Yeah, it just seems to me that you have a view which looks at a conference as a holding company aggregating individual school brands as opposed to a brand unto itself.
Both are true to some extent, but it just seems so clear to me that the historic Big Ten, and SEC, and Pac 10 were more than the sum of their parts as entertainment products.
I say "were" for a reason. If the golden goose is already dead, there's no sense in turning down a drumstick. So on those terms maybe you're right.
But I remain totally certain in my own mind that the classic ten team Big 10 would be at a competitive advantage for the media monetization paradigm of the future.
I think you've pretty much nailed it.
I see a world where Utah and Colorado are in the Pac 12, West Virginia is in the Big 12, Notre Dame and Louisville are in the ACC, Missouri and A&M are in the SEC, and the list goes on. The immediate connotation of every single conference has been called into question through this process and I do think the original conference brands have been forced to evolve. At this point, I think conferences are viewed through wins and losses (which isn't great for us in the major two sports) and school brand recognition (which saves us).
As for whether the classic Big Ten could exist in 2018, I personally think it'd be a big gamble. It's extremely hard to predict the cascade effect on each of the other conferences if we stick to 10. What I do know is the Big 12 and Big East, which were financially weaker than the other conferences and geographically easier to split apart, were ransacked. As an Illinois fan, I would never want to risk it and see where we ended up.
