Recent content by Frank the Tank

Alamo Bowl gets the first pick of former Pac-12 teams, so USC is almost certainly going there. USC is the most desirable former non-playoff Pac-12 team from a bowl perspective. Vegas gets the 2nd former Pac-12 pick and the consensus is that will be Utah. That’s why there’s a lot of confidence...

Yes - that one is interesting. Maybe I could see Vegas taking us over Nebraska solely because of our record (as if it comes down to traveling fan bases, bowls love Nebraska as much or more than anyone). I’m a little surprised that a lot of this forum seems to prefer the Music City over Vegas...

PSU is obvious for the Pinstripe Bowl out of any Big Ten team. The issue is more that Pitt is going to be relatively high in the ACC bowl selection order, so they may already be headed elsewhere before the Pinstripe gets to its ACC choice.

Fox doesn’t get the #1 Big Ten pick every week. They get the 3 top Big Ten picks of the *year*, which this year are Texas-Ohio State, Ohio State-Penn State, and Ohio State-Michigan. After that, it’s a draft between CBS, NBC, and FOX as to who picks where each week and they may even trade games...

Right - and that wouldn’t be realistic. UIC’s academic standards are significantly higher and the admissions standards have gone up accordingly over past 10-15 years. Their academic standards are now more in line with a lot of the Big Ten (e.g. Iowa, Michigan State) and it’s in the top 100 of...

At least for 2027, the neutral site location is replacing what would have been a road game for Illinois and we will still have 7 home games. It would be the same for 2033 as long as the current rotation of us having 5 Big Ten home games in odd-numbered years is still in place.

No, this is not how it’s supposed to work. (Whether it actually works as intended is a different question.) Everyone here saying that booster NIL is still uncapped or unrestricted is incorrect and this has been talked about endlessly if anyone has been following this case for the past couple of...

This is all true. Another important point is that State Farm is a big-time national brand - they are one of the heaviest advertisers associated with sports of any company in America. (It wouldn’t surprise me if they are the THE largest buyer of ads during sporting events.) We’re not dealing with...

I know the notion of a student-athlete is quaint, but for any normal student, it is natural for transfer decisions to be made in December so that they can be at their new college for the second semester in January. From that perspective, it makes sense for the transfer portal to open in...

The athletic revenue figures for us compared to anyone other than the SEC schools is going to be skewed because all B1G/SEC schools get such high conference distributions. To be sure, I don’t think that Iowa State is more valuable than Illinois. What I’m saying is that in today’s paradigm...

The sheer viewership is on a completely different level. The Michigan State-Arizona basketball game on Thanksgiving Day was the first regular season basketball game with over 5 million viewers on 15 years… and that was largely due to the holdover audience from the Packers-Lions NFL game before...

Thank you! I appreciate it!

Yes, exactly. I was someone that really focused on markets and academics for realignment in the 2010s because conference networks like BTN were such an important driver of revenue. That was how the Big Ten could monetize schools like Rutgers and Maryland to great success despite them not having...

I understand the nostalgia, but in this world, it’s kill or be killed. We are VERY fortunate that we are in one of the two conferences (the other being the SEC) that’s an apex predator as opposed to being hunted. Believe me - we aren’t in a position to be valued more highly than Stanford and Cal...

By the way, I’ll believe the B1G leaving out teams from the conference tournament when I see it. Coaches and ADs always seem to be more open to reducing games, reducing teams, etc., but then when you tell the university presidents that they might be locked out of a what used to be a guaranteed...