Spence wrote:All conference teams that are deemed vested should get a full share. Otherwise what is the good of being in a conference. Purdue may not offer a lot in football but traditionally they have been pretty good at basketball and they are an excellent academic partner. Most astronauts went to Purdue.
There's a reason why Purdue academics started spreading it's wings across Indiana ...
Micro Purdue Universities began popping up and partnering with IU throughout the state. They are a major engineering school, and could only fit so many into their programs on one campus + cost of living and travel for lower income students.
In order to gain a larger body, and potential scholars, smaller satellite Purdue campuses became rather common, nothing more than the size of a Community College. Though, with the full backing of the Purdue Diploma attached to degrees.
My wife and I both went to IUSB
[Indiana University South Bend], which is a solid Physics Research, Business and Arts School.
Just there, considered off campus, yet still sharing the same grounds, one of the buildings became, IUPUSB
[Indiana University Purdue University South Bend], now Purdue Polytechnic South Bend.
They have since regressed a bit, as they maximized their expansion limit, and had to start closing some of those smaller locales, or merging entirely with a host entity
[such as IUPUI will become IU Columbus by July 1rst, 2024]{believe it or not, they are actually using the term realignment for the transition}. Mainly due to the lack of engineering interest with the current generation.
Anyhow, per what Spence is alluding to; the Big Ten University circuit is a tremendous research network, that offers quite a bit to the non-athletic student body. Every school under the Big 10 umbrella is an AAU Institution, outside of Nebraska, who was when they were invited into the Conference, but have since lost its status.
So, for the B1G, it's not just Athletics as the expansion model, but one gear toward Academic expansion, as well.
Oregon, Washington, USC and UCLA are all AAU members.
People bonfire dancing of claims that Florida St and Clemson are going to be invited to join the conference are truly casuals who know nothing about the under-workings of the trade interests for expansion. Neither of those schools are AAU members. So the College Football normies just see field of play success
[a little less from Clemson these days], assuming quality football is all that matters.
After all, there is a reason that the Big Ten invited Maryland and Rutgers to join the league. And it had nothing to do with football.
Miami, Duke, Georgia Tech, Pitt, North Carolina, Notre Dame and Virginia are all AAU members.
So the likelihood, if anyone, getting an invite to join the Big 10 in future expansion, from the ACC, will come of those programs.
Here's a list of AAU schools, and the year in which each received said status, in simple pdf format:
https://www.aau.edu/sites/default/files ... 202023.pdfNow, personally, considering the intention of expansion with TV market and network growth, Internationally; I'd think it would be hilarious if the Big Ten were to invite the University of Toronto to join.
Can you imagine how the casuals would cry foul, then
Bet their Hockey program would kick some serious tail, though
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