2022 conference realignment (7/6 rumors: Big 12 to add 4-6 Pac-12 teams?)

[NewYorkExpress]

There's no way Rutgers or Maryland votes to approve this. Why would they agree to constant cross-country travel like this?

[NewYorkExpress]

There is also a strategic element to it — now that the SEC knows the Big Ten is actively expanding by poaching teams from P5 conferences, you might need to lock down recruiting territory. Would not be ideal to have FSU or Miami as financial dead weight for years, but better than letting the Big Ten establish a recruiting foothold in Florida. Same logic applies to Clemson and Carolina — those are marquee brands on the table, and if you're not willing to take the financial hit, you have to wonder if the other guy might.

There's no way Rutgers or Maryland votes to approve this. Why would they agree to constant cross-country travel like this?

There are ways to deal with the cross-country travel through scheduling, especially if (hypothetically speaking) you were to add Oregon, Washington and Stanford(?) at the same time.

Gonzaga's also plausible, at least if football isn't up for conversation.

[NewYorkExpress]

The real question is - what happens to the Rose Bowl? I mean, you could technically keep the conference tie-ins, but it doesn't make sense when the two sexiest brands in the Pac-12 join the other conference. I guess this might make the purists (myself included) let the Rose Bowl go to become just another CFP bowl game?

Yeah, the Rose Bowl will likely become a permanent Semifinal. Maybe the other one will be the Sugar Bowl, given what's happened to the Big 12 with their two best schools (Texas and Oklahoma) heading to the SEC.

[NewYorkExpress]

Honestly, Missouri's happy in the SEC, even if they are really out of place from a sports perspective.

I'd suggest Louisville instead (they could slot into either the Central or the East, given their location on the Ohio River).

[NewYorkExpress]

The ACC is tough to break since it’s (terrible) media contract guarantees all revenue from its current schools stays with the conference until 2036. Whoever took an ACC program would be committing itself to a fiscal deadweight until then.

There's always a way out of everything. I believe it takes 10 (?) votes to change the ACC financial rules, so the Big 10 and SEC could offer slots to 5 teams each.

I don't know that they will or they should, but something like this seems possible:
Big 10 - Virginia, North Carolina, Duke, Syracuse, Georgia Tech (would the SEC agree to let the Big 10 into Atlanta? Maybe Miami instead)
SEC - Florida State, Clemson, Virginia Tech, NC State, Miami (or Georgia Tech)

You could also see Pitt going to either, Louisville to the SEC, and obviously either would crawl over broken glass to take Notre Dame.

As a Syracuse fan, I'd rather go to the Big East for basketball, but the Big Ten for football in such a scenario

I can't picture the Big Ten agreeing to that.

The Big East would love that, but the Big Ten would want Syracuse Basketball just as much as the Big East would.

[NewYorkExpress]

The ACC is tough to break since it’s (terrible) media contract guarantees all revenue from its current schools stays with the conference until 2036. Whoever took an ACC program would be committing itself to a fiscal deadweight until then.

There's always a way out of everything. I believe it takes 10 (?) votes to change the ACC financial rules, so the Big 10 and SEC could offer slots to 5 teams each.

I don't know that they will or they should, but something like this seems possible:
Big 10 - Virginia, North Carolina, Duke, Syracuse, Georgia Tech (would the SEC agree to let the Big 10 into Atlanta? Maybe Miami instead)
SEC - Florida State, Clemson, Virginia Tech, NC State, Miami (or Georgia Tech)

You could also see Pitt going to either, Louisville to the SEC, and obviously either would crawl over broken glass to take Notre Dame.

Doesn't the Big 10 have some education/research qualifications?  Can Miami meet those?

Not sure exactly on research, but in the USNWR (which are not the only rankings, nor are they gospel) has Miami as the #55 university in America, which is a little bit worse than Purdue and Ohio State and a little bit better than Maryland, Penn State, and Rutgers.

Nice.  I'm probably just holding on to biases of "the U" in the 80s-90s.

Browsing through the list, I see Nebraska is far below all of them, embarrassingly enough.  Even Missouri is higher.

The “official” or “unofficial” (not sure of the technicalities) policy was always that the Big Ten wanted only AAU members for the insane research funds, and Nebraska actually WAS AAU when we took them.  They lost that status after the fact.

The Big Ten wouldn't be interested in kicking Nebraska over to the SEC for Vanderbilt, would they?