• You do not need to register if you are not going to pay the yearly fee to post. If you register please click here or log in go to "settings" then "my account" then "User Upgrades" and you can renew.

HuskerMax readers can save 50% on  Omaha Steaks .

Conference Re-Alignments

Huskerthom said:
One key difference. To join the B1G it has to be a unanimous vote. Pretty sure we would not be the only ones to vote against it.
Click to expand...


Who does the voting for NU; President Hank Bounds, Chancellor Ronnie Green, AD Bill Moos, any 2 of the 3, or all 3? Do we know how they feel about Texass and would they vote to accept them into the B1G?
 




I'm starting to think that a lot of you guys don't like Texas? I'm starting to think a lot of you guys really like it when a lot of other guys agree with you that you all hate Texas? Who knew?

Seriously, I don't like Texas. Also, I don't think Texas will join the B1G because they could probably get a better deal from the Pac 12, but to say that the B1G wouldn't want Texas (or Notre Dame) is crazy. When you factor in that the decisions are made above the level of the athletics department, the idea that university presidents would look at the choice using the perspectives and paradigms that are listed here is even more crazy. This is a Nebraska football discussion board. We are concerned, mainly (apparently sometimes "solely") with Nebraska football, and therefore by extension with the B1G conference. We are NOT the sorts of people who make these sorts of decisions. The people who make these sorts of decisions think differently and look at different things than what everyone is discussing here. For example, when the Big 10 voted to add Penn State, the university presidents didn't even bother to tell their own ADs until AFTER the official announcement was made. Do you think that those university presidents were overly concerned with Penn State football's effect on their team? They didn't care.

Until just hours before the announcement only 11 men knew what was about to happen. They were the league's 10 school presidents, dubbed with haughty monicker The Council of Ten, and BigTen commissioner Jim Delany.

No faculty representatives had been told. No athletic directors had been consulted. No coaches had been informed. The presidents, led by Illinois' Stanley Ikenberry, a former PSU vice president, wanted it that way.​

This post will be epic enough on its own, so instead of quoting everyone else's posts, I'll list off a few of the things that diverge from the popular narrative above, and then dig DEEP into why they matter. I'm going to be going out into the weeds to address some of this stuff, so if all you want to do is focus on how Texas was selfish and naughty and should be spanked, this isn't the post for you. As for the arguments in favor of adding Texas (and/or Notre Dame) I'm not even going to address the whole "adding TV subscribers" part of the discussion because that's already been covered at length above, and I don't think that there is much disagreement that adding Texas and/or Notre Dame would add about as many or more subscribers to the B1G Network as any other combination of teams. On the other hand, if you wonder why the B1G has gone after institutions as geographically dispersed as Notre Dame, Texas, Georgia Tech, Missouri, North Carolina, and Virginia, a lot of what is written below will make that make more sense....
  1. The B1G Conference doesn't care about what Texas did to either the Southwest Conference or the Big 12 conference because the B1G Conference is not set up like those conferences. Those conferences solely existed/exist for the purposes of sports affiliations and the shared revenues that come through that. Yes, the B1G has that, too, but it's NOT the end all/be all that it is for every other P5 conference besides the Pac 12. Since this is a Nebraska football discussion board, it's not shocking that almost everyone here would come with the general perception that Texas sucks, and that Nebraska is awesome, and the money that the B1G would get by adding Texas isn't worth it. Fine, but joining the B1G is not solely a discussion about football. There's actually MORE money involved in the B1G Academic Alliance than there is football and all other sports combined, but more on that below.

