June 27, 2009: Testudo, the University of Maryland’s mascot, before he was set on fire

I have kept a link to my August 2012 “College Conferences and House Apportionment” post on the sidebar of this blog. I figured it would be good for a while…and then Jim Delany got more delusions of grandeur. One week from today, with the additions of Maryland and Rutgers, the Big Ten will be bringing the joys of tater tot casserole to the East Coast. (This link is worth it for the “New Hoker” alone.)

Instead of a quasi-equilibrium of the Big 12 having ten teams and the Big Ten having 12 teams, the Big Ten is going to have 14, an absurdity that confuses even Jeopardy contestants. Conferencepocalypse I and II were the first two “Spider-Man” movies — the second with higher stakes, and higher rewards, than the first — and Conferencepocalypse III is “Spider-Man 3”: Less cohesive than the earlier versions, too many characters, and a plot that sours those who were fans of the first two.

My original Congress-based thesis was only one way of touching on the real issue, and adding Maryland and Rutgers is about more than the 20 U.S. House districts their two states have. It’s about getting a grip on the New York City, Washington DC, and Baltimore media markets (along with shoring up Philadelphia). The media-market angle concurrent with the Midwest’s lack of growth has always been the basic rationale for the Big Ten’s move; Stewart Mandel just wrote some more about this in Sports Illustrated. (This apparently is Mandel’s last piece before moving to Fox Sports.)

In light of that, while re-evaluating the blog post, I wondered, should I add in the congressional seats clustered in New York City? Northern Virginia? Delaware? The one DC would have as a state? I have decided that such questions merit leaving the post alone, and keeping it representative for that part of the 2010s. (I’ll also leave my comment about the ACC not being relevant, despite Florida State’s new national championship.)

On a strict state basis, the Big Ten will still have fewer congressional seats (118) than the SEC (128). The more important point, however, remains as true as when I wrote the original post: No state in the Big Ten Conference has gained a seat in the U.S. House since the 1960s. Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey and Ohio all gained a seat that decade. Out of 11 states, only Maryland, Minnesota, and Nebraska have not lost a seat since. (Minnesota’s 8th was literally the last district apportioned out from the 2010 census, beating a last-minute projection.)

In the next five years, the Hawkeyes will play Maryland three times and Ohio State once. It’s still about the televisions (pending court cases notwithstanding, and I am so very much not going to get into that here). Tater tots and crab cakes will have to find a way to co-exist.