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Big Ten Basketball: Ranking all 18 programs for future after recent … – Busting Brackets
Jan 29, 2023; West Lafayette, Indiana, USA; Michigan State Spartans forward Joey Hauser (10) dribbles the ball while Purdue Boilermakers forward Mason Gillis (0) defends in the second half at Mackey Arena. Mandatory Credit: Trevor Ruszkowski-USA TODAY Sports
Big Ten Basketball Southern California Trojans guard Boogie Ellis Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
Not only is change on the horizon in college sports, but it’s already affecting athletics in many notable ways. Sure the new NIL rules have been a net positive for the average college athlete and there’s as much attention and focus on the sport as there ever has been, but conference realignment fueled by TV executive deals is already affecting the sport.
Though they didn’t make the first move, the Big Ten played an enormous early role in this current stage of realignment. Last year’s announced additions of UCLA and USC served to increase the footprint of the Big Ten, but at what a cost? On its own, this move would have nabbed two of twelve teams from the Pac-12, the premier west coast league, but it’s done much more than that in the end.
In recent weeks, most of the other Pac-12 teams have announced their departures, with the Big Ten actually adding two members from the Pacific Northwest in Oregon and Washington. We could spend hours debating the pros and cons of these moves for these schools, conferences, and their student athletes, but our specific focus is on what this means for Big Ten Basketball.
One of the oldest and most recognizable conferences in the nation, the Big Ten has long since swelled past that “Ten” in its name, and the addition of these four schools will give the league 18 members. Those four former Pac-12 schools join in 2024, joining fourteen athletic programs mostly located in the Midwest. Frankly, the addition of these west coast teams is ludicrous from a geography standpoint but will have quite an impact on basketball.
We’re not taking about the oddity of these moves; we’re instead forecasting this league with current and future members all together. We’ll be looking closely at the current state of these eighteen programs and ranking them from top to bottom. This isn’t a current ranking or even a look-ahead to 2024, but how these programs stand based on long-term factors for the future.
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