I'd like to make an argument that the Big Ten's 21st expansion was horribly botched.

My initial assessment of their expansion desires was they had two major interests:

1. Notre Dame
2. Gaining highly populated eastern markets to capitalize on a market based revenue model, particulately when it comes to T3 carriage fees on the BTN

To accomplish objective 1 they needed to make the BE an untenable conference home. This plays in to objective 2. IMHO there were 5 potential northeastern schools that could have been picked:

Rutgers (BE--NYC market)
Syracuse (BE--Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo markets)
Pitt (BE--Pittsburgh market, partially covered by PSU)
Maryland (ACC--DC and Baltimore markets)
BC (ACC--Boston market)

Adding 4 of those plus ND to create a 16 team league would have been ideal. Had they taken the 3 BE schools and one of the ACC schools I think it would have done enough damage to make ND seek a new conference home and the Big Ten with it's big Midwestern and east coast markets would have been their only real option. Not to mention the Big Ten would be home to 5 of their annual rivals: Mich, Mich St, Purdue, Pitt, and BC. With an 8 game conference schedule there would still be plenty of room to play USC and Navy, but probably not Stanford if they wanted to maintain a slot for a MAC-level school and a high profile game from another major opponent.

That's not how it went. Larry Scott of the PAC 10 announced his own expansion intents. Delany got caught off guard and distracted. He panicked and added Nebraska. There was no reason to add Nebraska when he did and he should have waited. Even if the PAC 16 plan had been consummated Nebraska was still going to be there. The PAC 12 had no interest in them. There was no reason to rush that decision.

By jumping the gun with a knee jerk reaction with Nebraska Delany sabotaged the East Coast/ND gambit. With Nebraska in the fold he didn't have enough spots to deliver the decisive death plow to the BE and gather the eastern markets and traditional ND foes into the fold.

Why do I say this? The loss of 3 football schools, Pitt, Cuse, and WVU (2 of which I proposed the B10 should have taken) was precisely the blow that it took to destabilize the BE and send ND looking. With a footprint from Maryland to Miami, aside from GT and the hot but short lived Catholics vs the Convicts Miami series ND didn't have a lot of history with the ACC. It also doesn't have the types of markets, urban with high Catholic populations, that ND was looking for.