Bruce Feldman from cbsports.com has a new mailbag up now. Thought this question and answer was interesting:
From @Huskerinsanity: Do you think the Big Ten should be proactive with all this realignment talk? What other teams fit the Big Ten mold?
The problem with this is it'd feel like the Big Ten would be getting bigger just for bigger sake, and that's it. What else would these other programs actually bring to the conference? The schools people always just throw out as candidates, namely Rutgers and UCONN, don't really bring much. If anything, they'd water down the product in football a little more since both, realistically, would fit into the bottom half of the league. Neither has truly a significant foothold of the NYC area TV market. I suspect there's more die-hard Michigan, Ohio State or Penn State football fans in NYC than Rutgers and UCONN football.
Maryland has the academics and would offer up reach into a different, sizeable TV market but the Terps football program is horrible right now, and it's not like this program is a slam dunk from a financial model. Keeping in mind, if you add more schools, you also have to divide up the money more and you're likely to increase travel budgets for all of your sports significantly.
Notre Dame, no doubt, is intriguing but ND has flirted with the Big Ten several times before and blown off the conference, so I don't Jim Delany is in the courting mind any more.