Former Nebraska coach/athletic director Tom Osborne is obviously proud that the Corn Huskers are in the Big Ten. On Friday, he spoke about the conference being an attractive option for schools in general.
Tom Osborne says schools are interested in Big Ten membership. They must like money!
Isn’t that the name of the game anyway?
Photo by Eric Francis/Getty Images
“I don’t want to start jumping into that hornet’s nest where someone’s quoting me as saying, ‘Well, this school ought to join the Big Ten,’ ” Osborne said via Land of 10.com during a media tour in Des Moines.
“I do know people that I’ve talked to in the past who maybe have some interest. And so I think the Big Ten is a viable option.”
No, Osborne isn’t necessarily saying that the Big Ten is expanding. But of course schools like the Big Ten. Why? Money.
But you’d be naive to think that the money the Big Ten has been hauling in recently hasn’t gauged other schools’ interests.
Take, for instance, the revenue totals for the conference that schools have been getting. Michigan announced earlier this month that it is projecting to get a whopping $51 million from Big Ten revenue totals for the 2017 fiscal year. That’s a whole lot more than the June 2015 total, which was $32.4 million to member schools that had full shares.
Pair that with the fact that Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany is set to make $20 million in bonus payments, and that the conference’s most recent total revenue according to the USA Today was $483.4 million, it’s obvious for schools to think highly of the Big Ten.
“First of all, you have to have instability in the league that a team is in for them to want to leave, and so that’s probably the biggest factor,” Osborne continued. “But I would hesitate to say, ‘Well, the Big Ten ought to approach this team or that team.’”
The talks of realignment, no matter how casual, will pretty much always continue. The Big Ten kicked off the modern realignment cycle by announcing it was going to take a team, which ended up being Nebraska. Since then, the Big 12’s been in crisis mode.
Osborne mentioning instability in a league could be a hint at Oklahoma in the Big 12, who was at the heart of the conference’s realignment talks over the last few years. There have been rumors of OU joining the Big Ten in the past, as well as basically every other conference.
Money isn’t everything, but when you see the Big Ten schools raking in this kind of cash, how can other schools not think the grass is greener?
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