(11-09-2023 08:07 AM)esayem Wrote:  

(11-09-2023 08:01 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(11-09-2023 07:42 AM)esayem Wrote:  Yeah, the Big Ten would not pass on Harvard. That's ridiculous. They'd figure it out and Harvard would make more money from their media contract than they do now, which isn't hard to do. Comparing them to Stanford doesn't make any sense because 1) Harvard brings a new state 2) Harvard is in Boston, a large East Coast media market with many Big Ten alums 3) Harvard is an Ivy League institution—yes, that means something 4) did I mention it's Harvard!

The main roadblock here is Harvard has 0.000000000% interest in joining the Big Ten

This is all water under the bridge because I agree that it isn’t happening, but the reasoning is insanity. Many more Big Ten alums live in the Bay Area compared to Boston. (Silicon Valley LOVES the Big Ten computer science and engineering departments, whereas New England is always going to have an Ivy bias.) Northern California is effectively a different state than Southern California - LA schools don’t cover it in a way that flagships in smaller states can. The San Francisco Bay Area has a larger population than the entire state of Massachusetts. Plus, Stanford is an ELITE athletic department that actually gives athletic scholarships to elite athletes on top of being at the top of the academic food chain in a way that Harvard won’t ever do.

I mean, I’m saying that the ACC made a good move. I thought the Big Ten should have added Stanford and Cal - I don’t think a lot of people understand that the institutional fit is way better between the Big Ten and West Coast schools than anyone on the East Coast (which is why the Big Ten and Pac-12 were such close partners for so long in the first place). Stanford is the gold standard of a combination of elite academics and true elite athletics (NOT the Ivy model). You should be happy here.

Surely you understand how the Big Ten cable model works and that Harvard would bring a new state and Stanford would be the third in Cali? So even if you throw out the alumni argument, Harvard brings new cable territory, Stanford does not.

Also, in this hypothetical scenario, Harvard would be funding scholarships the way Stanford does. So that’s moot.

Harvard and Yale for that matter, are larger worldwide brands than Stanford.