When Will Notre Dame TV The Big 10?

As a Big 10 fan, the lack of a championship game is really frustrating (I brought up some of these frustrations previously when I suggested some tweaks to the BCS System). The NCAA requires that a conference must have 12 teams in order to have a conference championship game in football, and since the Big 10 only has 11 teams, it gets left out every year.

The rumors have been for, well, really the past decade or so that the Big 10 wanted to expand to 12 teams by bringing Notre Dame into the Big 10. The most recent hope that this would happen was in 2005, shortly after the Bob Davie and Ty Willingham fiascos in South Bend. Unfortunately for Big 10 teams, Charlie Weis came in and led the Golden Domers to back-to-back BCS bowl bids at the 2006 Fiesta and 2007 Sugar Bowls. That led to a new, fat TV contract with NBC for Notre Dame, which NBC has re-upped with Notre Dame again this fall. Once again, the Big 10 is frustrated.

So who should the Big 10 bring in if it ever wants to get its title game? Again, as I wrote about before, I think that the chances of the Mountain West getting into the BCS are pretty high in the near future. While they could just bring in a new conference, the idea of re-distributing money seems to horrify lefty-college Presidents much more than the current Congress, so that's seems pretty unlikely. More likely is that they will kick out a conference, and when it comes to football, none is more likely to be given Germany's "Das Boot" from the BCS than the creatively blogospherically titled "Big Least." If this were to happen, some of the better football schools in the conference might bolt to get back into the BCS, regardless of the Big East's basketball schedule. What teams would the Big 10 try to pick up, in this incredibly hypothetical situation?

1.) Pitt-- A rust belt team that would fit in well with the conferences "blue collar" atmosphere. They would provide a natural rival to Penn State, as well as give all the Ohio State fans in Cleveland the chance to actually beat the city of Pittsburgh in football.
2.) West Virginia-- It makes sense in the long run in that WV is a rust belt state-- a state that, like the rest of the Big 10, is suffering from a transition to a post-industrial economy and an increasingly shrinking population. Plus, you get the RichRod-WVU blood feud. You know, pending Tate Forcier or Denard Robinson actually keep him in Ann Arbor long enough.
3.) Louisville-- This is a school that works in terms of proximity to the rest of the Big 10, which is crucial. Their rivalry with Kentucky also provides the chance to build up an annual Big 10-SEC match up, which could potentially be the spring board to a football equivalent to the ACC-Big 10 Challenge in football. Unlikely, but bringing the Cardinal in would at least be a first step.