Take Two: Should Big Ten concern itself with conference expansion?

11:44 AM ET

Whispers about the next round of conference expansion continue to grow louder this offseason. Who will make the first move? When will it happen? And should the Big Ten take notice?

We debate in the latest Take Two installment.

Austin Ward: No.

Maybe 16-team superconferences are the future of college football. Perhaps the Big 12 is about to make its last stand and the fight for its members is about to begin.

But until either of those look like much more of a reality, the Big Ten is well-positioned and should stay put.

It’s fun to speculate about what the league would look like with Oklahoma and Texas joining the ranks. Those two powerhouses would give the conference a couple of evenly balanced eight-team divisions and likely make the ensuing television deals all the more rich, thanks to the combination of new eyeballs and prestige. But the Big Ten has already spread itself out pretty wide in terms of its footprint. Going to 16 teams would only further dilute the conference schedule and at some point any sense of identity the league has established over the years would simply be lost by snapping up teams that obviously aren’t a regional fit.

Didn’t the Big 12 already teach the rest of the …

continue reading in source espn.go.com