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Notre Dame is the only school with the media draw necessary to justify adding a twelfth team. But they don't want to do it and I'm not sure we want them to.
Pros: additional national TV audience for the conference. Whether they deserve it or not, ND has a lot of followers around the country, many of whom have no direct connection with the University other than their religion. Whether we care to admit it or not, there are millions of folks who watch the ND broadcasts on NBC every Saturday. With ND in the conference, those millions would become Big 10 watchers.
Cons: the likelihood of a Big 10 championship play-off increases exponentially. This would probably mean that going undefeated in the Big 10 would be much harder than it is now ...and it ain't exactly easy now. For tOSU to win the Big 10, the Bucks might well have to play the next best team twice, a la Auburn v. Tennessee. That would make undefeated seasons a real rarity, which would make National Championships even harder to achieve for Big 10 teams.
On the whole, I'd just as soon see ND stay independent. Let them stew in their own juice while tOSU picks up a few more NCs.
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