@Lulufulu
It would be much better if it could happen, but the effects of joining the Big Ten would unfortunately cut a number of different ways for big power interests in Kansas and that makes it unlikely to happen.
I would think that both adidas and Nike would be willing to spend sharply more to have KU under contract were it in the Big Ten.
KU could never be as sexy as UM and MSU in the Big Ten, but KU would become especially desirable to turn into a long stack in basketball for the Big Ten, if it were in the Big Ten. It would be a very desirable alternative to Indiana and Purdue, because Indiana is politically basically a rogue state in the midst of the Big Ten. The state of Indiana itself is a thorn in the side of blue state interests in the Great Lakes Basin. It is essentially a long north-south potential transportation and pipeline and canal corridor from the Great Lakes to the Ohio River and on to the South that many Great Lakes interests would never want to see opened up.
To digress a moment, Indiana is, if anything, a redder state than Kansas. And if Kansas were to join the Big Ten it would likely occur only if it had decided to move back toward its centrist, main street republican roots, which would make it a preferred alternative to many Big Ten power players to Indiana's continued red state stridency. But of course with local Big Oil and Big Ag players heavily supporting red state stridency in Kansas, Kansas Republicanism for the foreseeable future seems unlikely to shift back to center and so KU seems unlikely to join a blue state dominated conference.
There is more complexity to it of course.
Contrary to popular belief, it appears to me that certain elements of Big Oil and Big Ag might at least consider KU and KSU joining the Big Ten, but only if they were able to build their influence in KU and KSU to the point that they did not have to worry about KU and KSU getting off the leash once they got into the Big Ten and grow more independent because of the implied political economic alliances that become possible with such membership. The Big Oil and Big Ag interests from the Texas-Oklahoma-Kansas alliance reputedly worked hard for political regime change in Wisconsin and Michigan the last few elections, so injecting a KU and KSU into the Big Ten conference to go along with a strident Red State Indiana might well be appealing to them on some levels. But only some.
All the oil interests at play in Kansas always have to keep in mind keeping the state of Kansas staunchly in the Texas-Oklahoma-Kansas oil and gas and pipeline right of way alliance. And one of the crucial levers in any state that a player must control to control that state is its major universities. Controlling those universities creates tremendous economic and political economic clout. That clout translates to getting regulatory control of the state government and control of the senate and congressional voting from that state in Washington, D.C. The end game is always preservation and extension regional infrastructure and political economic interests.
So: while on the one hand, oil players operating through Red State political organizations might see some advantage to porting KU and KSU to the Big Ten alliance of state schools and states that dominate the Great Lakes Basin, as a means of interjecting influence, where vast crude oil reserves exist under Michigan and the Great Lakes themselves, and for other agendas, also, well, those sorts of agendas are birds in the bush so to speak. In turn, birds in the bush have to be weighed against birds in the hand. The pipelines and oil, gas, oil shale, and tar sands through out central North America have to be delivered to Texas' Gulf Coast for refining NOW. The have to come through Kansas. No small amount of it has to come FROM under Kansas, too. The great sunk costs are in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and northwest Basin and Range and north Great Plains all the way to north central Canada. No moves can be made that ever jeopardize control of that system and those interests. NOTHING. Everything else is flank, not center. Given the way present worth of money discounting works, almost nothing, not even all the oil under Michigan, and the chance to extend the Super Corridor through to the Great Lakes, can exceed the importance of maintaining the existing sunk costs already in the Great Plains. Some day, under the right set of crisis circumstances, the oily folks in Texas and the Royally Chartered district of London, will get that oil in the Great Lakes, but it will be after most of us are gone. So: in this regard, KU is going no where fast, because the state of Kansas is joining no Great Lakes Basin alliance fast. :-)
But hypothetically speaking, if the Big Oil and Big Ag interests would let KU move, Big Ten membership would sharply improve KU's recruiting credibility throughout the Great Lakes states, with, or without Big Shoe, where KU is now viewed (wrongly) as barely a cut above U of New Mexico academically and in sports (outside basketball) kind of a nothing also.
KU would have to embrace an even more physical brand of bruise ball as the norm too.:scream: Note: the bruise ball gap is now much smaller between B12 and B10, but still seems significant to me. Let me put it this way: some B12 teams now play as rough as the B10 teams, but all B10 teams play that way. :-)
Finally, Big Ten football is one helluva a big party and Kansas fans would love it as much as Nebraska fans now do. I doubt many closely involved with Nebraska football, even the fan base, in Nebraska looks back and wishes they had stayed in the Big 12, good season, or bad. And all the academics and grant whores are much happier in the Big Ten, where the academic esteem and granting pork is higher. For teams and fans, its fun playing in front of big crowds every game and most every town (except Minneapolis) is quite a fun campus and town to visit away. Those lovers of Prince and Minnie cut me some slack here. I don't know that town and campus well. Maybe the Golden Gophers know how to have a good time. But when I was at UW, no one drove to Minnie the way they did to Ann Arbor, Iowa City and Champaign Urbana for games. Ann Arbor, Madison, East Lansing, Champaign-Urbana, Iowa City, Columbus, Bloomington, and University Park, these are great football happenings every weekend even in their down seasons. Some times they are even better in their down seasons.
So the long answer is above.
And the short answer is: yes, some of KU basketball's current recruiting problems could be made some what better by moving to the Big Ten, but not fully resolved IMHO without a switch to Nike, too. Notice adidas UM struggles for talent just as KU does. And Nike MSU, before Izzo kind of appeared to go along to get along with apparent stacking last season and this, struggled, too. But for things to improve decisively, some fundamental shift in the Big Shoe regime that would favor adidas programs would probably have to occur.