  2. When you get beyond hating Texas and start looking at the connections and resources and prestige and, yes, money that is involved with the B1G Academic Alliance, you will start to see why Notre Dame and Texas are EXTREMELY attractive, even apart from what they bring in football tradition and TV dollars. Yes, the conference was built for sports participation, but it is the academic side that has held it together stronger and longer than any other conference, and that's why part of the price of admission to B1G athletics is having B1G levels of academic research money. The Alliance shares/pools/collaborates in ways that no other group of universities does. According to their promo video here, the B1G has more shared research resources than the California university system (which is by far the largest in the U.S.) and the Ivy League combined. Texas and Notre Dame are routinely in the top 10 to top 20 in schools that get various types of research grants (depending on how the grants are counted, and how the years are divided up). Nebraska does quite well, but we're not at that level. Do you know who else is?
    • Did you know that the University of Chicago--a founding member of the B1G who gave up D-1 football in '46--is STILL a member of the B1G? Why? Academic research money. The U of Chicago runs with the big dogs when it comes to research money, and that is the primary attraction of joining the B1G for most universities with a large resource base.

    • Did you know that Johns Hopkins (lacrosse) is a partial member of the B1G? Why? Johns Hopkins is usually at or near the top of the list on any given year of universities who receive research funding from various government entities, so they prefer to be associated with the B1G over the ACC or similar conferences. They're not in the B1G Academic Alliance, but it's something that likely would be attractive to all parties at some point down the line. When/if that happens, you'll know that anyone who starts a discussion about it by asking, "How does JOHNS HOPKINS help the conference when they don't even play football?" doesn't get the big picture.

    • Did you know that Notre Dame (hockey) is a partial members of the B1G? Why? Same as Johns Hopkins above. N.D. plays almost everything else in the ACC, but academically they aren't as good of a fit there as they would be in the B1G. That doesn't mean that they'll join the B1G, but if they did join the ACC, their faculty would NOT be happy.
  3. Sticking with the academics part of the conference, it's interesting that some have also mentioned how Nebraska was kicked out of the AAU. I hadn't known that Texas had voted against us (is that true?), but I did know that Michigan and Wisconsin voted against Nebraska remaining in the AAU, even after they had just voted to add us to the B1G conference. Did anyone else notice that? Did that seem odd to anyone else? It wasn't a coincidence. That was the conference equivalent of a shot across the bow. The whole AAU fiasco is a long and convoluted mess that never had to happen, and a lot of the problem was the equivalent of a shell-game facade (and Perlman didn't help things), but it still happened, and it was meant to send a message ... and the message that we apparently got was ... blame Texas?

    In the same thread where some are already gleeful over the idea of being able to blackball Texas from joining the B1G in the future, we're bitter because they voted against us in the AAU (assuming that they did). Well, how do you feel about Michigan and Wisconsin voting against us? We had just ditched Texas by leaving the Big 12, and that wasn't even an academic research association the way that the B1G is, so why would you be more upset with Texas than with Michigan and/or Wisconsin? Part of the attraction of "elite" universities is the snobby, snooty feeling of being "elite," and it's impossible to be "elite" unless there are those who are beneath you; the Michigan and Wisconsin folks wanted us to know that we're not at their level academically. The AAU is basically the university equivalent of joining an honors fraternity as there weren't shared resources in the way that the B1G Academic Alliance shares resources, so they made a point of voting to take away the university equivalent of being recognized as Phi Beta Kappa. It affected nothing other than the prestige associated with membership, and that's why they did it. If Texas did vote against UNL, it makes sense for much the same reason, and that would be attractive to the Michigan and Wisconsin types. Speaking of Michigan voting against a B1G team....

  4. Admission to the B1G does not have to be unanimous. They prefer that it is, which is why the last 3 expansions of the conference (Nebraska in 2011, Maryland and Rutgers in '14) have been promoted as being unanimous, but that's at least partly because of the bad blood that was created by the two expansions prior to the most recent ones. When Penn State was added, Indiana, Minnesota, and ... [drum roll] ... Michigan voted against it. (See if you notice a pattern with Michigan.) Back in 1950 when the Big 9 literally became the Big "10" by adding Michigan State, Michigan voted against them, too. Technically, Michigan voted to add Pittsburgh instead of Michigan State as the member schools were asked to choose one of those two institutions as they were the two finalists, but from the perspective of Michigan State folks, it equated with voting against them. Michigan State apparently never forgot because in 1973 when Michigan and Ohio State were both undefeated and finished the year by playing to a tie in their game, the Big 10 ADs voted to decide who got to go to the Rose Bowl, and Michigan State's AD--a former Michigan head coach, who happened to be the head coach in '63 when Devaney's Nebraska team defeated them--voted for the Buckeyes. Bo Schembechler and Michigan fans never forgave them. Michigan State fans enjoyed the hatred because they'd never forgiven Michigan for voting against them joining the conference back in '50. Oh, by the way, Penn State's admission to the Big 10 in 1990 was officially reported as "unanimous" as well, but that was not quite the reality:

