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[QUOTE="nzm136, post: 3496630, member: 2531"]
Oh, their locations mattered a great deal. Where do you think PSU alums live? Where do you think their donor base is? (See an alumni map and overlay that with a map of average salaries/costs of living.) Where do you think they recruit athletes? RU and UMD were absolutely picked because of location.

And money was absolutely why the B1G cared. PSU brings mountains of cash into the conference, and risking that cash would have been a lot to ask. Risking that cash in favor of a rival would have been even more. Imagine if the B1G lost PSU to the ACC. Think of how much that loss would have closed the conference profitability gap. Even “worse,” imagine if adding PSU was enough to get ND to join the ACC. Imagine how much the gap would have closed then.

Where your analysis falls short is your assumption that RU brings in more money than they cost the conference and/or have the realistic potential of bringing in more than they cost. They don’t, and it’s not close. They don’t have a strong fan following, which means few people watch their games (little money from advertisements), and GRE people care about having access to their content (little money from carriage fees). Since they don’t create much value for media partners, they don’t create a reason for those partners to pay the B1G much more. Since the B1G pays them a lot, but doesn’t get paid a lot for having them, the conference loses money on them, but for their talent for keeping a conference bread winner around. The same is probably true for UMD, but RU is the clearer example.
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