The Big Ten knew that Nebraska was going to get booted from the AAU. In fact, if all of the Big Ten members had voted to keep Nebraska in the AAU (and they didn't), NU would still be in the organization. The vote was seriously that close.
Syracuse is definitely a valuable school even without AAU membership - they are essentially what UConn would look like (powerhouse basketball program in the Northeast) if it had old money football tradition (even if they haven't been as strong on-the-field over the past decade). The fact that Syracuse is private doesn't mean as much since they are on the large side (so a lot of people see them as acting as the de facto "flagship" for the state of New York as opposed to any of the SUNY schools). Now, Syracuse wasn't valued as highly by the Big Ten as Maryland and Rutgers (I personally agree with the assessment of the former but disagree with the latter), but when the B1G legitimately thought that it had a shot at getting Notre Dame as a full member, Syracuse was very much in the middle of the B1G 16-team scenarios before they were taken by the ACC.
The main minus of Syracuse (or any school in Western New York) is that the region has as bad of demographic trends as the Detroit metro area these days (as the growth in the NYC metro area has masked a lot of the deficiencies in the rest of New York state). As with the New England states, New York State (including the NYC area) is also a truly terrible football recruiting ground considering the size of its population base (particularly compared to New Jersey and Maryland, much less Pennsylvania). To be honest, it's shocking how few Division I football recruits come out of New York State with it being the third most populous state in the country (i.e. states like Indiana, Mississippi and Missouri with a fraction of the population are beating NY State *outright* in terms of producing FBS recruits, much less on a per captia basis) . That is as important to the "demographics" quotient for the Big Ten as TV households.
FTT,
Here's part of my post last week on the recruiting numbers (off Rivals.com). You're right - it is not fertile recruiting ground. The trick is to get kids from elsewhere to come to the Northeast as Nebraska has.
"The biggest problem the northeast D-1 schools are going to have in the future is maintaining relevance in the national conversation about football. BB will be fine and the ACC will be the best hoops conference in the country (until the B1G takes UConn), but I don't think hoops matters a lot. If it did, UConn would have been the first one poached from the old BE. It's football, football, football! Until the schools in the northeast, as a group, become more competitive then northeast football will languish. (I don't care what conference you're in.) For that purpose all D-1 schools from the northeast should support the development of region-wide competence in football. Only then will recruiting become easier and the schools will be more attractive to kids from the football rich south and southwest. The recruiting numbers don't lie. In all of New England, approx. 15,000,000 people, there were 21 D-1 scholarship kids. 10 from CT and MA each and 1 from RI. That's it! Add NY, PA, and NJ (population of approx. 41,000,000) you add 146 for a total of 167 D-1 players from the northeast (56,000,000 population base). Compare that to the numbers from TX, Fla, GA -=- 346, 332 and 184 respectively - total of 862 D-1 players from a population of roughly the same - 56,000,000.
You say enough with numbers. However, you can see that you have to convince kids from the south to come to school in the north to have any shot of developing northeast football at an elite level. The only way to do that is to have a thriving, competitive regional presence and an exciting brand of football. This will help create a national buzz about the sport in the northeast and that will attract athletes. Daunting task? You bet it is! But how the hell did Nebraska do it? A state that loves football, but works off a population base of 1,500,000 with only 5 D-1 recruits state-wide this year. It gets players from other football rich regions.
It will take awhile, but I think it can be done. The only question is whether the effete northeast fan base can embrace college football like it has been elsewhere. It did before --- this is where college football got its start."
The numbers don't lie - Northeast football will only thrive with an influx of out of region talent.