How Rutgers Saved the Big 10
- Fred
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
Yeah, you read that right.
Back in the 1980's, athletic conferences in college seemed static. They were what they were, more or less.
But in 1990, Penn State joined the Big 10 conference, and, slowly but surely, conferences began to evolve, they began to shrink and grow, and by the 2020's, started to cannibalize each other. They became their own living and breathing entities. How absurd does the Big 10 logo above look in hindsight?
In 1990, though, the SEC was clearly the best football conference in the land, and has mostly staked their claim to that title since, but the Big 10 had its up years and down years, as did the ACC, Big 12, and PAC 10.
When Rutgers joined the Big 10 in 2014, it had nothing to do with football, it had to do with the conference wanting to expand its footprint into the New York/New Jersey television market. The conference grew based off of the money generated by their television network.
The Big 10's pitch was: "Hey Rutgers, how would you like to make a butt-load of money to keep losing football games?"
Rutgers' response: "How much money?"
Now the Big 10 is the biggest, and arguably the best, football conference in the nation. They did it by adding teams that didn't mind losing to Ohio State, Michigan, and Iowa every year. The conference added states' largest universities to grow the brand, not necessarily add football strength. Their expansion route was based on adding eyeballs and land mass. It is not an exact science, but you'll notice that the bottom of the Big 10 is mostly littered by teams that have joined the conference since 2011.
The SEC countered the Big 10 by adding schools like Texas and Oklahoma. SEC schools expected that Texas and Oklahoma would come in and lose football games, Texas and Oklahoma came in and WON a bunch of football games. If you look at the bottom of the SEC standings-
-it is almost entirely made up of ol' SEC blue bloods. They tried growing by adding strong football teams to make their conference better. It did the opposite. The SEC still doesn't understand that someone has to LOSE football games. The SEC would have been better served adding a team like Kansas to the conference, lots of eyeballs, not traditional football strength. How do you think a team like Arkansas feels about losing to Texas A & M, Texas, and Missouri this season?
But, again, none of this has to do with football.
The elephant in the room is NIL money. Now that the sport is flush with ABOVE THE BOARD payments to players, it slanted the playing field toward the sport's biggest conferences, because now the kids want to get paid, just like the schools wanted to get paid when they evolved into super-conferences. Eventually some traditional powerhouses, like Arkansas, will levitate to the bottom of the standings, simply by numbers.
6 of 16 SEC schools will have new coaches next year with the emphasis on winning NOW. Okay, but who will lose? If the SEC expands to 18 teams, like the Big 10, they need to take a hard look at Kansas. They need to think about expanding into larger markets in North Carolina and adding a team like Wake Forrest, a team that would join the conference for a bigger payday, not a team looking to come take the SEC by storm.
That would make SEC member schools happy.
You know, what the Big 10 figured out a decade ago.
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