A significant portion of each school's total athletics revenue comes from The Big Ten Network (each school got about $4 million in payout last year). Obviously, Rutgers is currently receiving $0.00 from the BTN right now.

Should they join the Big Ten, they would gain access to this revenue stream, which would put their revenues ahead of Illinois's and on par with Indiana and Purdue. Given that the motivation for inviting Rutgers to the Big Ten doesn't hinge upon the profits of the Scarlet Knights' athletic department itself, but the effect that it would have on the rest of the Big Ten through a Championship game and theoretically opening up the Big Ten Network to the New York market (which would be a license to print money).

There's also the fact that simply joining the Big Ten would have a huge positive effect on Rutgers' budget (the revenue sharing in the Big Ten is faaar more lucrative than that of the Big East, and they would get much better attendance from NY/NJ area alums of other Big Ten schools), and they wouldn't be that far behind everyone else, but probably more like a middle-of-the-pack Big Ten budget.

All that said, it might seem like I'm defending Rutgers' candidacy as a Big Ten expansion option (which I guess I am, in a way), but I would greatly prefer that they weren't the option. However, the reasons are competitiveness and academic quality of the school, not current athletic budget.

Tim-
Don't discount Rutgers on academic quality. They're just about as good as Penn State, Ohio State, and Minnesota, a step down, of course, from UM, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Northwestern, and just above Indiana, Michigan State, and Iowa. But I don't want them because they're not particularly good at football.

Fair enough, athletic competitiveness was (and still is, apparently reinforced) my #1 reason that I think they're a meh candidate.

Rutgers is a poor option for Big Ten expansion. Notre Dame & Missouri are the top two choices.
My understanding is that the Big Ten Network payout was over $22 million per team last year, and not $4 million as written in the first post above.

Ya gotta love the photo above showing a warm New Jersey welcome to the Big Ten from the Rutgers student. Wonder if he realized that his middle finger cost Rutgers over $22 million per year?

Haha, or any future employment opportunities legitimate enough to do background checks.

I always thought it was funny, that everyone says adding Rutgers would mean expanding the BTN's footprint. Right now, maybe 2 or 3 Rutgers games are on TV and nobody seems to care about watching the other ones. I'm not too convinced the BTN wouldn't be on a prescription package from the NY/NJ cable companies just like it is now.

Academics aside, money drives everything.
If the money doesn't work out, forgettaboutit, and that goes for all expansion candidates

Perhaps Rutgers didn't get great tv ratings or televised games against Central Florida, Syracuse, or Connecticut, I can guarantee that games against Michigan, OSU, Penn State would be much different and would get cable companies in the New York area to purchase the Big Ten Network. Besides Notre Dame, I would guess that Rutgers is still at the top of the Big Ten list.

You're almost certainly correct, Flint. But unless Rutgers is good, nobody will give a damn. It took them flirting with perfection for anyone to notice them, and since then, they've faded back into oblivion. New York doesn't really have a team–you could argue Syracuse, but that's pushing it–, but it's still a very good college football town. Every Friday in fall, Mike Francesa (#1 radio host in NYC) will spend half the day talking about the upcoming college football weekend. If Rutgers is in the position of playing national games that actually matter, and not just ending up 5-7 and 6-6 every year, it's entirely possible that they'll recapture the glory of 2006, though I wouldn't bet on that happening.

psudevon, are you implying that Rutgers ended up 5-7 or 6-6 every year since 2006? Not so: the record for 2007, 2008, and 2009 was 8-5, 8-5, and 9-4, respectively, with a bowl victory in each year. True, lots of cupcakes and all minor bowls, but the program HAS made significant progress under Schiano, and there is more reason to believe that it will continue to do so than that it won't.

Yeah, but Flip, that's playing against the much softer Big East and with 5 games against a beyond ridiculously cakey Out-Of-Conference schedule. I'm not sure playing Army, Ball State, Howard, and Maryland and then going 4-3 against the weakest “major” conference in the NCAA translates into more than .500 in the Big Ten. There will almost certainly be no 10-win seasons unless something drastically changes.

It was as recent as 2006 when #16 Rutgers faced Kansas State in the Texas Bowl and they couldn't even get the game in the New York City / New Jersey media market. It was a dispute over the NFL network and even the best season to date in Rutgers history didn't make a difference until a list minute ditch effort allowed Time Warner and Cablevision to carry the game for free. Final Nielsen rating for that game? 1.43, next to last among all 32 bowl games. So much for delivering the massive New York City media market.

Rutgers does not have $54 mill in revenue. They require about $16 mill in Direct Insitutional Support (money from the school to cover expenses they cannot afford from real revenue).

Rutgers Revenue is more like $38 mill. Their expenses are $54 mill, and they need the school (and New Jersey taxpayers) to pick up a large portion of the debt.

Get your facts straight.

I researched and pulled the numbers straight from the governmental entities that deal with this issue. In this case, the Office of Post-Secondary Education. The numbers were written as reported, if they differ from your facts, I would take it up with your secondary sources and see where your numbers are coming from. I linked the original governmental source above, but here it is again if you want to double check the numbers:

http://ope.ed.gov/athletics/Index.aspx

Academically they would rank 8th in the Big 10 (based on rankings from US News & World Report)…but still in the top 26th nationally.

University of California–Berkeley Berkeley, CA 1
University of California–Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA 2
University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA 2
University of Michigan–Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI 4
University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC 5
College of William and Mary Williamsburg, VA 6
Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, GA 7
University of California–San Diego La Jolla, CA 7
University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL 9
University of Wisconsin–Madison Madison, WI 9
University of California–Davis Davis, CA 11
University of California–Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 11
University of Washington Seattle, WA 11
University of California–Irvine Irvine, CA 14
Pennsylvania State University–University Park University Park, PA 15
University of Florida Gainesville, FL 15
University of Texas–Austin Austin, TX 15
Ohio State University–Columbus Columbus, OH 18
University of Maryland–College Park College Park, MD 18
University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, PA 20
University of Georgia Athens, GA 21
Clemson University Clemson, SC 22
Purdue University–West Lafayette West Lafayette, IN 22
Texas A&M University–College Station College Station, TX 22
University of Minnesota–Twin Cities Minneapolis, MN 22
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey–New Brunswick Piscataway, NJ 26