As he nears his 25th year as commissioner of the
Big Ten Conference, Jim Delany has put himself in a position of immense power
in the world of intercollegiate athletics. But while Delany is responsible for
bringing millions of dollars to the Big Ten member institutions through
innovations such as the Bowl Championship Series, the Big Ten Network, and NCAA
Men’s Basketball Tournament coverage, he is becoming more and more a threat to
the very organization whose interests he is charged with representing on the
national stage.
Since Delay became Big Ten commissioner in 1989, he has
presided over the addition of Penn State University (1990), the University of
Nebraska (2011), and now the University of Maryland and Rutgers University,
both scheduled to join the conference for the 2014-2015 academic year. More
recently, Delany has presided over the addition of Johns Hopkins University as
an affiliate member for men’s lacrosse, bringing the Jays’ storied program into
the fold as the Big Ten begins sponsoring competition in lacrosse starting in
2015.
But while all of this expansion has brought a treasure chest
of fortune to the member institutions, it has done so while threatening the
very brand upon which so much of the Big Ten’s value is built.
The conference’s own webpage describes how “even in its
infancy, the conference established itself as the preeminent collection of
institutions in the nation, where the pursuit of academic excellence prevailed
as the definitive goal of all Big Ten universities.”
In short, for all the athletic prowess of Big Ten
institutions, academics supposedly remain at the center of the conference’s
mission.
Supposedly.
I say that because with the addition of Nebraska to bring
the membership up to 12 in order to allow for a conference championship game in
football, Delany signaled once and for all that the “pursuit of academic
excellence” would no longer take precedence over the simultaneous pursuit of
television contracts and football fortunes. Money talks and despite what Delany
and company may say, everything else walks.
Clearly the Big Ten has decided that money is more important
than reputation but even with that conceded, one has to wonder whether the
conference can even compete in the football arms race it has decided to fight
against the vaunted SEC.
Sure the SEC has inflicted some serious wounds on the Big
Ten powers-that-be in its decade of drubbing on the gridiron, but they might in
fact inflict the most damage as those powers continue to erode the prestige of
the Big Ten conference in a futile response to try and compete for the title of
nation’s best college football conference.
While the numbers actually point toward the Big 12 as the
best football conference in the nation, it is considered fact at this point
that the SEC holds the crown. Now winners of the last 7 BCS title games
(carefully worded), the Southeastern Conference has a local talent pool, fan
support, and popular reputation that would make it difficult for any conference
of any size to effectively challenge its reign on the gridiron.
Yet that is exactly what Delany is attempting to do.
Forgetting the basic mission of the Big Ten and the attributes that make the
conference great (and different from the SEC), Delany has sought out any and
all major football programs to join what has started to become a mass of teams
and schools that leave much to be desired both on and off the playing field.
First there is Nebraska. While certainly a fine Midwestern
institution and a flagship for the State of Nebraska, UN-L is not on the same
level academically as the traditional Big Ten institution. Even the most ardent
supporter of Nebraska would have to concede that the university is not on par
with the likes of Michigan and Northwestern, traditional Big Ten institutions
that hold permanent spots amongst the world’s leading research universities.
While Nebraska was a member of the AAU (American Association
of Universities- a group of leading US and Canadian research institutions) at
the time of the announcement they were moving into the Big Ten, the university
was stripped of its AAU membership months prior to the official move. To think
that Big Ten officials were unaware of this upcoming decision by the
association is the epitome of naivety. They knew and they simply didn't care.
Again, money talks.
Then there is the Penn State situation. Whether or not PSU
was a good addition to the Big Ten seemed to have been settled as the
university crossed the 20-year mark inside the conference. Until reality
finality came to the surface. Not only does the Jerry Sandusky situation stain
the reputation of Penn State, it stains the reputation of the Big Ten
conference and every single one of its member institutions. While it has been
reported that the conference considered expelling PSU for its actions
(remember, football IS the reason Penn State was added in the first place),
Delany and other conference leaders again chose to keep the money rather than
taking a stand in support of the Big Ten’s reputation. Without Penn State, the
conference would be down to 11 members and no longer eligible for a conference
title game in football. No title game means no television deal and that was
simply too high a price in Delany’s eyes.
Rutgers has brought forth another test of Delany’s devotion
to reputation and as of yet, he has done nothing but fail. Continuing his
obsession with bringing the conference to the New York City media market
(ignoring the fact that several Big Ten schools have over 10,000 alumni in the
market), Delany has tied the Big Ten in knots by sticking with a school whose
athletic department has become the laughingstock of collegiate athletics in the
wake of a scandal involving an abusive basketball coach and an incompetent
search committee who eventually hired as the new athletic director a women
facing allegations of abuse at not one but two different schools where she was
previously employed.
