So you wanted to cash in immediately on joining a conference whose status was built on the backs of other universities over decades? It just doesn't work that way.
Here's the argument I think is fairly valid.
Rutgers should have been given a fixed fee at the time of joining. That is, the Big Ten could clearly calculate the value of membership at the time based on current payouts. They had some estimates of what the value of adding Rutgers and Maryland might be.
The right thing to do was to say the cost to join is.. I dunno.. $100M. I think $100M was a fair figure for joining the conference.. after all, the conference gets something in exchange as well.. more conference games to sell and broadcast rights. We will take $10M a year out of Rutgers share for 10 years to pay that.
Or maybe Rutgers gets a half share until the $100M is paid up.
But what we got is Rutgers will be paid a fixed fee.. increasing in some small way year to year.. and the balance of what would be an equal distribution gets split among the other members.
Last year the average distribution was about $33M and Rutgers got $16M. So lets call that a $17M fee paid to the Big Ten.
I found this in an article about Purdue's distributions..
2007-08: $18.8 million
2008-09: $19.2 million
2009-10: $20 million
2010-11: $22.8 million
2011-12: $24.7 million
2012-13: $25.4 million
Then I found actual numbers for 2013...
2013 $26M each for 12 schools
At that time they had Future projections:
$30.9 million in 2014-15;
$34.1 million in 2015-16 and
$35.5 million in 2016-17 for the 11 schools, excluding Nebraska.
And last year, as shown above, the number averaged $33M but I read elsewhere it was $37M.
Next year the figure is supposed to be $50M+
The Big Ten gave Rutgers $9.5 million in its first year (FY2015) and $9.8 million following its second season (FY2016).
From a Oct 2017 story.. the Big Ten was expected to give Rutgers $12.6 million in 2017, $24.6 million in 2018, $27.1 million in 2019 and $29.4 million in 2020.
So if I do a rough calculation..
2015 $31M to all.. $9.5M to Rutgers = $21.5M "payment" for Big Ten entry fee
2016 $34M to all.. $9.8M to Rutgers = $24M entry fee payment
2017 $36M to all, $12.6M to Rutgers = $23.5M entry fee
2018 $50M to all, $24.6M to Rutgers = $25.5M entry fee
2019 $50M to all, $27.1M to Rutgers = $23M entry fee
2020 $50M to all, $29.4M to Rutgers = $20.5M entry fee
So.. to the end of 202 Rutgers would have essentially paid a $137M entry fee
Those are real rough numbers.. actual amount is definitely more or less.. but the ballpark is correct.
So my argument is that if they assigned a real dollar figure to join rather than a fixed figure of what Rutgers will be paid until 2021... that would have been more fair.. because maybe Rutgers bringing in the 5th largest TV market in the land (that's the NJ households that are part of the NYC and Philly media markets) really helped revenues increase. And as such, because of the structure of the payouts, Rutgers did not get to participate in increased revenues that it helped bring about.
In the end, Rutgers helping increase revenues meant it cost Rutgers more to join.