The Indiana Hoosiers play in one of the best conferences in the country, in the Big Ten. But could it be even better by adding a few more teams?
When the realignment craze happened in college sports the Big Ten joined, adding Nebraska in 2011. It was the first team to join the Big Ten since Penn State was added in 1990. The addition of Nebraska gave the Big Ten 12 teams and was widely viewed as a success.
But schools switching conferences was not over and the Big Ten, wanting to expand its geographical reach, added both Maryland and Rutgers in 2014. The Terrapins were a nice addition but the Rutgers add was a headscratcher for the Big Ten.
Until this past men’s basketball season the Scarlet Knights have been pretty much irrelevant in the Big Ten. Besides getting a New Jersey market the addition of Rutgers has been seen as a bust. If their basketball team can use this success to make a run and Greg Schiano can make the football team relevant again, then the perception could change, but that is a lot of if’s.
The Big Ten currently sits at 14 teams, but could they add a couple of other teams and get up to 16? There aren’t any talks to adding teams, but it doesn’t mean we couldn’t see the conference expand sometime in the future.
Whether or not the Big Ten wants to expand is up for question but if they were they are definitely some teams they should look at adding. While adding two more schools would be great for the conference, some would argue they should add three and dump Rutgers and I wouldn’t necessarily argue that notion.
So which teams should the Big Ten look to add? We take a look at five teams the Big Ten should definitely try to add.