So, back in the quaint time period right after OU and UT bolted for the SEC, but USC and UCLA had not yet left for the B1G, the Big12 commissioned a consultancy to do a strategic study of conference alignment and basically to look at who the Big12 should consider adding in that context. Bailer being Bailer, someone on their board leaked the study.
The entire 263 page report can be read here:
www.dropbox.com
But, what is interesting is that their research indicated that the Big12 and SEC are more of what we think of as sports conferences, whereas the Pac12, B1G and ACC operate a little differently in that there is a lot more collaboration between schools on everything from research projects to graduate student seminars and even to joint contracts for IT resources.
It's the B1G that leads the way on the above collaborations, and the B12 that lagged. Part of their point was that the B12 should improve on that, but I digress.
It was sort of telling though that in their graphing and grouping of schools and conferences on academic and sports performance metrics, there was a clear divide between the SEC & Big 12 vs the Pac12, B1G and ACC. There were, of course, outliers in each grouping, but the line was pretty stark. An interesting data point in their graphic was CU - we were basically the median P5 school in terms of academics and athletics, but I digress, that's not what I came to post.
What I came to post was a series of slides about the financial benefits that B1G members receive that go beyond the conference distributions. Some of these benefits go up if they add schools. Some of them go up if they add the right schools. Academics matter in this context. The bottom line is that joining the B1G, even at a reduced conference distribution or larger travel budget would probably be well worth it.
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