OK, NW, my last was clearly in response to your previous item.
RE: conferences, I think the ignored factor with these big mega-conferences is geography. For the negative revenue sports (almost all of them), the travel involved is a major obstacle. Since you use ND as an example, look at the Volleyball team. They might be able to take a bus to Evanston, or Bloomington or Columbus, but instead they have no choice but to fly to go to Boston, Atlanta, Miami, etc.
Many of these sports also play regularly on weekdays, as opposed to football which is primarily on Saturdays. It's much more disruptive for class, etc.
Maybe for the big programs like ND and OSU, this isn't as big of a deal. But for the smaller $$ schools (even at BCS level), I imagine it will cause serious problems. Look at the monstrosity called the Big "East".
RE: conferences, I think the ignored factor with these big mega-conferences is geography. For the negative revenue sports (almost all of them), the travel involved is a major obstacle. Since you use ND as an example, look at the Volleyball team. They might be able to take a bus to Evanston, or Bloomington or Columbus, but instead they have no choice but to fly to go to Boston, Atlanta, Miami, etc.
Many of these sports also play regularly on weekdays, as opposed to football which is primarily on Saturdays. It's much more disruptive for class, etc.
Maybe for the big programs like ND and OSU, this isn't as big of a deal. But for the smaller $$ schools (even at BCS level), I imagine it will cause serious problems. Look at the monstrosity called the Big "East".
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