Big 10 & Pac 10 Expansion.

With the Pac 10 hiring former Big 12 Commish Kevin Weiberg as COO and basically the #2 man in the conference offices, and with the Pac 10 Commish basically saying they are going to expand, The Big 10 has to consider moving up their timetable.

IF the Big 10 sticks to their guns and say that a New member MUST be a member of the AAU (list of members: http://www.aau.edu/about/default.aspx?id=4020), then the pool of candidates is rather limited (if they want to stay "contiguous". 

The pool of candidates is: Iowa State University, Stony Brook University, Syracuse University, University of Buffalo (The State), University of Maryland, University of Missouri, University of Nebraska and University of Pittsburgh.

Others that might be considered if Geograpy is not an issue...Texas A&M University, University of Kansas, University of Texas, University of Virginia.

Notre Dame, West Virginia, Cincinatti are not members of this prestegious group and therefore are probably not going to be considered if Academics are leading the way.

BTW...the Pac 10 has several members in this group as well (Arizona, Cal-Berkeley, UCLA, Oregon, Washington, Stanford and Southern Cal) and if they want to keep the number of members in the AAU balanced with Non-AUU's then Utah and Colorado fit the bill.  (CU is an AAU member, Utah is not.)