Pitt to B10?

Blogs and message boards all around the internet were in a tizzy yesterday due to a report that it is basically a done deal that Pitt will be the 12th member of the Big Ten, possibly to be announced by the end of the week. Any report citing an unnamed source needs to be taken with a grain of salt, of course, and the Chicago-Tribune has even already released a conflicting report so the chances of this actually happening seem extremely diminished. If Ben Maller's "little birdy" really was just a couple Pitt football players tweeting (why the fuck is "tweeting" not capitalized BTW? Twitter is a proper noun but the act of Twittering isn't?) about some random meeting then that is fine investigative work there dude. *makes slow wanking gesture*

Huge tangent: can you imagine if they had Twitter in the 1920s? Ninety percent of professional athletes were drunk by noon, pounding every piece of kitty they could get their hands on and hated minorities. Scoops Callahan would have eaten that shit up. God damn that would have been amazing. I would pay $10 if someone would go back in time and give Ty Cobb access to Twitter.

So even though this internet rumor has fizzled faster than Agent Zero's career, I'll just go ahead and still speculate.

Mmm, mustache

The overall e-opinion on this move seemed to be fairly positive, but I remain relatively unconvinced. The main benefit would be that it would allow the B10 to realign into conferences and then have a conference championship game, which would be pure, unadulterated, nut-crunching awesomeness. I am sick of B10 teams being done a month before every other conference, plus a CCG would bring extra revenue for the conference and added excitement. Also, Pitt has very competitive football and basketball programs, fits well within the B10 geographically-speaking and is a good academic and research institution.

I don't think adding Pitt would be a terribly bad move, but there are also some negatives that aren't immediately apparent. The point to adding a 12th team would be to expand the conference - in every sense of the word. Pitt fails to do this. Pitt already falls into a TV market carried, some might say dominated, already by PSU. Adding Pitt doesn't get anyone new watching the Big Ten Network or really generate much extra excitement for games beyond the revival of the Pitt/PSU rivalry that died when PSU joined the B10 in 1990. The B10 needs to either expand westward or, ideally, tap into the huge East Coast market. I don't know if there is a perfect fit out there right now, but Rutgers comes fairly close. Their football program has been a respectable-but-not-amazing 25-14 (finishing 5th once and 4th twice in the Big East) since their breakout 2006 campaign, so they should be competitive in the conference. Plus, adding Rutgers would allow the B10 to seize the New Jersey/New York market that is largely devoid of competitive collegiate football. I think the fan turn out to an @Rutgers game would be huge for OSU or U of M since both colleges have so many graduates in the area.

Names being tossed around for the 12th spot in the conference include Mizzou, Iowa State and Nebraska, among others. I even read one rumor that Texas was being considered, but that is 100% ridiculous and would never, ever happen so I'll just ignore that one even if it would be amazing. I feel that Pitt and Rutgers are clearly the best two options and it seems as though conference expansion is less of an if and more of a when with every passing month so my money would be on one of those two schools.