[NU Sports] Merger: Big East & BIg 12

[Clark Zahn]

-----Original Message-----
>From: Mike Nolan <nolan at tssi.com>
>Sent: Sep 20, 2011 10:53 AM
>To: clzahn at mindspring.com
>Cc: 'NUSPORTS' <nwu-sports at tssi.com>
>Subject: Re: [NU Sports] Merger: Big East & BIg 12
>
>> Increased travel harms the student athletes and destroying traditional rivalries will lesson ticket sales.  Will we come to the point where far fewer people attend the games and just the sports nuts watch them on TV?  Maybe the athletes themselves will no longer be true students.  Then college FB would just a bigger NFL.
>
>The travel for 6 road games a year in football (bigger schools often have 
>just 5 road games because they want 7 home games) aren't a major factor, 
>northern college baseball teams often spend half the winter semester
>playing in warmer weather and college basketball teams play a lot more road 
>games, more of them mid-week, too.
>
>Northwestern will sell far more tickets for the Nebraska game in Evanston than
>for geographically close schools like Illinois, Indiana and Purdue.  
>
>But when is the last time (if ever) that NU had anything close to a sellout
>where half or more of the crowd wasn't from the visiting school?  
>--
>Mike Nolan

I was pondering the effect of the potential realignments to all of college FB, not just to NU.  The B1G will probably come out of it OK.