May 31, 2010
UB listening for conference calls
The landscape of collegiate athletics is potentially in for a seismic shift caused by conference expansion.
Talk of expansion and potentially high-stakes musical chairs began in December when the Big Ten Conference announced it would begin a 12-18 month evaluation on the merits of adding additional teams. The Big Ten currently has 11 teams and could expand to as many as 16.
Why all this talk about expansion? Follow the money, said Tom McElroy, former senior associate commissioner of the Big East and a graduate of St. Bonaventure.
"Membership in varying leagues are pressing conference offices to make more money," said McElroy, now senior vice president/sports division of the Leffler Agency, a sports and entertainment advertising agency. "The cost of business is going up for all of us. If you're able to sit back and take a long-term view of where college athletics has come it's almost like an evolutionary thing. If you apply simple laws of economics and marketplace, it makes sense of what's happening: We're looking for a bigger piece of the pie."
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