    Though the vote was later announced as unanimous, everyone knew better. Ikenberry acknowledged last month that it was really 7-3. He refused to say who accounted for the nays. Duderstadt and Hasselmo declined to be interviewed for this story. Though Ehrlich did not divulge his vote, his comments seem to speak for themselves.​

  5. Any arguments about the B1G Conference being all-consumed with money and not giving back to the student-athletes are and will be countered by pointing to the B1G Academic Alliance, and all of the academic opportunities that it allows and provides. Again, watch the video link from above if you're not familiar with it. Because of UNL's membership, UNL students have access to all of the books and all of the resources at all of the member institutions, plus they can participate in any other member school's study-abroad programs as well as internships, shared research projects, etc. No other conference has anything quite like it (though the Pac 12 has been trying to build something similar), and those dollars are larger than the sports side of the conference. Those affiliations allow the member institutions to hire bigger guns to do research at their universities, and that in turn brings in more research grant money because the people that do the research also go hand-in-hand with the people who write the grants, and it's a symbiotic relationship for them.

    Do you remember how excited we were to get $50+ million from the B1G for our share of the TV rights pie? It's common for research grants to be worth multiples of that amount, and most research grants are set up with approximately half of the grant covering the costs of the research while the rest goes to the university to cover its basic operational costs. A $200 million grant to study anything equals approximately $100 million going into the universities' coffers. You notice how UNL is fretting over cutting costs because the system is in the red? Get more grants and the problem evaporates. How do you get more research grants? Hire some people who specialize in areas that would be of interest to the NIH or similar, and have them write up a grant proposal that takes advantage of both your university's resources, but can also tie into any and all resources at other B1G Academic Alliance schools.

    Since the whole pot or research funding is a political pie to be cut up and shared, the more states covered by members in the conference equals more senators and representatives who want to see that research money coming into their universities. Nebraska's representatives in D.C. suddenly grew more interested in supporting research funding going to, oh say, the University of Maryland around 2014, and vice versa. That's how the sausage is made. Any research grant that is drawn up to include multiple member institutions will then include multiple state delegations supporting it. If the grant-writer/lead research team is at UNL, they'll get a bigger slice of the pie to cover those "administrative" costs,... and that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the Nebraska university system goes from being in the red to being very, very much in the black. Oh, and remember how we got booted out of the AAU? Everyone acknowledged, then and now, that the medical school being counted separate was all that stood between UNL meeting the most basic requirements. The B1G schools in the AAU who voted against us were basically punishing the state of Nebraska for keeping the medical center's resources out of the Alliance.

    I have tried to find something that summarizes how all of this interacts, but the Chronicle of Education articles typically don't include the sports perspective, and the sports writers rarely grasp the academics perspective. The best thing that I could find is this article from February 2010, written by a Texas supporter who was pushing for Texas to join the Big 10 before anybody else had decided to leave the Big 12. There are some sections that are very dated (everything about bringing A&M with them, for example), but it's better than whatever else I could find just now at explaining why it makes sense from Texas' perspective to join the B1G. He also discusses why the B1G would want Texas. Keep in mind that Texas was close to the top of the collegiate football world at that point, so it often comes across as Texas-level obnoxious, but he still makes a lot of valid points. If you hate Texas and want to believe that they're a creation of Satan, you're NOT going to want to read the article.

