Actually, Frank is convinced that most people here are biased toward UConn. What he has trouble accepting is that we actually have a grasp on objective facts.
Frank constantly shifts the metrics so that UConn always comes out on the short end of the stick in realignment attractiveness. Rutgers has no sports accomplishments and no national following, but it has a big market. OK, with Rutgers off the table UConn now has the biggest market -- but market no longer matters, now it's Kansas's academics and national brand. But UConn equals Kansas's national basketball brand and academics and research, and lies in a bigger market. Oh, but that doesn't matter -- what matters is that Kansas would bring with it football powerhouse Oklahoma. But Oklahoma is a Connecticut-sized market without NYC nearby, and is feeble in academics and research, which B1G Presidents have named as requirements. Oklahoma's football brand is balanced by UConn's basketball brand. Frank says the B1G values football brands, and valued Florida State far above UConn, even though FSU is inferior in academic and research terms to UConn, shares its state with 4 other major football schools plus three pro teams, and is not geographically contiguous to the B1G footprint. Why didn't the B1G want Florida State? Geographic contiguity is important to them ... which leads us back to UConn.
It's hard to avoid the perception that Frank is projecting his own preferences onto the B1G. In my view Delany is now thinking more like a television executive than a football fan -- because he now is, essentially, a television executive -- and therefore he clearly sees the value of UConn and further penetration of the northeast.
Of course UNC, UVa, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas are major prizes -- if they are available. But what has to happen to pry them free for the B1G? UConn is similarly attractive to Kansas and Oklahoma and readily available.
Well, I'll be honest. You're one of the first people that I've come across that has actually said that I'm not somehow looking at the business side. Normally, I'm accused of breaking everything down into TV values, markets and revenue without caring about the on-the-field side of the equation. The line that I used in the first paragraph of the first post that I wrote on Big Ten expansion in 2009 that still gets 100 or so hits per day even now was, "Think like a university president and NOT like a fan."
To the extent that there are shifting metrics, they're from the conferences themselves, NOT me. They aren't static and set in stone. The ACC is a perfect example: in 2011, they would only look at certain schools that met a certain academic standard, yet in 2012, they had to add a "football school" regardless of academics. (As much as I hate to give credence to anything that West Virginia bloggers say, I'll agree with them that WVU would have been acceptable to the ACC in 2012 in a way that they weren't prior to that time.) What the Big Ten did in 2012 with adding Maryland and Rutgers in terms of adding population needs to be looked at in conjunction with (and not separate from) the Nebraska addition in 2010. That shows a holistic approach - television households AND national brand names matter. These aren't mutually exclusive concepts. So yes, how a pairing with UConn would work greatly matters (because the Big Ten sure as heck isn't expanding to 15 for anyone, including Notre Dame). Is UConn plus Kansas worth more than Kansas plus Oklahoma? Is UConn plus anyone worth more than UVA plus UNC? That's why I keep repeating that this isn't a vacuum - timing is a big deal in conference realignment and who is willing to move in other conferences is just as much of a big deal, too. There are some bedrock principles (i.e. the Big Ten's academic requirements), but the overall ground is ALWAYS shifting with conferences' needs changing and individual targets moving up and down the pecking order.
You're saying that Jim Delany is thinking like a TV executive, which is correct, but you're making the wrong assumption that the only element of this is the Big Ten Network. What I've found is a lot of people prior to conference realignment starting up in 2009 didn't realize how important the BTN was on the college sports landscape (including how basic cable subscriber fees worked), as fans from outside the Big Ten thought that they "obviously" couldn't get anyone because of "boring basketball and football" (I can't tell you how many times that I've seen that ridiculous comment), yet now it has swung in the opposite direction where they think that the BTN is *everything*. This simply isn't the case. Even with a currently badly undervalued ESPN contract, the Big Ten's revenue from the BTN is still only around 60% of what it receives from ESPN. Once again, this is with a circa 2006 ESPN contract. Certainly, the BTN is absolutely important, but when the Big Ten ends up selling its current ESPN package to the open market in 2016, the league is expecting that package is going to bring in about 3 or 4 times as much as the BTN. When you see those huge figures that the Big Ten had projected to Maryland (and trust me, those aren't pie-in-the-sky numbers) starting in a couple of years, the vast majority of it is attributed to by how much the top national Big Ten package is going to be worth on the open market. That package is going to be dictated much more by a school like Nebraska (and more by a school like Oklahoma) than a school like Rutgers. So, can a TV executive conclude that a small market national brand name can still draw in more TV revenue to a conference than a large market team without any good branding, even if that conference has its own TV network? Absolutely. As I keep saying here, it's not an accident that Nebraska was picked FIRST by the Big Ten (and everyone knew the importance of the BTN when that happened).
There are going to be various strands looked at: national TV value for ESPN (or Fox or whoever pays for the national package), basic cable households for the BTN, football branding, graduate research academics, recruiting areas for both football players and regular students, etc. Some of these are more important than others, but I believe the academics portion is more of a "all or nothing" standard (either you meet a minimal level of academic standing or you don't - all academically "eligible" schools are in the same pool, so if the Big Ten ultimately finds School A and School B to meet that bar, the fact that School A is higher ranked academically doesn't matter if School B is bringing in more athletic dollars). From that point, the national TV value, basic cable households and football branding are the next 3 most important factors by far. UConn arguably can score well on the basic cable household metric. However, the national TV value (largely football-based, although I once again don't understand how much people are underestimating how much pull Kansas has nationally for basketball - that's a legitimately timeless program that can get by with just putting "KANSAS" on the jersey and draw viewers without regard to how well they're playing in a given year and the TV ratings continue to bear that out) and football branding metrics are where the school needs improvement, and those are what UConn needs to have shored up by the time the next round of realignment occurs. And this is of course assuming that there's another desirable school willing to move to the Big Ten, too.
Look - like I've said, I was convinced that the ACC was going to take UConn back in November. People can blame BC or Florida State or whoever else all that they want, but looking back, there were some pretty clear red flags (some of which UConn can conceivably control, such as football performance going forward, and others that it can't, such as the fact that its FBS program is young). I ultimately believe that UConn can get into a power conference, but it's more likely to be the Big 12 in an eastward expansion than the Big Ten.
