the league, meaning they aren’t total RPI killers. Syracuse adds tons to the league and the annual Syracuse-Michigan St. games become appointment television.
3. The SEC gets stronger despite adding a bunch of football centric schools. Of all the big football schools out there, Texas and Oklahoma have been among the most successful (along with Michigan, Ohio St. and Florida) while Oklahoma St. adds basketball value and Texas A&M is no worse historically than most of the rest of the league.
4. The Mountain West gets significantly stronger. Kansas and Kansas St. alone make the league much better and Texas Tech, Baylor and Iowa St., while not great historically, make the middle of the league stronger in an RPI sense.
5. The new Big East is still a strong basketball league and DePaul and St. John’s have an opportunity to return to some level of prominence. A league consisting of Providence, St. John’s, Seton Hall, Georgetown, Villanova, Marquette, DePaul, Xavier, and Temple is a strong nine-team league that gets four or five bids every year like the ACC did pre-expansion.
6. Cincinnati and South Florida end up back in Conference USA, making Memphis very happy to have some competition, especially from Cincinnati.
7. Lesser conferences make some mostly inconsequential moves like what happened after the Big East raided Conference USA to recover from the ACC raid in 2003 making the entire conference landscape look different.
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