    By the way, Texas is an elite research institution, and that's only grown since the 2010 article was written as Google and other Silicon Valley giants have since opened up Austin campuses to work with UT creating corporate-university programs in Austin to do (and pay for) more R&D. How much money are we talking? I didn't look up the Google funds, but I came across something else that illustrates the point.... Remember how UNL couldn't include the medical center's research funding with their AAU membership requirements? UT-Austin is in the same situation as UNL in that the UT Southwestern Medical Center is counted separate from UT-Austin for AAU purposes because it's in a separate bureaucratic hierarchy, but here's how they're different from UNL: the UT Southwestern Medical Center pulled in just shy of $72 million in just NIH research funding in 2018. Folks, that isn't including anything to the main UT campus; that isn't including almost infinite other sources of funding. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln simply isn't playing in the same sort of ballpark.

  6. Nebraska would be very likely to vote for Texas' admission into the B1G. We are currently at the western-most periphery of the B1G, and we're not too far away from being the farthest south. Adding schools that are west of the Mississippi and south of Lincoln expands the conference's footprint and places Nebraska in a better position to gain more recruits and fans from locations near us that in the newly enlarged part of that footprint. More importantly, it expands the political footprint. As things currently stand, Texas senators are more likely to support Nebraska senators' legislation, and vice versa, than either would with, say, Maryland or New Jersey. Missouri would have helped, and Kansas would be great, but adding Texas is better for Nebraska, relatively speaking, than adding Notre Dame or another school on the East Coast. Why? Go back up to #5 and review how the sausage is made.
 
Last edited:
How is it that you would expect Texas to be able to destroy the B1G conference? Please, add to my list of things that I remember hating about Texas in the Big 12 (because I know that I'm leaving some out), but these are the ones that I most remember off the top of my head:
  1. We hated that they opposed revenue sharing from TV rights.
  2. We hated that they pulled the locus of power towards the state of Texas physically (league offices and Big 12 Championship games).
    • The B1G offices have been in Chicago since 1896 as Northwestern and the University of Chicago were charter members and the driving forces behind creating the conference, yet the conference offices haven't moved from Chicago, even though the U of Chicago hasn't played D-1 football since Truman was president, and even though Northwestern has been one of the least influential members of the B1G for over a century. Also, the folks in Chicago probably wouldn't mind some more western gravitational pull away from the East Coast to keep things more centered in Chicago.

    • Do you think that Northwestern, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Purdue--as well as the entire Eastern Division--would go along with the idea of moving championship games to Dallas instead of Indianapolis?
  3. When the Big 12 was first formed, we hated that they raised the admissions standards for member schools so that Prop 48 Non-Qualifiers could not be admitted, and that Partial Qualifiers would be limited as this seemed to be aimed directly at knocking Nebraska down a notch or two.
    • There was almost no question, then or now, that this was aimed at knocking Nebraska down a couple notches as Osborne had found ways to get athletes that nobody else could use, and he was turning them into All-Americans. It's no longer an issue as the NCAA has overhauled the same rules for everyone, anyway. What's also worth pointing out is that the final vote on adapting the admissions standards was 11-1, as even every Big 8 school voted against us.

    • Not directly related to the topic of this thread, but incredibly related to this particular sub-point, have you ever read the Sports Illustrated article from immediately after the '96 Fiesta Bowl that laid out in amazing detail how this rule change was going to end Nebraska's dynasty? That's the kind of writer who is worth reading. Here's that article.
 
Last edited:
Hville said:
You can say as many times as you want that Texas and Notre Dame are the B1G's favorites and that they would take Texas over Nebraska back when they choose Nebraska but its pure hypothetics. No matter how many times you say you are interested in those two they won't play within the scope of fairness and that is why Delaney has been unsuccessful with both. The primary reason Notre Dame and Texas are in their situations is nobody wants them under unfair terms.....except maybe the Big 12 and that is why they are constantly on the hit list for dis-banding.

