I think them not playing Washington, Oregon, UCLA and USC might make them care. A six (or seven if they took one of the two AAU Arizona schools) team pod out West keeps a status quo that slumming it with SDSU, UNLV and Boise doesn't.
This is good. Big 10 grabs Oregon, Washington. They can bring along Oregon st and wsu. Then cal and Stanford for the prestige and break into norcal. From there you gotta look to the southwest, they’re growing too fast to ignore, take zona and they bring along asu, maybe pry away Utah and Colorado for the mountain west, that gives you a nice 12 team group, call it the “Pacific Pod”
Then you figure they have to look east. Grab the big Florida schools (fsu, Miami), Clemson. UVA brings prestige, they bring along va tech. Unc obviously, they bring along nc state and duke (and don’t sleep on wake). Ga tech gets you Atlanta, give them a southern partner with Louisville. Then you can start north with cuse, Pitt - I know this is gonna sound crazy but bc could be a sleeping giant. That’s a nice geographic group, call it the “Atlantic Pod.”
After that, grab a few Texas schools, ok state to block the sec, Iowa state, Kansas, of course, who brings ksu along. Maybe cinci and wvu, not great markets but they’re traditional powers, and ucf is a stretch but they could turn into something. That’s a new southern pod, add that to your Midwest pod.
For rivalries and travel you only play teams in your own pod, each pod plays a separate conference title game/bball tourney. Maybe the Atlantic Pod could get msg! If not I’m sure Greensboro is available. That’s a pretty solid 52-team conference. From there we just have to hope notre dame joins and needs a partner to get to an even 54.