Is there any chance whatsoever we could get a Big 12 invite should Nebraska and Missouri leave?

Huh? Seriously? Why would we? There are other schools who might get an offer before NIU.
Is that what you really would want?

if texas & oklahoma stay in the big-12 then YES i want to be in the big 12. if the texas & oklahoma teams bolt (including A&M, tech, ok. st, etc)...then it becomes murkier water as the travel would increase greatly for the NIU teams without the benefit of sharing conferences as the elite programs. being in the same conference as an Iowa St., Kansas, K-State, wouldn't be so bad though.

this said, NIU IS NOT on the radar, and even if they were, we wouldn't have the guts to make such a move.

(06-09-2010 10:14 AM)RitzHuskie Wrote:  Is there any chance whatsoever we could get a Big 12 invite should Nebraska and Missouri leave?

Zero. NIU's facilities and budget are completely incompatible with Big 12 standards. NIU is a great fit in the MAC and I expect the MAC to be impacted very little by whatever changes occur elsewhere.

Of course thats what we'd want. We are no where near the front of the line, but if about 15 schools turn them down for some reason, of course we want in.

Leaving the MAC is probably a touchy subject because of what happened before, but if you really want a shot at getting into a good BCS conference, you need to get out of the MAC first. C-USA is probably the best choice at this point for NIU. From there, yes, getting into a good BCS conference for a school like NIU would be possible.

The idea that NIU's facilities aren't up to par or whatever is really a non-issue 81. I think there is zero chance, but that's not why.

The day NIU is invited to a big conference there'd be an announcement they've expanded the football stadium and put up press boxes. The amount of revenue that comes in would make it easy to get the funding to make that happen. I think for a lot of reasons NIU won't be invited to the Big 12, but it won't be because of the facilities. Those could be be improved pretty quickly with Big 12 money. At least to an Iowa State's level. You don't have to be Texas, you just have to be as good as their bottom rung, and that wouldn't be too hard for NIU to do with Big 12 Revenue coming in.

(06-09-2010 10:14 AM)RitzHuskie Wrote:  Is there any chance whatsoever we could get a Big 12 invite should Nebraska and Missouri leave?

compare the ath budgets of niu to the big 12, there is no caomparison. so the answer is no. For a school to join a conference, i think a good barometer is comparable budgets.

Our budget would instantly change dramatically though if we joined the Big 12, GCD.

I don't think we have the prestige to get in, but I don't think the budget would be an issue.

If we move, i will be down. We don't have he resources to play in a BCS conference. Unless big donors come out of the wood work, we are MAC Caliber

(06-09-2010 11:55 AM)HuskieFan84 Wrote:  Our budget would instantly change dramatically though if we joined the Big 12, GCD.

I don't think we have the prestige to get in, but I don't think the budget would be an issue.

Our budget would not change because we don't have the money to expand. the first number below is the football budget and the second is overall budget. Lets be real especially when the school itself is in a budgetary crisis. It just is impossible. 2003-2004 Spending Football Budget Athletics Budget
Texas $12.9M $70.6M
Nebraska $12.9M $55.8M
Oklahoma $13.7M $47.8M
Oklahoma State $8.7M $45.3M
Texas A&M $9.8M $43.8M
Texas Tech $15.3M $41.2M
Missouri $6.8M $38.7M
Colorado $9.6M $36.7M
Kansas State $11.4M $35.7M
Kansas $7.7M $34.7M
Baylor $7.7M $28.1M
Iowa State $7.2M $27.7M
nd.

If the Big 12 lost a team or two, the most likely targets would be teams from the MWC or Boise. They wouldn't need to waste their time inviting us or any other MAC school to fill their open slots.

(06-09-2010 11:43 AM)gcd Wrote:  

(06-09-2010 10:14 AM)RitzHuskie Wrote:  Is there any chance whatsoever we could get a Big 12 invite should Nebraska and Missouri leave?

compare the ath budgets of niu to the big 12, there is no caomparison. so the answer is no. For a school to join a conference, i think a good barometer is comparable budgets.

South Florida had no facilities and a football office in a trailer and joined the Big East. Now they have state of the art facilities and are building more, all from Big East revenue. It's not always the case, that everything needs to be in place before you join. I don't think our administration or staff would be brave enough to make that jump though.

I don't think we're going anywhere for the time being. I think if Temple stays we'll try and add a team like WKU or MTSU to balance things out. I really doubt the samller conferences will be that affected if at all by these bigger conference shifts

gcd.. the television revenue alone would make our budget expand. Look at what those teams get per year. Most of these schools are in a budget crisis. Hell Florida and Texas are making cuts to academics, their athletics are fine.