And yes.....outside of Texas people everyone hates Texas.
Click to expand...
Unless the word "hypothetical" doesn't mean what I think it means, it was not hypothetical that the B1G wanted Texas (and Notre Dame) but settled for Nebraska in 2010 because that is exactly what happened. Both schools were (and more than once have been) courted by the B1G to join, and likely would be courted again. Neither school has somehow become less attractive since 2010, and Nebraska (and Maryland and Rutgers) haven't eclipsed what Texas (or Notre Dame) would have or could have brought to the table. The B1G would still love to add those two teams. I don't think that they will ever join the B1G, but it won't be because either school is unwanted, and it really doesn't matter how many times you say otherwise.
 
Unrelated, but worthy of mention ... "a friend" told me that there is a 20,000 character limit to your posts, just in case you ever wondered.
 




Middle-aged_Ball_Coach said:
I'm starting to think that a lot of you guys don't like Texas? I'm starting to think a lot of you guys really like it when a lot of other guys agree with you that you all hate Texas? Who knew?

Seriously, I don't like Texas. Also, I don't think Texas will join the B1G because they could probably get a better deal from the Pac 12, but to say that the B1G wouldn't want Texas (or Notre Dame) is crazy. When you factor in that the decisions are made above the level of the athletics department, the idea that university presidents would look at the choice using the perspectives and paradigms that are listed here is even more crazy. This is a Nebraska football discussion board. We are concerned, mainly (apparently sometimes "solely") with Nebraska football, and therefore by extension with the B1G conference. We are NOT the sorts of people who make these sorts of decisions. The people who make these sorts of decisions think differently and look at different things than what everyone is discussing here. For example, when the Big 10 voted to add Penn State, the university presidents didn't even bother to tell their own ADs until AFTER the official announcement was made. Do you think that those university presidents were overly concerned with Penn State football's effect on their team? They didn't care.

Until just hours before the announcement only 11 men knew what was about to happen. They were the league's 10 school presidents, dubbed with haughty monicker The Council of Ten, and BigTen commissioner Jim Delany.​
​
No faculty representatives had been told. No athletic directors had been consulted. No coaches had been informed. The presidents, led by Illinois' Stanley Ikenberry, a former PSU vice president, wanted it that way.​

This post will be epic enough on its own, so instead of quoting everyone else's posts, I'll list off a few of the things that diverge from the popular narrative above, and then dig DEEP into why they matter. I'm going to be going out into the weeds to address some of this stuff, so if all you want to do is focus on how Texas was selfish and naughty and should be spanked, this isn't the post for you. As for the arguments in favor of adding Texas (and/or Notre Dame) I'm not even going to address the whole "adding TV subscribers" part of the discussion because that's already been covered at length above, and I don't think that there is much disagreement that adding Texas and/or Notre Dame would add about as many or more subscribers to the B1G Network as any other combination of teams. On the other hand, if you wonder why the B1G has gone after institutions as geographically dispersed as Notre Dame, Texas, Georgia Tech, Missouri, North Carolina, and Virginia, a lot of what is written below will make that make more sense....
  1. The B1G Conference doesn't care about what Texas did to either the Southwest Conference or the Big 12 conference because the B1G Conference is not set up like those conferences. Those conferences solely existed/exist for the purposes of sports affiliations and the shared revenues that come through that. Yes, the B1G has that, too, but it's NOT the end all/be all that it is for every other P5 conference besides the Pac 12. Since this is a Nebraska football discussion board, it's not shocking that almost everyone here would come with the general perception that Texas sucks, and that Nebraska is awesome, and the money that the B1G would get by adding Texas isn't worth it. Fine, but joining the B1G is not solely a discussion about football. There's actually MORE money involved in the B1G Academic Alliance than there is football and all other sports combined, but more on that below.

