Pesky Maryland to Big East Expansion Rumor Pops Up Again

Yearly matchups with those schools wouldn’t be guaranteed. With 18 teams, there are a each team has a couple schools that they don’t actually play in a given year. Then, they would suddenly force a ‘rivalry’ (i.e., home+away) series with some random team.

I think we should schedule series with major non-conference opponents more often. For example, see what teams like UConn, Texas, Michigan State, and Tennessee do every year. That hasn’t really been Gary’s style, but maybe the Villanova games indicate he’s getting into it.

I’ve spent so much time being a Maryland, and by extension ACC fan…maybe this is ridiculous, but a switch like that would challenge my self-identity. I’m not sure I can handle that!

Maryland was a founding ACC member. I really can’t see us going to the Big East.

Maryland being a basketball oriented school would fare well. They’d be competitive in football ( unlike in the ACC) and would have a nice natrual rivalry with gtown in the Big East.

There is more of a chance that we go to the Big 10. And that is extremely unlikely.

what would MD fans think if it was an 8 team Northeast FB conf – MD,Penn St, Pitt, WVU, Rutgers, UConn, Cuse, BC, and a 12 team hoops league – add Nova, ND, Gtown, and St Johns.

For a lot of Big East fans this is the dream scenario

if the big ten expands there is a good chance they will take a school from the big east because notre dame isn’t going to join the big 10. that said i don’t think there is anyway md. a founding member of the acc will leave the acc.

There’s nothing in it that makes sense for Maryland. The Big East is an unstable, clumsy hybrid league that is nowhere as financially solvent as the ACC For Maryland to leave the ACC for the Big East would be the dumbest conference move made by a major school since South Carolina ditched the ACC in 1971.

The Big Ten, however…that’s something else entirely. It’s a conference that makes far more money than the ACC or Big East, and if accepted, Maryland would make considerably more revenue than it does now. And the allure of Big Ten football easily trumps the ACC; it’d be much easier to sell those suites at Byrd Stadium (not to mention further expanding the stadium) if Penn State, Michigan, Ohio State and Wisconsin are on the home schedule rather than Florida State, Clemson, Wake Forest and Virginia. (Football remains the primary economic engine that drives big-time athletic departments.) I think it would be easier to recruit for Big Ten football than for ACC football. Moreover, the Big Ten’s academic consortium would be a big selling point to the administration, along with being in a conference with several of the nation’s top land-grant institutions.

What would Maryland’s appeal be to the Big Ten? It brings two large TV markets — Washington and Baltimore — to the Big Ten Network, which the conference owns. (That’s been why Syracuse and Rutgers have been rumored as Big Ten expansion candidates, but Maryland has far more appeal in D.C.-Baltimore than SU or Rutgers have in NYC.) Maryland has the best overall athletic program among the perceived contenders (SU, Rutgers, Pitt, Missouri), and that it’s won national titles in men’s and women’s basketball within the past decade would make it attractive to the Big Ten.

I know many of you would hate to see basketball rivalries with North Carolina and Duke fall by the wayside, and I understand that. But there are times you have to see the big picture, and the benefits of Big Ten membership to Maryland — athletically and academically — would far outweigh losing those games.

You don’t do something like this lightly, and while I like the ACC, the Big Ten would be the only conference I’d leave it for.