Not to mention we'd sell out every home conference game. The additional revenue per year would make it easy to increase our budget. We'd never be near Texas or Oklahoma but catching up to Iowa State wouldn't be hard.

I still think we have no chance of getting in, but the idea that it's our budget holding us back doesn't make sense to me.

(06-09-2010 02:08 PM)HuskieFan84 Wrote:  gcd.. the television revenue alone would make our budget expand. Look at what those teams get per year. Most of these schools are in a budget crisis. Hell Florida and Texas are making cuts to academics, their athletics are fine.

Not to mention we'd sell out every home conference game. The additional revenue per year would make it easy to increase our budget. We'd never be near Texas or Oklahoma but catching up to Iowa State wouldn't be hard.

I still think we have no chance of getting in, but the idea that it's our budget holding us back doesn't make sense to me.

Yeah. NIU's budget would immediatley go up from all the money playing in the Big 12 brings in.

Budgets and lack of facilities do make a difference. If not, why wouldn't the Big 12 offer any school? Any school in a decent TV market would increase their budget by being in a bigger conference. But, why would the big conference want to add the little fish?

It would take a few years to upgrade facilities. What big school would want to play at NIU in the interim and earn relative peanuts? Plus, how much can Huskie Stadium be expanded? We can't have endzone seating in the north endzone, and the south endzone offers very limited expansion possibilities. Sure we could add a second deck to the east side, but we would probably need to double our capacity at least, and we'd still be one of the small sisters in a big conference. Plus, what guarantees would we have for attendance and television revenues? Would revenues and attendance immediately explode in DeKalb if tomorrow we were admitted to a conference like the Big 12? Would it take several years? Would the Big 12 be patient just to be privileged with NIU's presence in the conference in the meantime? Should we even mention basketball in this scenario? Last - but certainly not least - what appeal would we have for a bigger conference when we have only been to our conference championship once and lost that?

Face it. When it comes to big conference expansion, we are not even on their radar. Dreams are nice, but then you have to wake up sooner or later.

Problem solved! Introducing the Not Too Far From The Mississippi River Conference, or NTFFTMRC. Catchy, no? Here's the scenario:

-The Big 10 adds Nebraska and no one else to go to 12 teams.
-The PAC 10 adds Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Colorado.
-The following Big 12 teams are now orphans: Iowa State, Missouri, Kansas, Kansas State, Baylor.

The new NTFFTMRC now consists of:

Iowa State
Northern Illinois
Missouri
Kansas
Kansas State
Memphis
Baylor
SMU
Houston

Nine teams allows 8 conference and 4 nonconference games. I believe all of these schools are in the central time zone. This would be a great hoops conference with Iowa State, Kansas and Memphis and would tap into the Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, Memphis, Dallas and Houston markets. Pretty powerful. Oh, and Ames.

(06-09-2010 02:08 PM)HuskieFan84 Wrote:  gcd.. the television revenue alone would make our budget expand. Look at what those teams get per year. Most of these schools are in a budget crisis. Hell Florida and Texas are making cuts to academics, their athletics are fine.

Not to mention we'd sell out every home conference game. The additional revenue per year would make it easy to increase our budget. We'd never be near Texas or Oklahoma but catching up to Iowa State wouldn't be hard.

I still think we have no chance of getting in, but the idea that it's our budget holding us back doesn't make sense to me.

I've had conversations with people who know about this stuff and it is about budgets. If we want to go into the big 12, we need to expand the stadium to at least 50,000 and the overall budget to about $30 mill. Where do we get that when the school might have to borrow to pay its bills. It is never going to happen. We should try to make the MAC the best we can

(06-09-2010 04:06 PM)NIU1981 Wrote:  Problem solved! Introducing the Not Too Far From The Mississippi River Conference, or NTFFTMRC. Catchy, no? Here's the scenario:

-The Big 10 adds Nebraska and no one else to go to 12 teams.
-The PAC 10 adds Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Colorado.
-The following Big 12 teams are now orphans: Iowa State, Missouri, Kansas, Kansas State, Baylor.

The new NTFFTMRC now consists of:

Iowa State
Northern Illinois
Missouri
Kansas
Kansas State
Memphis
Baylor
SMU
Houston

Nine teams allows 8 conference and 4 nonconference games. I believe all of these schools are in the central time zone. This would be a great hoops conference with Iowa State, Kansas and Memphis and would tap into the Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, Memphis, Dallas and Houston markets. Pretty powerful. Oh, and Ames.

Super idea!

And to save travel costs, all teams can travel by paddleboat up and down the mighty Mississippi while singing rousing choruses of Ole Man River or Proud Mary!