  2. When you get beyond hating Texas and start looking at the connections and resources and prestige and, yes, money that is involved with the B1G Academic Alliance, you will start to see why Notre Dame and Texas are EXTREMELY attractive, even apart from what they bring in football tradition and TV dollars. Yes, the conference was built for sports participation, but it is the academic side that has held it together stronger and longer than any other conference, and that's why part of the price of admission to B1G athletics is having B1G levels of academic research money. The Alliance shares/pools/collaborates in ways that no other group of universities does. According to their promo video here, the B1G has more shared research resources than the California university system (which is by far the largest in the U.S.) and the Ivy League combined. Texas and Notre Dame are routinely in the top 10 to top 20 in schools that get various types of research grants (depending on how the grants are counted, and how the years are divided up). Nebraska does quite well, but we're not at that level. Do you know who else is?
    • Did you know that the University of Chicago--a founding member of the B1G who gave up D-1 football in '46--is STILL a member of the B1G? Why? Academic research money. The U of Chicago runs with the big dogs when it comes to research money, and that is the primary attraction of joining the B1G for most universities with a large resource base.

    • Did you know that Johns Hopkins (lacrosse) is a partial member of the B1G? Why? Johns Hopkins is usually at or near the top of the list on any given year of universities who receive research funding from various government entities, so they prefer to be associated with the B1G over the ACC or similar conferences. They're not in the B1G Academic Alliance, but it's something that likely would be attractive to all parties at some point down the line. When/if that happens, you'll know that anyone who starts a discussion about it by asking, "How does JOHNS HOPKINS help the conference when they don't even play football?" doesn't get the big picture.

    • Did you know that Notre Dame (hockey) is a partial members of the B1G? Why? Same as Johns Hopkins above. N.D. plays almost everything else in the ACC, but academically they aren't as good of a fit there as they would be in the B1G. That doesn't mean that they'll join the B1G, but if they did join the ACC, their faculty would NOT be happy.
  3. Sticking with the academics part of the conference, it's interesting that some have also mentioned how Nebraska was kicked out of the AAU. I hadn't known that Texas had voted against us (is that true?), but I did know that Michigan and Wisconsin voted against Nebraska remaining in the AAU, even after they had just voted to add us to the B1G conference. Did anyone else notice that? Did that seem odd to anyone else? It wasn't a coincidence. That was the conference equivalent of a shot across the bow. The whole AAU fiasco is a long and convoluted mess that never had to happen, and a lot of the problem was the equivalent of a shell-game facade (and Perlman didn't help things), but it still happened, and it was meant to send a message ... and the message that we apparently got was ... blame Texas?

    In the same thread where some are already gleeful over the idea of being able to blackball Texas from joining the B1G in the future, we're bitter because they voted against us in the AAU (assuming that they did). Well, how do you feel about Michigan and Wisconsin voting against us? We had just ditched Texas by leaving the Big 12, and that wasn't even an academic research association the way that the B1G is, so why would you be more upset with Texas than with Michigan and/or Wisconsin? Part of the attraction of "elite" universities is the snobby, snooty feeling of being "elite," and it's impossible to be "elite" unless there are those who are beneath you; the Michigan and Wisconsin folks wanted us to know that we're not at their level academically. The AAU is basically the university equivalent of joining an honors fraternity as there weren't shared resources in the way that the B1G Academic Alliance shares resources, so they made a point of voting to take away the university equivalent of being recognized as Phi Beta Kappa. It affected nothing other than the prestige associated with membership, and that's why they did it. If Texas did vote against UNL, it makes sense for much the same reason, and that would be attractive to the Michigan and Wisconsin types. Speaking of Michigan voting against a B1G team....

