3. University of Chicago really fumbled the bag.
(Paraphrasing Chicago alum Kurt Vonnegut here)
Imagine if Alabama decided today to terminate it's football program because the sport is inconsistent with its Academic goals. Then imagine they turned Bryant-Denny stadium into a lab to develop weapons of unthinkable mass destruction. That, is the University of Chicago.
5. SoCon really screwed up by enforcing their bowl ban. They could have been a strong conference for a long time, even with the SEC defections.
The BIG did not allow it's members to play in any bowls until 1946, and then the only exception was they allowed a team to play in the Rose Bowl. But a team couldn't play in the Rose Bowl in consecutive years, so sometimes the conference champion stayed home. They didn't expand into other bowls until the mid 70s.
Their conference seemed to do alright.
8. Funny that Notre Dame breaking away from the CFA to negotiate its NBC deal kind of led to all of these conference specific contracts and a lot of the realignment we see today.
What's not funny is the way that went down. The CFS schools were negotiating a new deal with ABC, when CBS and NBC both approached the SEC about breaking away and having their own TV deal. The BIG 10 commish and the ND President begged the SEC to stay with the CFA for the good of the sport. A few weeks later ND announces its deal with NBC.
10. Looking back, the SEC added freaking Arkansas and South Carolina in response to the Big Ten adding Penn State. Would have been laughed at today.
Had nothing to do with the BIG. The SEC wanted to have a championship game. Some members of the Birmingham Touchdown Club approached the SEC with an idea....the NCAA had a little-known rule that was passed to help out some of the conferences in lower divisions: if a conference had 12 or more members it could split into 2 divisions and add a championship game to its football schedule, exceeding the maximum of 11 games. They suggested the SEC add 2 teams and have a championship game. All they wanted in exchange for bringing up the idea was for Legion Field to host the first five championships (it only got to host 2).
7. Wild that the Big Ten was so dug in on trAdiShUn that they almost missed out on adding Penn State.
The wild thing to me is the animosity between the Big Ten and ND. ND seems like a natural fit for the BIG, but there used to be a really strong anti-Catholic bias in this Country, and particularly in the Mid West. ND would sometimes play BIG TEN schools, and the fans would treat them horribly. The BIG Ten wouldn't even consider letting the Irish join.
That bias may be gone, but hurt feelings still remain among powerful alums. ND will have to join a conference some day (for real, not this weird ACC affiliation they have), but I will really be surprised if it is ever the BIG.
