I don’t understand the reference to feast/famine years outside the context of having six or eight home games per year.

WIth the opening season game from last season in Dallas, Michigan had six home games last year and seemed to survive it quite nicely (that game nornally would have been played in Ann Arbor. This was a season where UM was on the road against Ohio State, Notre Dame and Nebraska, so the six -game home slate in 2012 was Air Force, Massachusetts, Michigan State, Iowa, Northwestern and Illinois.

If he’s looking at a a situation whereby Michigan plays at least two top-tier teams in Ann Arbor each year as I outlined above, then we aren’t seeing the feast/famine cycle that Michigan was recently on IRT Notre Dame, Nebraka & Ohio State.

I’d also add that Brandon’s trending away from having two MAC teams on the non-conference schedule (although there are two this year, one in 2014 and one in 2016). He was recently quotes as saying that September football in the Big Ten was getting “boring”. On his watch, Michigan has single home games schedule in the near term with Oregon State, Brigham Young, Colorado, Cincinnati, UNLV and Hawaii and a home-and-home with Utah.

So if he gets one MAC team on the non-conference schedule, one major home-and-home opponent, a good non-conference opponent who won’t need a return date and couples that with a conference schedule that is coordinated with the OOC slate to balance out the top-tier teams, then I’d say that’s a pretty good deal.

CIC officials have already met with their counterparts at RU and MD. The formal date for joining is 1 July 2013.

Not really. It’s just the mechanism by which we coordinate the exchange of actual resources.

“More of it means more options and better chances to be successful in the future.”

Show me the true correlation here. The 6 wealthiest conferences do the best. But between the 6 (now 5) wealthiest conferences, where does money truly fit in?

“More importantly, it means athletics don’t need to subtract from the academic side of the school.”

We, Ohio State has a $5 billion budget. The entire athletic department is essentially a rounding error. Only creative accounting makes you think it is important.

“You start with a faulty premise. You say that since the B10 isn’t #1 in anything, let alone everything, money must be meaningless.”

You interjected your own premise. Feel free to quote me exactly, rather than play with what I say to your own needs. All I said was that the Big 10 is #1 in money and nothing else. If it bothers you, and your typical lengthy word vomit suggests that it does, so be it. But feel free to show me where the Big 10 is #1 other than money. That was my only “premise,” if it was even that.

“That assumes that the B10 would be equally competitive with less money. For all you know that extra money is what is keeping B10 football from being BE football and B10 hoops from being SEC hoops.”

Similarly, for all you know BE football would continue to be BE football even if they had more money. And perhaps SEC hoops will continue to languish, even with an infusion of cash from its network. Which brings me back to money being an imperfect, unproven correlation for success outside of comparing the Big 10 to the MAC, etc.

“You’re also assuming that being #1 in one thing is better than being good across the board.”

For most fans it comes down to being #1 in the revenue sports, plus one or two other non-revenue sports that they really care about. For some fans, it is only revenue or only one non-revenue. Other than some general pride that comes with winning the Director’s Cup, I am not sure too many fans are perusing those statistics and projecting them if “mens swimming pulls out a top finish.” The next debate here regarding the methodology for the Director’s Cup will be the first (at least in my time here). Conversely, we spend a lot of time with bracketology and BCS debate.

“Just because you think that way doesn’t mean that matches the goals of the B10. Of course they want to be #1 in everything, but I think they would tell you that across the board success is very important to them.”

You really think an athletic director would rather have a Director’s Cup than a national title in a revenue sport? You really think a “Top 25″ or “Top 6″ Director’s Cup finish means more to the athletic department than a national title? You think any athletic director takes more pride in having both revenue sports in the top 10 than having one of them be #1? Wisconsin has been great in both sports… Louisville gets 12 months of being the reigning national champion. Last I checked, we were calling Jurich a great AD and questioning Alvarez’s decision with respect to paying assistant coaches.

“There’s a reason B10 schools sponsor so many more sports than SEC and B12 schools. The B10 knows they could do better if they specialized more. They have consciously chosen to take the broader approach.”

I get it. Better to offer 30 sports, finish decently in all of them, and rise to the top of the Director’s Cup standings on the basis of quantity alone. Nice. Sounds like fun.

“What’s more meaningful is:”

A bunch of things that have nothing to do with increased revenue from the BTN. Money makes it possible… but adding a few million a year in TV revenue does not move the impossible to possible. It is a drop in the bucket.

“Thanks. When the ACC has a down time in hoops, what is it they can hang their hat on exactly? Next year?”

There is no “down time.” All we have to do is be top 3 and claim a Big 10-esque successful result. If we can edge out the SEC and Pac-12, mission accomplished in the conference battle. Apparently.

Funny how you did not provide an actual response to the question. Maybe you need to stop quoting comments and actually read them.

Notre Dame is also a small private school, but I know B1G fans tend to not get how small. While twice the size of JHU, ND’s still half the size of Northwestern.

Actually, I do realize that. But when you read the JHU committee report, that factor does not emerge as one of the school’s main concerns.

The ACC is also much the stronger of the two LAX conferences (the closest analogy I can come up with is the B1G hockey, but ACC LAX would be more stacked top to bottom). OTOH, the strength of the ACC may be an issue and JHU may decide to pull a Bowden and take the path of least resistance.

It cuts both ways. On the one hand, Hopkins wants to play a strong schedule, to maximize their chances of an at-large berth. On the other, Hopkins wants a league they could win, to give them another way of qualifying for the post-season.

Of course, the conference schedule would comprise just five games of a 13-game regular season, so the quality of the OOC schedule would dominate the RPI calculation in either event. Virginia and North Carolina are long-term Hopkins rivals, so Hopkins is going to play them whether they’re in the ACC or not.

Although in this scenario, I could easily see the end of the B1G as the East teams with the high population glamor schools would split off and keep the money for themselves in twenty years or so. Perhaps they would drop a still-bad PSU or potentially a redundant MSU to pick up say Illinois to keep the Chicago metro but I’m not sure what the western schools add demographically at that point.

The crucial point, is that ESPNU televises 100% of JHU’s home games, and I don’t think there’s any scenario where BTN would do the same. It’s not like football or basketball, where every game gets televised on one network or another. Lacrosse isn’t popular enough to justify putting every game on TV, or anywhere near that.

So the two deals strike me as complementary: between BTN and ESPNU, there’d be far more lacrosse games televised than if all rights were on BTN alone.

Notre Dame is also a small private school, but I know B1G fans tend to not get how small. While twice the size of JHU, ND’s still half the size of Northwestern. The ACC is also much the stronger of the two LAX conferences (the closest analogy I can come up with is the B1G hockey, but ACC LAX would be more stacked top to bottom). OTOH, the strength of the ACC may be an issue and JHU may decide to pull a Bowden and take the path of least resistance.