Great analysis, Medina!
As an old Big 8 geezer, I'd flip your rankings for Colorado and Missouri. Colorado has a better all-time record, and a part of a national championship, due to its best-ever run from the late '80s into the early '00s. But Missouri's significance to college football goes back further than Colorado's. Think Don Faurot and the Split-T offense. Also, Missouri was the flagship school in a state much more populous than Colorado. Missouri's stadium seats 71,000, while Colorado's seats 50,000. Colorado was a relative latecomer to the conference--it joined what had been the Big 6 in 1947 and made it the Big 7. (Oklahoma A&M joining in 1957 was the final brick in the wall.) Before that, it had been in the Skyline Conference. Missouri, by contrast, was a founding member of the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association (MVIAA, a.k.a. the Big Six) in 1928. That became the Big Seven in 1947, then the Big Eight in 1957. Missouri's rivalry with Kansas was the 2nd-longest continuous rivalry in the country (longest west of the Mississippi) until Kansas discontinued it when Missouri joined the SEC.
On the basis of all that, I suspect that Missouri was a bigger financial contributor to the Big 8 than Colorado was.
That doesn't affect the logic of your analysis a bit.
Thank you for the compliment and for your perspective on it since you were closer to it than I was.
Even today (2019 est) Missouri has a larger population than Colorado (6.1M vs 5.8M) but today that is close enough to be pretty much a wash and Colorado is growing MUCH faster. Per the census, Colorado has added ~730k since 2010 (14.5%) while Missouri has added ~150k (2.5%). I was thinking in current terms (ie, which would be a better addition for the B1G right now). On that basis I think Colorado is better largely because the growth trends imply that Colorado's population will surpass that of Missouri within the 2020's.
Colorado was 22nd in the 2010 census and per the census bureau's estimate they have overtaken #21 MN and are the third fastest growing state behind only Utah and Texas. There is a good chance that they will pass all of the following in the 2020's and reach the 2030 census at #18:
- #20 WI, 5.8M and grew 2.4%
- #19 MD, 6.0M, 4.7%
- #18 MO, 6.1M, 2.5%
My thinking is that circa 2040 or 2050 Colorado will be an obviously more valuable property than Mizzou but you bring up a good point, they almost certainly were NOT in 1996.
In the 1990 census Missouri was #15 with 4.9M and Colorado was #26 with 2.9M.
An interesting aside:
Iowa was once a member of what became the B12. They actually have an older history there than ISU. Iowa was a charter member of the MVIAA along with Kansas, Mizzou, Nebraska, and Washington U. ISU (along with Drake) joined in 1908, KSU joined in 1913, Grinnell joined in 1918, Oklahoma in 1919. OkSU joined in 1925 then left then rejoined in 1958 and Colorado joined in 1947. Iowa's membership was interesting because they were ALSO in the what became the B1G, having joined in 1899.
In 1907 Iowa played one MVIAA game (Mizzou) and two Western games (UW, IL). In 1908 and 1909 they appeared to be drifting to the MVIAA with only one Western game each year (IL then MN) and four or five MVIAA games per year. In 1910 they played two Western games (PU and NU) and three MVIAA games (MO, ISU, Drake, Washington).