Quote Originally Posted by lawhokie View Post
Of all conferences, I would think the least likely to lose a member is the Big Ten. Can you name one school that would leave the Big Ten for any other conference. On the flipside, I'd bet schools like Mizzou and Kentucky would rather be in the Big Ten.

The Big Ten's average research budget is over .5 Billion/yr., and PSU fits right in. I can't imagine why a massive public school would opt to leave the B10 research consortium in order to share less athletic money with private school dead weight like Wake, BC, Cuse, and public school dead weight like Maryland, et al. It's funny that the ACC's crown jewel, Notre Dame, is a relative research lightweight.

The only fit between PSU and the ACC is geography. Otherwise, PSU looks just like Minnesota, OSU, Wisconsin, and all of those other midwest giants.
Just for the record, PSU's research money has nothing to do with CIC membership--this is a myth that is perpetuated by Big Ten fans. CIC is a cooperative partnership, but it is not responsible for Penn State research money. It would be baffling if PSU were blackballed academically by other Big Ten academic programs for lack of athletic membership in the Big Ten. Virginia Tech, for example, has all kinds of non-ACC academic partnerships.

And to repeat what has been repeated a million times already--if PSU joined, theoretically it would be with Notre Dame and it would probably be what finally sets off an ACC network. The money would be at least comparable to current Big Ten money. While it is highly unlikely that PSU is a member of the ACC in 2025, time changes EVERYTHING. We have no idea what the landscape of college athletics could look like in 10-40 years. Conferences are almost unrecognizable today compared to 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago.

And I would say that the Pac-12 is least likely to lose a member given that college football is heavily concentrated east of the Rockies. There's no other viable conference for a Pac-12 member.