Three Thoughts From The Weekend: Big Ten expansion, Purdue basketball team’s trip to Europe and more

GoldandBlack.com’s Three Thoughts from the Weekend column runs every Monday morning, with analysis of Purdue football, Boilermaker men’s basketball, recruiting or whatever else comes to mind. In this week’s edition, we discuss Big Ten expansion, Purdue basketball team’s trip to Europe and more.

ON BIG TEN BLOAT

What the Big Ten did this week was kinda like Monopoly, that first turn around the board, when you’ve passed Go, collected $200 and you land on Baltic, a property that nobody else really wants but, hey, you may as well. It’s cheap and there for the taking, so you grab it on your way to trying to build an empire.

To be fair, Washington and Oregon aren’t Baltic and Mediterranean, but they’re not Boardwalk and Park Place, either. Big-time programs and good schools, yes, but more Pacific Ave. (quite literally) and Pennsylvania. In the grand scheme of realignment hysteria, these really weren’t even contested assets.

You took them because they needed a place to go, like the stray cat you started feeding who then just kinda moved in. Washington and Oregon only had bad options as the Pac-12 fell apart like a crunchy taco last week. They have been lobbying the Big Ten behind the scenes for some time.

The options were a TJ Maxx version of the Pac-12 or some ridiculous partnership with the ACC, but the SEC wasn’t about to try to span Tampa to Tacoma.

Far as I know — and there’s been nothing reported that suggests there’s something I don’t know — the short-term financial boon here goes to Washington and Oregon, not your existing conference members or marquee additions to come. Yes, the Duckskies are coming at garage sale prices more or less, but that still cuts into what everyone else gets, presumably. I doubt anyone’s taking a meaningful loss; but without meaningful gain now, is that a win?

To be clear: This doesn’t seem to be a situation where the Big Ten’s billion-dollar rights deal — not even in effect yet — just saw some escalator clauses triggered. This seems to be more about the next rights renegotiation, six years from now.

Six. Years.

Let’s put six years in context. Six years ago, basic cable television packages still really mattered. Remember, it was BTN reach that compelled the Big Ten to add Rutgers and Maryland. Did that make the Big Ten better or more lucrative or prestigious or whatever? No, it did not. FOX, CBS and NBC didn’t just agree to that billion-dollar deal with those two schools in mind.

Penn State made the Big Ten markedly better and richer. Nebraska — though they’ve stunk in football since joining the league — made the Big Ten more interesting and richer. USC and UCLA will do the same, however illogical those adds might have been.

Oregon and Washington, we’ll see in the long term, I guess. Which begs the question: Why now? Are we that eager to start up a “Lakes and Oceans” divisional structure?

The Big Ten has for so long been good about being strategic and big picture-minded, proactive — for (much) better and (much) worse — instead of reactive. This reeks of being a reactive move. This conference has generally been very united, everything being “unanimous” whether that reflects reality or not. This couldn’t possibly have been truly so.

“At the end of the day, we voted for it,” A.D. Mike Bobinski told GoldandBlack.com Saturday. “Does it come with a little anxiety, a little trepidation? Of course it does, because it’s a brand-new world.

“But now that we’re in it, it’s incumbent upon all of us to turn it into a great thing and I think we’ll find a way to do that.”

But forget about places like Purdue for a moment. All due respect, these decisions aren’t made with the Boilermaker program in mind.

You think Ohio State really wanted this? You’re playing for national titles more seasons than not and now you have to go to Oregon some weekend then beat both jet lag and the Ducks. Yeah, I know, more Playoff spots, but that upper 1 percent of college football is still best served to plan on having to go undefeated, because there is going to be a No. 4 from the SEC whose case may be just as strong as the Big Ten No. 2 one day. Without a brown paper bag full of money involved, that’s a big concession.

You think USC wanted this? They left the Pac-12 at the height of its strength only to have two stragglers tag along to share the money and prestige of the Big Ten, and keep attacking SoCal in recruiting?

You think anyone wants to deal with these logistics? Any college football manager who ever drove an equipment truck to Iowa will shudder at the thought of driving one through freaking Yellowstone. Watch out for those bighorn sheep in the road.

Scheduling is going to be a nightmare. Travel will make for competitive disadvantages, more so for the western schools. And this also seems like a first: A conference saying it without actually saying it that academics matter in press releases, but not in practice.

With all due respect to Oregon and Washington, I just don’t get the knee-jerk move here.

I am not alone.

ON CONFERENCE CULTURE

It’s going to be interesting to see whether the Pacific Party changes the Big Ten or the other way around.

I could write a whole dissertation on why I think Nebraska has been no better than Illinois since joining the Big Ten, but I’ll spare you the whole spiel and just focus on the fact that that program’s history is built on the sort of football that state’s identity is compatible with. The move to the Big Ten probably did them no favors in their recruiting sweet spots in Texas and California, either.

Competitively, the Big Ten neutered Nebraska because Iowa, Wisconsin and even Northwestern and Minnesota have been better at being Nebraska than Nebraska’s been. And that says nothing of the Big Ten East blue-bloods. Incompetent coaching has certainly been part of the problem, but I think things go deeper than that as Nebraska keeps chasing ghosts from the ’80s and ’90s.

So what happens now? Does USC’s, UCLA’s, Oregon’s and Washington’s California speed change the Big Ten and the way it has to play defense? Or is Iowa sucking the life out of football the perfect antidote to Chip Kelly? Who wins out at the line of scrimmage between the dairy-farm kids at Wisconsin and the bad-ass Polynesians at U-Dub?

Do schedule-makers try to keep UCLA from having to play in East Lansing at the end of November?

How does the move to the Big Ten affect recruiting? It’ll help Ohio State and Michigan with the best of the best out west I’d imagine, and maybe open some things for others who’d be interested in putting the time and energy in. It’s just so much easier to recruit Georgia and Texas and Florida for athleticism.

It will change the conference competitively, though.

In which direction, though, we’ll see.

ON PURDUE BASKETBALL AND EUROPE

One last reminder: What happens during Purdue’s four games in Europe doesn’t matter.

If Purdue wins all its games, cool, but it doesn’t matter.

If it loses to somebody, then drats, but it doesn’t matter.

If Purdue shoots 85 percent from three, it doesn’t matter.

If it shoots 8.5 percent, it doesn’t matter.

If Myles Colvin scores 20 in a game, cool, but it doesn’t matter.

If Braden Smith doesn’t shoot well, yep, doesn’t matter.

This is a team for which everything will revolve around Zach Edey. Him being absent makes this almost a wholly different team than it’ll be come October. There’s not a rotation player on the roster who’ll not be affected in some way when Edey is present.

Plus, different rules, different balls. Context is completely skewed.

It’s interesting, but far from predictive of anything to come.

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