Andy Katz Reviews the Landscape

ESPN's Andy Katz provides a good overall assessment of the realignment situation, as of mid-afternoon today. Regarding a possible 10th team for the Big 12 (assuming Texas A&M's move to the SEC comes to fruition, but that Missouri now doesn't join the Aggies), Katz characterizes the possibilities thusly:

• Arkansas is a "no"
• BYU is a "maybe"
• Louisville "available"
• West Virginia "available"

As far as the SEC and its apparent limbo with an odd number of teams (13), Katz writes:

The SEC can take its time in deciding if it would add Missouri or even look again to West Virginia, which it has recently rejected. Grabbing Virginia Tech will be tougher with a $20 million exit fee being proposed in the ACC.

Pac Won't Go Beyond 12

The Pac 12 apparently will expand no further, at least for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, Missouri is said to be on its way to becoming the SEC's 14th team.

Syracuse and Pitt to ACC

Syracuse and Pittsburgh, both longtime Big East members, apparently have submitted applications to join the ACC.

UPDATE: The move of Syracuse and Pitt to the ACC appears to be a done deal.

Texas and ACC a Good Match?

Kristi Dosh argues that the Atlantic Coast Conference would come "the closest to giving Texas everything it wants and needs" in the areas of competitive balance, academics, and television contracts. Lately, I've been looking at possible realignment scenarios through the lens of travel distances, so why not examine Texas and the ACC that way?

The hub of the ACC arguably would be Raleigh-Durham (North Carolina) Airport. That's where you would fly into to play Duke, UNC, or NC State (Wake Forest, also in North Carolina, has airports closer to campus than Raleigh-Durham).

Looking at the Travel Math flight-distance website, we see that Austin, Texas is roughly 1,165 miles from Raleigh-Durham (1,170 miles from Raleigh, 1,159 from Durham). The outer reaches of the ACC are as or more distant from Austin: Miami (1,115 miles), Washington, DC (an approximation for trips to Maryland and Virginia; 1,318 miles), and Boston (1,696 miles). Tallahassee (home of Florida State, 804 miles), Atlanta (home of Georgia Tech, 819 miles), and Clemson, South Carolina (921 miles) would appear to be the shortest trips for Texas. Even though conferences' geographic names don't seem to mean much anymore, these distances reflect the fact that Texas is nowhere near the Atlantic Coast.

As I previously reported, the average distance from UT-Austin to its nine current mates in the Big 12 (including Texas A&M) is 446 miles, whereas the Longhorns' average travel distance would be 998 miles in a hypothetical 14-team Big 10 (including Notre Dame).

Presumably, Texas would need another school (or three) to join in on the move to the ACC, in order to give the Longhorns some shorter trips. I'm highly doubtful this could happen in reality, but Rice (a Conference USA school based in Houston) would be a good institution to accompany Texas to the ACC. After all, Rice has some academic similarities to the ACC's Duke and Wake Forest, plus the Owls have shown some degree of athletic success, winning the 2003 NCAA championship in baseball.

On the basis of academics, Vanderbilt (in Nashville, Tennessee) has always seemed to me a better fit with the ACC than its existing conference, the SEC; plus Texas and Vandy are "only" 753 miles apart. The SEC presumably wouldn't be lacking for schools to replace Vanderbilt. Throw in another elite academic school, New Orleans-based Tulane from C-USA (460 miles from Austin), and now you're getting somewhere!

Possible Legal Issues with A&M Move to SEC

Attorney Kristi Dosh examines the legal issues of whether the SEC could be vulnerable to a lawsuit for tortiously interfering in Texas A&M's existing cotractual obligations to the Big 12.

Texas to Big 10?

According to some new "buzz" making the rounds, the University of Texas would not go independent or to an expanded Pac 12. Instead, the Longhorns would join Notre Dame in bringing the Big 10 up to 14 teams.

Notre Dame, located in South Bend, Indiana, near Chicago, would be a good geographic fit with the Big 10. Texas, though geographically distant from the other Big 10 schools, would mesh well with the Big 10 prototype of large, state-university campuses. The UT-Austin campus hosts in excess of 50,000 students, similar to Ohio State's 50,000-plus, Michigan State's 47,000, Indiana's 42,000, and Wisconsin's 40,000-plus, as some examples. Austin, Texas and Madison, Wisconsin also mirror each other in being state capitals as well as college towns.

Academically, Texas is a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities (AAU). Until Nebraska's recent demotion, the Big 10 held the honor of all of its schools belonging to the AAU. Notre Dame, though not an AAU member, is nevertheless considered a strong academic school.

Despite the apparent cultural similarities between UT-Austin and several Big 10 schools, there still is that issue of travel distance. Thus, just as I did recently for Texas Tech and the expanded Pac 12, I've conducted a travel-miles distance analysis for Texas and an expanded Big 10, using the website Travel Math.

Big 12 Opponent	Distance	Big 10 Opponent	Distance
Texas A&M*	88	Penn State	1,330
Texas Tech	332	Ohio State	1,067
Baylor	95	Michigan	1,136
Oklahoma	342	Michigan State	1,130
Oklahoma State	405	Indiana	884
Kansas	617	Purdue	929
Kansas State	618	Illinois	865
Missouri	673	Northwestern	986
Iowa State	843	Wisconsin	996
---	---	Minnesota	1,044
---	---	Iowa	859
---	---	Nebraska	729
---	---	Notre Dame**	1,015
AVERAGE	446	AVERAGE	998

HTML Tables

*Move to SEC pending. **Hypothetical scenario.

As can be seen, a Texas move to the Big 10 would increase its average in-conference travel distance by roughly 550 miles. Texas's shortest distance within the Big 10 would be to Nebraska (729 miles), which used to be in the Big 12 with the Longhorns.

Whether the rumor of Texas and Notre Dame to the Big 10 proves to have any more credence than other scenarios remains to be seen, of course. Still, examining the factors of geography/distance, academics, and culture provides an interesting lens on the possible ways institutions may group themselves.

Longhorn Network Impact on Texas Possibly Going to Pac 12?

Attorney and Business of College Sports blogger Kristi Dosh addresses what may be one of the most crucial questions in the whole realignment puzzle: "Is [the] Longhorn Network [a] Roadblock to Texas Joining [the] Pac-12?"