Conference Tug-O-War

With College Football’s Conference Championship games fast approaching and the College Basketball season heating up, it feels so wrong that all of the attention is being paid to what is happening off the field, in board rooms and offices throughout the nation.

Louisville, Rutgers, Maryland, UConn, and Cincinnati would have been thrilled to know that in late November, their sports programs are headline stories on national news networks.

However, none of the above programs are competing for a BCS National Championship or winning early-season hoops tournaments. Rather, they are the universities that are engaged in the ongoing tug-o-war between conferences. In other words, they are relevant for all of the wrong reasons.

If nothing else, all of the conference realignment is an affirmation that college sports are now big business. Rutgers and Maryland are merely the two newest beneficiaries of the ever-growing Big Ten Network cash cow.

Traditionalists may blame the Terrapins for leaving the ACC, but who can blame them? The University of Maryland Athletic Department will now earn a rumored $10 million more a year, making them financially sustainable and preventing the termination of any of their non-revenue athletic teams. For those that will miss the rivalries with Duke and North Carolina, don’t rule out those two programs from jumping ship in the coming years. It will hurt Maryland fans that they will no longer have the opportunity to hassle the hated Blue Devils. But hey, there is always the increasingly lop-sided Big Ten-ACC challenge to maintain that rivalry.

At the end of the day, the decision for these universities is a financial one, one that will benefit their school’s brand. Something Under Armour Founder Kevin Plank, a reported proponent of Maryland’s move to the Big Ten, knows a thing or two about.

For the Big Ten, the additions of Rutgers and Maryland make perfect sense. In extending “Big Ten Country” to New York and Washington, D.C., the Big Ten Network will open the door to almost 20 million additional subscribers. This would lead to what many are estimating to be a $100 million gain for the conference as a whole. It also brings the league just two schools away from creating what would be the first true SuperConference.

Rumored candidates for the final two spots include North Carolina, Duke, Georgia Tech, Boston College, Virginia, and Vanderbilt. How will Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany and the schools’ Presidents choose whom to invite?

Whoever will boost the brand, of course.