[NU Sports] Big Ten Expansion this week?

[Mike Nolan]

A number of sources are suggesting that the Big Ten could offer Nebraska
a seat at the table as early as this Friday.  (Last week's Big XII meetings 
may have set that as a deadline for Big XII schools to commit to the future
of the conference for something like six years.)

I still think Notre Dame is the big prize, but offering Nebraska an
invitation might be what it takes for the Irish to commit as well, since
Nebraska leaving the Big XII is likely to snowball as the other teams in
the Big XII start looking for good homes.  

Some writers have gone so far as to blame Nebraska for this mess, forecasting
the end of the Big XII and the Big East as well as the BCS itself.

The six BCS conferences could realign themselves into four superconferences 
of 16 teams each.  However, that would only include 64 teams and the BCS
schools (plus Notre Dame) current have 66 schools in football.  


ACC        12
Big Ten    11
Big East    8 (in football)
Pac 10     10
SEC        12
Big XII    12
Notre Dame  1
           --
           66

(The Big East has a total of 17 schools in basketball, but only 8 of 
those play Division I football.)

So, unless some conferences decide to go to something larger than 16
schools in football, it looks like two schools could be left out of
the four superconferences.  

My guess:  Baylor and Iowa State.  That will not make for happy campers 
in either Texas or Iowa, not to mention the states like Utah where having
their major football teams be non-BCS members is already a political 
hot potato.  

So, another possibility is that the final mix has five or six 
superconferences, which means that the CUSA, MAC, Mountain West, Sunbelt 
and WAC conferences could get reshuffled as well.  
--
Mike Nolan