FanPost

Geography of a Big Ten Expansion

With all the recent attention given to the possibility of the Big Ten expanding its membership, I thought it would be interesting to visualize the various new landscapes of a 12 (or more?) -team Big 10. 

4190530141_dc83f57742_medium

big10expansion (via ingebritsen)

While the map can give an approximate idea of where the new member would be, here's a chart of the distances (roughly estimated, courtesy of Google Maps) from existing schools to the six potential newbies.

 

Iowa state

Missouri

Notre dame

Pittsburgh

Rutgers

Cincinnati

Syracuse

Minnesota

217

558

502

868

1205

703

1087

Wisconsin

278

476

241

607

945

443

826

Michigan

581

626

179

283

621

243

502

Mich state

561

606

159

349

687

309

467

Ohio state

677

534

280

185

523

103

473

Illinois

376

296

198

489

827

237

783

northwestern

363

430

112

479

816

314

697

Iowa

137

237

301

667

1004

476

886

Penn state

907

851

478

136

237

418

281

Indiana

542

343

259

409

747

131

696

Purdue

459

388

151

423

761

179

710

Total Miles

5098

5345

2860

4895

8373

3556

7408

Average Miles

463.4545

485.9091

260

445

761.1818

323.2727

673.4545

 

It seems that between Syracuse's lack of football tradition/success and its distance from member schools, that possibility can be essentially written off.  Rutgers would be in the same boat but for its renewed football vigor (...by which I mean proximity to the Manhattan media market).  The geographic aspect of restructuring the Big 10 points to Notre Dame being the best choice, and that won't be happening. 

If the Big 10 decides to add 3 schools to get to 14, I could envision a combination of Cincinnati, Iowa State, and Pittsburgh.  All other factors aside, this would spread the travel distances more or less equally between the existing schools.

FanPosts are user-created posts from the Bucky's 5th Quarter community. They reflect the opinions and views of that particular user, not that of the staff of Bucky's 5th Quarter nor the blog community as a whole.