How Notre Dame & the Pac-12 schools linked with the Big Ten stack up against other schools

The Pac-12 schools match up pretty well when you compare the other schools vying for a spot in the Big Ten

Even with college football just a mere couple days away from starting, the realignment rumors are only running more rampant. 

While many of us thought that the realignment talk would cease, reports came out just the other day that Oregon had reached out to determine their compatibility with the Big Ten. A move that is not surprising as the Big Ten is the hottest conference in the country right now after signing a monstrous media rights deal. 

Something that has schools across the country wary of, as there seems to be a race to be one of the next schools to make a jump to what will end up being one of the mega-conferences. While we don't know who is next, or even when the next wave will happen we do know that the Big Ten has plans for further expansion. This of course has led to speculation of who is next, and while most people think it will be Notre Dame, Stanford, and Oregon among others there are still arguments being made for schools in the ACC.

This has led to fans from across the country debating which schools are the best fits for the conference and who is the most valuable. However, while the debating amongst fans is fun, FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver decided to measure up and compare the 38 remaining schools that are all candidates to determine who is best fit analytically. 

Silver broke it up into three different categories — sports, fit, and market. When it comes to the sports category there are four sub categories consisting of recent football performance (3x multiplier), historical football performance (3x multiplier), historical basketball performance (3x multiplier), and Total NCAA championships (2x multiplier) in all Division I team sports. Each of those categories all received "multipliers", which will equate to the schools' total scores as every category has a maximum of 100 points. So for example, if school A received fives in all categories across the board, their score would come out to 55/100. 

Fit scores are based off Academic ranking (3x multiplier), AAU membership (1x multiplier), Enrollment (2x multiplier), SPF: Secular, Public, Flagship (2x multiplier), and Rivalries (2x multiplier). 

Market scores are based off of College football TV ratings (3x multiplier), Media market footprint (2x multiplier), All-sport revenues (2x multiplier), and Popularity on Google Trends (3x multiplier). 

With that being said, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at where the Pac-12 schools linked to the Big Ten along with Notre Dame, because they are the Big Ten's priority, all ranked in each of these categories. I will also include which tier Silver valued these schools at when said and done. 

Cal, "Tier 3: How big should the Big Ten be?"

Darren Yamashita-USA TODAY Sports

Sports Score: 44

Fit Score: 87

Market Score: 24

Composite Score: 52

Stanford, "Tier 3: How big should the Big Ten be?"

Stan Szeto-USA TODAY Sports

Sports Score: 59

Fit Score: 64

Market Score: 35

Composite Score: 53

Washington, "Tier 2: No-Brainers"

Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports

Sports Score: 49

Fit Score: 83

Market Score: 64

Composite Score: 65

Oregon, "Tier 2: No-Brainers"

Troy Wayrynen-USA TODAY Sports

Sports Score: 60

Fit Score: 63

Market Score: 77

Composite Score: 67

Notre Dame, "Tier 1: Notre Dame"

Matt Cashore-USA TODAY Sports

Sports Score: 77

Fit Score: 49

Market Score: 93

Composite Score: 73