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[quote=Anonymous]What are the concerns of the Big Ten Conference about adding UCal-Berkeley and Stanford into the Big Ten Conference ?

Clearly, there are no concerns regarding academics as both Stanford and Cal are world class universities with respect to academics and research.

And both are in a major media market (San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose area) ranked #10 in the US. This is a high income, highly educated region.

The Big Ten Presidents are fine with Stanford and Berkeley as it would add academic & research prestige to the conference and to its research co-operative.

The only two barriers that I see are money and recruiting.

Without competition from Berkeley & Stanford for California and Western US high school football players, USC, UCLA, U Washington, and U Oregon should have less competition for top athletes who want to stay in the West/California.

Money to pay for two additional member schools. Apparently the Big Ten Conference media partners did not see enough value in adding Stanford and Berkeley to justify the expense--even at a discounted rate for the first 6 or 7 years of Big Ten Conference membership. Somewhat surprising because of the location of the two universities in the 10th largest media market in the US populated by high income earners.

But, maybe there is another concern. The Pac-12 failed as a football conference. What would be different now ?

The difference would be that only the top 6 teams from the Pac-12 conference would become members of the Big Ten Conference. This seems like it would be regarded as a factor for success rather than as a concern for failure. Get rid of the dead weight and the remaining six football programs (USC, UCLA, Washington, Oregon, Stanford, and Cal) should prosper.

This leads back to two concerns: recruiting competition and time zone issues. The Pacific Time Zone does not attract viewers from across the country--especially after a long day of football viewing games played in the Eastern & Central time zones. In order to be successful at the level expected of SEC & Big Ten football programs, Pacific Time Zone teams need to travel to East to the Central and Eastern Time Zones. Not always, but for a significant number of games during the 12 game regular season.

Assume that the Big Ten Conference would be interested in Stanford, but not Cal. UCLA had to pay Cal-Berkeley millions of dollars before the California Board of Regents would allow UCLA to leave Cal behind in the Pac-12 when UCLA agreed to move to the big time in the Big Ten.

I don't know the answer as to how to get both elite academic universities an invitation to the Big Ten Conference. I do know that Stanford would be welcome as a traditional rival of Notre Dame IF Notre Dame would commit to the Big Ten Conference, but that is unlikely at present under the current CFP selection method.[/quote]

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