  4. Admission to the B1G does not have to be unanimous. They prefer that it is, which is why the last 3 expansions of the conference (Nebraska in 2011, Maryland and Rutgers in '14) have been promoted as being unanimous, but that's at least partly because of the bad blood that was created by the two expansions prior to the most recent ones. When Penn State was added, Indiana, Minnesota, and ... [drum roll] ... Michigan voted against it. (See if you notice a pattern with Michigan.) Back in 1950 when the Big 9 literally became the Big "10" by adding Michigan State, Michigan voted against them, too. Technically, Michigan voted to add Pittsburgh instead of Michigan State as the member schools were asked to choose one of those two institutions as they were the two finalists, but from the perspective of Michigan State folks, it equated with voting against them. Michigan State apparently never forgot because in 1973 when Michigan and Ohio State were both undefeated and finished the year by playing to a tie in their game, the Big 10 ADs voted to decide who got to go to the Rose Bowl, and Michigan State's AD--a former Michigan head coach, who happened to be the head coach in '63 when Devaney's Nebraska team defeated them--voted for the Buckeyes. Bo Schembechler and Michigan fans never forgave them. Michigan State fans enjoyed the hatred because they'd never forgiven Michigan for voting against them joining the conference back in '50. Oh, by the way, Penn State's admission to the Big 10 in 1990 was officially reported as "unanimous" as well, but that was not quite the reality:

    Though the vote was later announced as unanimous, everyone knew better. Ikenberry acknowledged last month that it was really 7-3. He refused to say who accounted for the nays. Duderstadt and Hasselmo declined to be interviewed for this story. Though Ehrlich did not divulge his vote, his comments seem to speak for themselves.​

  5. Any arguments about the B1G Conference being all-consumed with money and not giving back to the student-athletes are and will be countered by pointing to the B1G Academic Alliance, and all of the academic opportunities that it allows and provides. Again, watch the video link from above if you're not familiar with it. Because of UNL's membership, UNL students have access to all of the books and all of the resources at all of the member institutions, plus they can participate in any other member school's study-abroad programs as well as internships, shared research projects, etc. No other conference has anything quite like it (though the Pac 12 has been trying to build something similar), and those dollars are larger than the sports side of the conference. Those affiliations allow the member institutions to hire bigger guns to do research at their universities, and that in turn brings in more research grant money because the people that do the research also go hand-in-hand with the people who write the grants, and it's a symbiotic relationship for them.

    Do you remember how excited we were to get $50+ million from the B1G for our share of the TV rights pie? It's common for research grants to be worth multiples of that amount, and most research grants are set up with approximately half of the grant covering the costs of the research while the rest goes to the university to cover its basic operational costs. A $200 million grant to study anything equals approximately $100 million going into the universities' coffers. You notice how UNL is fretting over cutting costs because the system is in the red? Get more grants and the problem evaporates. How do you get more research grants? Hire some people who specialize in areas that would be of interest to the NIH or similar, and have them write up a grant proposal that takes advantage of both your university's resources, but can also tie into any and all resources at other B1G Academic Alliance schools.

    Since the whole pot or research funding is a political pie to be cut up and shared, the more states covered by members in the conference equals more senators and representatives who want to see that research money coming into their universities. Nebraska's representatives in D.C. suddenly grew more interested in supporting research funding going to, oh say, the University of Maryland around 2014, and vice versa. That's how the sausage is made. Any research grant that is drawn up to include multiple member institutions will then include multiple state delegations supporting it. If the grant-writer/lead research team is at UNL, they'll get a bigger slice of the pie to cover those "administrative" costs,... and that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the Nebraska university system goes from being in the red to being very, very much in the black. Oh, and remember how we got booted out of the AAU? Everyone acknowledged, then and now, that the medical school being counted separate was all that stood between UNL meeting the most basic requirements. The B1G schools in the AAU who voted against us were basically punishing the state of Nebraska for keeping the medical center's resources out of the Alliance.

    I have tried to find something that summarizes how all of this interacts, but the Chronicle of Education articles typically don't include the sports perspective, and the sports writers rarely grasp the academics perspective. The best thing that I could find is this article from February 2010, written by a Texas supporter who was pushing for Texas to join the Big 10 before anybody else had decided to leave the Big 12. There are some sections that are very dated (everything about bringing A&M with them, for example), but it's better than whatever else I could find just now at explaining why it makes sense from Texas' perspective to join the B1G. He also discusses why the B1G would want Texas. Keep in mind that Texas was close to the top of the collegiate football world at that point, so it often comes across as Texas-level obnoxious, but he still makes a lot of valid points. If you hate Texas and want to believe that they're a creation of Satan, you're NOT going to want to read the article.

