JIM "CASH MONEY" DELANY COULD PULL OUT THE KNOT FOR NEBRASKA

It worked great for Penn State. (The dominating the conference in football part, not the cash baths part.)

But stupid! I think the Big Ten is just doing some good old-fashioned saber-rattling with the expansion stuff. Here’s what’s really happening: if Brian Kelly doesn’t knock everybody’s socks off, the Integer is going to make a major push for ND in 2-3 years, because that’s who they really want. With the NBC contract coming due, ND could stand to more than double the money it makes as an independent. The faculty at ND are overwhelmingly in favor of Intergerization, and since our upcoming schedules are brough to you by the Bucket-O-Diarrhea, it may be an easy sell.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go add more tin foil to my hat.

Plus, UNL could introduce the Big Televen to runzas!

the chicken soup for the blogger’s soul of the cfb offseason.*

*How a college football playoff would work is an acceptable substitute here.

that Nebraska adds enough skrilla to Delaney’s Big Fat Cash Money Pies to make it worthwhile.

(Also, Iowa and Nebraksa would totally play for a giant bronzed version of this or thereabouts.)

they’re called “Hot Pockets”

…and you will see Nebraska makes no sense for the Big Ten. The BTN pays out tons of cash, but every school already in the league would have to take a lot less if Nebraska enters. Yes, the BTN would capture ever single TV set in the state for it’s cable programming…and that is worth what, maybe the rquivalent of San Antonio?

Texas brings the entire state to the TV dollars. The value of the BTN contract would rise exponentially, unlike the very slight increase the league would see by adding Nebraska.

A conference championship game adds money regardless who the 12th team is, but it is for all the other sports/games that the contract would have to rise, by enough to make certain nobody takes a loss on current revenues. No matter how good Nebraska is in football, it just doesn’t bring enough to the cable television table. Hell, even Missouri would at least bring the St. Louis and KC TV markets…which would still not measure up in any way to Texas.

Who knows if Texas is interested….but from a logical perspective, the Big Ten’s best fit would be the ’Horns.

Cornhusker fans, heed the words of W.C Fields:
“There comes a time in the affairs of a man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation.”

What do the Corn bring to the table that the ultimate decision makers (University Presidents) covet?

Not much in major tv markets which makes it difficult to expand the BTN which is the major goal of expansion. Add in their average academics and research and the Big 10 only takes NU if others say no (which won’t happen). In fact, I doubt expansion would be considered that low on the wish list.

We’re only a month or two into this 18 month “…process of an internal study, and we’ll take those studies and those options and talk to our athletic directors, who then will pass on their thoughts to our presidents.” In other words 18 months of pussyfooting around.

Just as a reminder, my man Delany loves pussyfooting. LOVES it. He gave himself almost 2 full years where he doesn’t even have to pretend to be doing anything else.

So my point is, we all need to relax, b/c Delany is driving this car and right now he’s on the median with this blinkers on going 10 mph.

Nebraska makes a little sense. UNL is an AAU-member institution, but its mission, selectivity, and population base is much more Great Plains state school than Rust Belt flagship school. The school has more in common with KU and Wyoming than Iowa or Ohio State.

I don’t doubt Tom and Harvey Perlman will listen, but it seems unlikely they’ll jump. I think most in Nebraska are secretly hoping Mizzou (which makes more sense for all involved) jumps to the Big Ten, the Big 12 adds a TCU, Houston, Boise or somesuch then realigns to break up the Texas-bloc and goes to an SEC-style schedule. That’s my ideal scenario, anyway.

Of course, this caveat always applies.

As if it wasn’t bad enough when the annual NU-OU game was scrapped, this would be even worse.

Nebraska may not have had the same game over the last ten years, but they’re still a name. Nebraska vs. BCS non-conference opponent is always televised, and Nebraska on the road against non-BCS opponent is always televised. Nebraska’s conference TV money was lower this year because there were at least three PPV games, all of which were more directly lucrative to NU than appearing on Versus would have been.

TO’s still midwestern-seething-pissed (think Grampa Walton about to whoop your hide) at how OU and the Six Dwarves of the Big 8 handed Texas, A&M, and two politically motivated tagalongs got complete veto power over the new conference, and implemented every SWC rule the Southern Block wanted. There were a lot of 11-1 votes around the time the Big 12 was formed. And Oklahoma decided our rivalry wasn’t important once they got a few Iowa State-grade beatings, like 37-0 / 73-21 / 69-7 in ’95-97. Traitors, the lot of them.

All the major Big 12 events have been sliding southward. The baseball tournament got permanently moved to Oklahoma City’s Bricktown. The football championship is very likely to land in Jerry’s World. Even the hoops tournament — a fixture in KC forever — is rotating between KC and southern cities. (The other sports don’t matter, and all of us understand that.)

If Nebraska could get more money to go to the Big Televen, especially in an era when the University (not the self-sustaining athletic department) has lower revenues, allowing it to get more athletic and research money, the question is how fast we can get Harvey Perlman and TO to Chicago (or wherever the hell Big Televen HQ is) to sign the papers.

Kicking the hell out of Iowa’s almost as much fun as thumping Oklahoma, cause at least us Omahans would get someone local to talk crap to. (Iowa fan was downright insufferable this year. The youtube of Eric Crouch trucking that DB never gets old.)