I hate to stick up for Rutgers. I said at the time, I would have preferred Mizzou and still insist that would have been the been the better move. Particularly if the ultimate goal was to build a bridge to Texas. Throw in the fact that Mizzou was the only P5 school in a 6M+ population state, is an AAU member, had better sports than Rutgers and was a better cultural fit than Rutgers, it still seems weird to me that the Big Ten never picked Mizzou.
However if you look at it from the perspective of a University president, Rutgers was a big catch. State flagship in a 10M population state. Rutgers is ranked #55 in USNews. Mizzou is #121. Although Mizzou was higher 10 years ago.
So maybe Big Ten presidents saw the trend that midwest universities like Neb, Mizzou, ISU, etc were slowly backsliding in the academic rankings and population. They also saw population growth was higher in the south, East and West away from the midwest. In order to grow, they needed to get to the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts somehow.
Too bad they figured out too late that the states don't need to be contiguous. If the ultimate goal was to get Texas, USC, UNC and VA, they should have just skipped MD, Rut, Neb and just took Tex, USC, UNC and VA in the first place.
