A B1G Debacle

Why, Jim Delany?

People already believe you, the commissioner of the Big Ten, are an idiot, based on your steadfast beliefs to hold the Rose Bowl and its geriatric leaders to a Big Ten/Pac 12 pairing every year, standing in the way of a playoff for years. It was your idiotic idea to name the football divisions after two non-descript, non-proper nouns and then top that by naming each individual conference award after not one but two former conference stars (Hello, Thompson-Randle El Freshman of the Year Award). You combined letters and numbers in your logo for no real reason.

But you've topped it now.

You're going to add Maryland for athletics to the Big Ten, the major conference I have the largest rooting interest in.

And you're going to ruin it.

Have you watched Maryland recently? They're operated by the biggest headcase in college football, Randy Edsall. That's saying something when you consider Lane Kiffin is still running USC and Bo Pelini has found success at Nebraska. At least, Ralph Fridgen was a decent person and he was run out of town.

You're going to add Rutgers, which is terrible at football and basketball, as well. Greg Schiano left for the Buccaneers, remember?

Well, at least they're an academic school.

Oh, that's right. The Big Ten gave up on academic laurels long ago. 

Yes, I understand you can make $250 million a year on a new TV deal because there's TV sets in Washington D.C., Baltimore and New York City. That's nice. But how does this make the Big Ten better on the field? These are, at best, 7-5 and 8-4 football teams.

Think of all of the other patsies that are already in the conference in a regular year: Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Northwestern, Purdue and Penn State will soon be in this bunch.

It's currently being said that Maryland and Rutgers will have the 12th and 14th largest athletic budgets in the conference, respectively. In other words, third-to-last and dead last. Ohio State spends more than both schools combined in a single year.

Tell me how Maryland and Rutgers will be able to compete and how they will be better when it comes to winning football games. Tell me it's not about the money, like so many athletic administrators do.

In the arms race with the SEC and Big 12 and Pac 12, does adding the Terrapins and the Scarlet Knights make the Big Ten better? I can firmly say no.

I don't much care for conference expansion. I thought West Virginia being in a conference that was actually in the east made sense. But the only expansion that would have made sense in the Big Ten would be Notre Dame and after 20 years of flirting, the Irish went to the ACC with a sweetheart deal. (I can't blame Delany there. The ACC is desperate so they had to make that particular football deal where the Irish get to eat their cake for the considerable future.) Notre Dame is in the footprint and potentially someone else (Missouri, Cincinnati) would have made geographic sense.

But you blew it, Delany. 

Television is changing the game for college athletics, just like the flashy boxes did for the NFL. Argubly, Delany set the table for the Pac 12 Network and the debacle that is the Longhorn Network when he created the Big Ten Network and despite that success, it's becoming a slippery slope.

They say college sports aren't out to make money but how can it not be.

The actions continue to speak otherwise.