But besides the scandals, Delany is betting the future of
the conference on his belief that adding Rutgers will make New York City crazy
for Big Ten football. As an alum myself, that is a bet I do not want the
conference to take.
Although the additions of Rutgers and Nebraska were
ill-conceived and the scandals facing Penn State should have resulted in the
school’s expulsion from the conference, there is a way for the Big Ten to not
only survive, but thrive as college athletics continues to undergo a major
transformation headlined by conference expansion from coast to coast.
The solution comes from asking the simple question: What
does the Big Ten do best?
Off the field, the answer is simple. No other major athletic
conference boasts a collection of premier academic institutions even in the
ballpark of the Big Ten. From a perennial top-15 school in Northwestern to
“public ivys” Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois, the Big Ten outpaces the other
“BCS” conferences in the classroom without dispute.
Each and every “traditional” Big Ten school has a
world-renowned academic program they can call their own:
·
Indiana’s Kelley School of Business ranks 11th
among undergraduate business programs according to US News and World Report
·
Iowa ranks 2nd in Audiology and 1st
in Speech-Language Pathology programs while boasting a top-30 law school
·
Ohio State has the 5th ranked
Veterinary Medicine program and top-5 programs in Supply Chain Management,
Vocational/Technical Education, and Interior Design
·
Michigan State has the top-ranked undergraduate
program in Supply Chain/Logistics, a top-15 education program and a top-10
program in Veterinary Medicine
·
Minnesota is home to a top-20 law school and the
3rd ranked Pharmacy school nationwide
·
Purdue boasts a top-10 engineering school and a
top-20 program in computer science
Nebraska lacks a major program ranked inside the top 50 and
Rutgers’ lone program inside the top 15 is in Library and Information Studies,
not exactly the most robust and viable academic department as technology
continues to progress.
The Big Ten has and should continue to excel in the classroom
and thus academics need to be involved in the conference’s plans for the
future.
Something else the conference does “better than most”, to
steal a phrase from Gary Koch, is men’s basketball. Just as the SEC has
dominated college football, the Big Ten dominates on the hardwood. While the
nature of the game and of its postseason competition has left the conference
without the national titles won by the SEC football powers (assuming you
consider a BCS title to be a legitimate national championship), the numbers
fail to lie when it comes to establishing the supremacy of Big Ten hoops.
Name another conference that relegated a team ranked in the
top-10 nationally to the play in game at the start of conference tournament
play. You cant.
The Big Ten may have lost its grip on football but there is
no doubt the conference has the potential to solidify itself as the dominant
power in men’s basketball.
This is where expansion should be focused. Rather than
trying to win an unwinnable arms race for football supremacy against the SEC,
the Big Ten should re-focus its energy on building its brand around domination
on the hardwood. In addition to being a more realistic and equally as lucrative
objective, basketball dominance would do more to attract the attention of New
York media than any accomplishments on the gridiron. New York is not a college
sports town and never will be. They do, however, have a soft spot for college
basketball and if Delany wants to reign in the NYC media market for Big Ten
exploitation, it will be on the hardwood where that battle is won.
As an added bonus, basketball prowess can be achieved
without sacrificing in the classroom. While an expansion that is
football-minded will inevitably and has already soiled the academic reputation
of the Big Ten, the conference can expand for basketball while boosting that
reputation to even greater heights.
So what exactly am I proposing Jim Delany do after all this
rambling?
Simple, forget Rutgers and ditch Nebraska. Do that and then
take a page out of the Johns Hopkins book by grabbing Georgetown and snatching
Cornell. Sound crazy? Maybe, but at least hear me out.
A Big Ten Conference composed of Minnesota, Iowa,
Northwestern, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Purdue, Ohio State, Michigan,
Michigan State, Maryland, Cornell, Georgetown, and Penn State[1]would
have the potential to send between 8 and 12 teams (out of 14!) to the NCAA
Tournament on an annual basis while reaching a level of academic supremacy
unparalleled among division 1 conferences.
As for football, the conference would still have perennial
title contenders in Michigan and Ohio State while also boasting common top-25
teams from Wisconsin, Northwestern, Michigan State, Iowa, and (post-sanctions)
Penn State. Even in such a setup, the Big Ten would arguably have as many teams
truly capable of running the table as does the vaunted SEC. But that's another
discussion.
Reinforcing the academic reputation of the conference by
adding Cornell and Georgetown (while re-classifying University of Chicago to
the same “affiliate member” status as Johns Hopkins) would not only add value
to the Big Ten brand but more importantly would boost the inherent worth of a
Big Ten degree.
