Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany has done a great job of getting more money for the member schools in his two decade tenure at the helm. He added Penn State, which built an Eastern presence and a powerhouse, storied football program. He started the Big Ten Network, a pipe dream that has become a cash cow for the conference. He oversaw the Big Ten Men’s Basketball Tournament, a wholly unnecessary weekend of games designed to take money from fans and downgrade the value of the regular season.
Well, he has another idea – more expansion. What the hell, it worked for Major League Baseball and the NFL and the NHL (well, never mind that last one).
Delany announced this week that the conference is exploring options over the next 12 to 18 months for expansion. The league’s presidents and chancellors decided this month that the timing is right to study adding a 12th school, but as the Chicago Tribune reported today, it might not stop at 1 team – it might expand by 3 or 5 schools building to a Big Twelve or even Big Sixteen or Big Eighteen.
Why? It’s the money stupid. First, it does make sense to add a 12th school – the conference has been like a three wheeled scooter since Penn State joined – scheduling is difficult with an odd number of schools. And the Big Ten reportedly considered expansion in 1993, 1998 and 2003. Penn State joined in 1990, and Notre Dame rejected an offer in 1999. This seems to fly in the face of a comment made by Delany as recently as March, when he called expansion a “back-burner” issue.
Earlier this year, Penn State coach Joe Paterno said he’d like to see Rutgers, Pittsburgh or Syracuse join the league. He was not in favor of extending another offer to Notre Dame.
“There’s some pressure, I would suppose, to maybe go back to Notre Dame and ask again, which I would not be happy with,” Paterno said then. “I think they’ve had their chance.” (Good for you, Joe Pa!!)
What has changed minds is the possibility of dividing the conference into 2 divisions like the SEC and then playing a “conference championship game” for big money. To his credit, Northwestern Head Coach Pat Fitzgerald was quoted as being against the added game, saying that his players are beat up enough by the current schedule and adding another game would put more pressure on them as athletes. (Of course, NU might be the only school in the Big Ten whose football players actually have to go to class and can’t load up on PE classes and other non-mentally strenuous courses.)
As I alluded to at the start of this post, I am no fan of the Big Ten Basketball Tournament. It is probably the only local sporting event in a major sport that I have avoided. The reason – the players play, and sweat and work hard for the 30-odd game regular season. That usually separates the good from the bad and the ugly. It is just another excuse for more games, more television, and more revenue to the schools. They have enough money; the athletes don’t get paid; and the games are ultimately meaningless. That is, unless a bad team gets hot for one weekend, wins the conference tournament, and gets the automatic NCAA berth. This isn’t fair for a team to get on a hot streak, get into the NCAA only to get slaughtered. Worse, this scenario has occurred before and deprived a smaller school, or one from a smaller conference who played well all year, gets squeezed out of a rightful place in the tournament by a school from one of the big conferences. It’s just not fair.
I don’t want the same thing to happen in football. In basketball, there is less wear and tear on the body (I didn’t say none, just less than football). Football players are subjected to terrific hits. Facing even one more game is a great risk. Ask NU defensive end Corey Wooten – he was going to be a first round draft choice last season, but a freak knee injury suffered in the Alamo Bowl forced him to return to school for one more year, and while he has shown improvement this season, he is probably no longer a first rounder.
In short, add one school if you want Big Ten powers that be, but we don’t need a championship game. And any Big Ten alumni and fans that would support such deserve to have their money stolen from them.