Adding Nebraska in the first place was a real head scratcher. They are not only mediocre in athletics but they are lowest ranked Big Ten schools across the board academically. Personally hope the conference removes them, and brings in Missouri. But we shall see.
Neb is a much bigger brand than Mizzou.
that said, the B10, PAC, and SEC, took Neb, Col, Mizzou, and A&M, hoping Texas and OU would leave too in an effort to bring down the B12 all together as a major conference.
UMd was taken by the B10 in hopes a couple other ACC schools like UNC and UVa would come too, not because the B10 wanted those schools, but in an effort to bring down the ACC as well.
RU was taken to keep them from going to and propping up the ACC.
everyone assumes this was about tv money, which it was, but not in the form most people think.
none of the added schools are a financial plus to legacy B10 schools due to additional BTN money or tier money once the added equal shares are figured in.
the bigger payouts now are due to new tier 1,2 contracts, not the additions. (every new multi yr contract brings a huge revenue jump for all major sports leagues, amateur or pro).
think of all this more in terms of a corporate takeover move for consolidation leverage with buyers.
the B10, SEC, and PAC, wanted to reduce the number of major conferences from 6 counting the Big East, to 3.
the reason they wanted to do this was for additional leverage in carriage rights negotiations with the networks like CBS, NBC, Disney/ESPN, Fox, and in the future the internet players.
the NFL was the template they saw as the gold standard, where all the networks had to bid against each other for one monopoly entity.
while the hoped for remaining big 3 they were going for still wasn't a single player monopoly like the NFL, 4 major networks bidding against each other for 3 properties, is a much different dynamic than 4 networks bidding against each other for 6 properties.
think of it this way.
if you have 4 buyers bidding on 6 houses for sale, that's a much different negotiating dynamic than 4 buyers bidding against each other on 3 houses for sale.
changing the negotiating dynamic is where the big money was, not adding a few schools in markets the B10, SEC, and PAC, were already bringing in some tv dollars already, and having to eventually split the pie, both financially and in voting shares, evenly with every school added.