    By the way, Texas is an elite research institution, and that's only grown since the 2010 article was written as Google and other Silicon Valley giants have since opened up Austin campuses to work with UT creating corporate-university programs in Austin to do (and pay for) more R&D. How much money are we talking? I didn't look up the Google funds, but I came across something else that illustrates the point.... Remember how UNL couldn't include the medical center's research funding with their AAU membership requirements? UT-Austin is in the same situation as UNL in that the UT Southwestern Medical Center is counted separate from UT-Austin for AAU purposes because it's in a separate bureaucratic hierarchy, but here's how they're different from UNL: the UT Southwestern Medical Center pulled in just shy of $72 million in just NIH research funding in 2018. Folks, that isn't including anything to the main UT campus; that isn't including almost infinite other sources of funding. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln simply isn't playing in the same sort of ballpark.

  6. Nebraska would be very likely to vote for Texas' admission into the B1G. We are currently at the western-most periphery of the B1G, and we're not too far away from being the farthest south. Adding schools that are west of the Mississippi and south of Lincoln expands the conference's footprint and places Nebraska in a better position to gain more recruits and fans from locations near us that in the newly enlarged part of that footprint. More importantly, it expands the political footprint. As things currently stand, Texas senators are more likely to support Nebraska senators' legislation, and vice versa, than either would with, say, Maryland or New Jersey. Missouri would have helped, and Kansas would be great, but adding Texas is better for Nebraska, relatively speaking, than adding Notre Dame or another school on the East Coast. Why? Go back up to #5 and review how the sausage is made.
Click to expand...
I was really starting to agree with your arguments until point #6. If you go back to post #101 and read the attached article with quotes from OSU AD Gene Smith and why they added Rutgers and Maryland you’ll see that before they would consider adding Texas there would need to schools to the south of Nebraska and Iowa that would be worthy and willing to join BIG.
 
manawahusker said:
I was really starting to agree with your arguments until point #6. If you go back to post #101 and read the attached article with quotes from OSU AD Gene Smith and why they added Rutgers and Maryland you’ll see that before they would consider adding Texas there would need to schools to the south of Nebraska and Iowa that would be worthy and willing to join BIG.
Click to expand...
Thanks!

He'd be just one vote though. It makes me think that they're still thinking about it. Kansas would fit very well as an academic institution, but add very little as far as revenue from TV subscriptions. I actually think that Missouri would consider leaving the SEC at some point in the future, also, fwiw. Oklahoma brings a lot as far as sports, but their academics aren't very well respected. Still, I could see all four of those--Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas-- being on the radar at some point.
 
Last edited:



Middle-aged_Ball_Coach said:
Thanks!

He'd be just one vote though. It makes me think that they're still thinking about it. Kansas would fit very well as an academic institution, but add very little as far as revenue from TV subscriptions. I actually think that Missouri would consider leaving the SEC at some point in the future, also, fwiw. Oklahoma brings a lot as far as sports, but their academics aren't very well respected. Still, I could see all four of those--Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas-- being on the radar at some point.
Click to expand...
From a BBall perspective Kansas has a national footprint.
 

@Middle-aged_Ball_Coach , I agree with everything you said above. It's what I've been trying to get people to realize for the last few years. Conference membership is bigger than football. Further, as it relates TO football, some combination of Texas, Oklahoma and/or Notre Dame would be an absolute steal for strength of schedule and conference prestige. You add a combo like that on top of the $100m (currently) gap between the B1G and the SEC and you'll start to see that gap widen.

Top-end schools will always be top end schools, so it's no surprise that Ohio State can compete with Alabama. But give it another 10-15 years and the middle of the pack will continue to rise. Michigan may not be an ocean of difference better than Georgia, but I can almost guarantee there will be a planet of difference between Northwestern and South Carolina or Arkansas.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

GET TICKETS


Get 50% off on Omaha Steaks

Back
Top