Think about it this way: Brown is a member of the Ivy
League. Brown is also ranked just 15th among national universities
and boasts exactly zero graduate programs placed inside the top-10 according to
US News/World Report. Yet because of Brown’s membership in the Ivy League a
degree from the school automatically has attached a level of worth that
surpasses the quality that is actually present in the classroom. Membership in
the worldwide fraternity that is the Ivy League has its perks and it is the
perfect time for the Big Ten to start its own.
Why would Georgetown and Cornell join the Big Ten?
For Georgetown, the answer is fairly simple. With the end of
the Big East, the school is in a state of flux when it comes to athletics,
gambling on the success of the new “Catholic 7”/Big East both in men’s
basketball and in so-called “non-revenue” sports. But the new conference lacks
the meat of the former Big East and its potential to generate competition and
revenue simply does not match that of the Big Ten and its television network.
Additionally, Georgetown would benefit from having a natural geographic rival
in Maryland and a potential rival in fellow private school Northwestern to
replace lost conference foes Pittsburgh and Syracuse.
Adding Georgetown would further cement the conference’s
presence in the Washington market while sealing its fate as the preeminent
power in college basketball.
Cornell is probably the most outlandish of my proposed
additions to the Big Ten. After all, the Big Red compete in the sacred Ivy
League and are currently subject to the conferences’ infamous ban on athletic
scholarships. But while Cornell is among the premier academic institutions in
the world, it is far from a typical Ivy League school.
While the other seven Ivy League schools average just 6,518
in undergraduate enrollment, Cornell enrolls 13,931 undergraduates in Ithaca.
Cornell is also the lone Ivy League school founded after the American
Revolution (1865- in line with most Big Ten institutions) and is the only Ivy
school that began as a land-grant institution, a history Cornell would share
with many of its Big Ten brethren. Joining the Big Ten would allow Cornell to
upgrade its athletic and academic facilities while expanding the geographic
reach of the school in a way that isn’t currently possible as the “little
brother” of the Ivy League.
From the conference’s standpoint, the addition is a
no-brainer. The Big Red are a national power in wresting as well as in hockey
and lacrosse, helping to provide tremendous value to the conference’s two
newest competitive offerings. More importantly, Cornell is the real link to New
York City that the conference should be pursuing. In addition to having a
graduate campus along with many other academic and research facilities in the
city, Cornell has nearly 75,000 living graduates living in New York state, with
over 50,000 of them residing in the City itself. New York City has two major
college connections: Syracuse and Cornell. Adding Rutgers is not going to get
New Yorkers interested in the least.
With Syracuse leaving the Big East for the ACC, the door is
open to anyone who wants to be “New York’s college team”. Cornell is best
positioned to be that successor, having already established both a
well-developed alumni base and an actual campus footprint in the city. With the
injection of Big Ten television revenue and other financial support into Big
Red athletics, there is no reason Cornell cannot compete on a high-major level
in men’s basketball. After all, the Big Red are just three years removed from a
Sweet 16 run that was made at the expense of none other than Wisconsin, one of
the conference’s most consistent men’s basketball powers in the past decade.
Adding Georgetown and Cornell to the Big Ten at the expense
of Nebraska and Rutgers would bring the conference its much-desired entre to
the eastern seaboard in a manner that does not put in jeopardy the reputation
built by the conference over its hundred-plus years in existence. Adding these
two institutions (along with Johns Hopkins) would give the conference not just
a couple isolated outposts out east but a true base of operations, with
Cornell, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, Maryland, and Penn State comprising a true
eastern consortium within the Big Ten.
The way Jim Delany and the Big Ten are currently embarking
on expansion is detrimental to all who are connected to the conference and its
institutions. The addition of relatively mediocre institutions devalues the
degrees of student athletes, regular students, and Big Ten alumni alike, while
the over-reaching geographic expansion forces student-athletes out of the
classroom and into the airport unnecessarily. Adding Maryland and Rutgers will
only add marginal interest in both DC and New York while boosting the Maryland
addition with Georgetown and Cornell would represent a notable splash into both
media markets. Finally, Georgetown and Cornell bring to the Big Ten the one
thing it has over other major conferences: academic prowess. The futile search
for a way to compete with the SEC on the football field has placed that very
important feature of the conference in danger and its time we reign these
efforts in and re-direct them toward additions that could provide even more
opportunity for financial growth and media exposure even if that growth is
achieved outside the realm of college football.
Expansion can be a good thing but the way Delany and other
conference commissioners have gone about implementing it has thus far been detrimental
to the long-term viability of major collegiate athletics. By focusing on shared
interests rather than shared profits, commissioners such as Delany can begin to
truly represent the interests of their constituents.
[1]
Sadly I believe we are stuck with PSU. However, I would ideally like to see
Penn State expelled and replaced by Vanderbilt
