The End of the Big 10
Anyone even remotely familiar with college sports, from football to basketball (and even the occasional swim fan) knows the intensity and riveting competition provided by The Big Ten Conference.
It’s the oldest Division 1 college athletics conference in North America, and its 11 teams worship sports like no others in the world. All 11 of its mid-western teams from Iowa to Pennsylvania are among the greatest threats in College football and College basketball, in fact they’re the biggest threats in most things college other than GPA.
Well now it’s time for an era to come to an end, and another to begin. Some call it commencement but whether you call it expansion or divide-and-conquer, everybody’s got something to say about the new direction the division is going to take in 2011.
Talk of expansion has been going strong since December 2009 when the commissioner of the Big Ten Conference Jim Delany announced that the league would be adding several more teams to its family. The reason for this was simple: more teams equals more profits, and after 93 years of existence (circa 1917) they decided the league was ready.
What this means for the rest of us, is that new teams will be added and the once-magnanimous force known as the Big Ten is being split up and diluted into two separate divisions. In a sense this is an alluring proposition; more divisions will create larger divergences in fan bases. This will lead to more teams with a chance to get to their division finals, more celebration and more money in the pockets of their respective states and their businesses.
In this new format Ohio State and Michigan will be separated divisionally, a new member will be brought up - Nebraska - and the Wolverines are poised to become their arch nemesis.
Here’s what the new breakdown will look like: In one corner you’ll have such forces as Michigan, Iowa, Michigan State, Nebraska, Northwestern and Minnesota, all battling out for division domination. And in the other corner Ohio State will have to battle Penn State, Wisconsin, Purdue, Indiana, and Illinois.
A lot of the fans were worried when this came up, but fear not, the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives (the Big Ten’s governing body) doesn’t want to alienate the masses too much. They plan on trying to maintain the traditional rivalries to the best of their abilities. Like in times of yore Michigan State and Michigan will still be going head-to-head for top billing.
The same goes for such old classics as the Purdue-Indiana rivalry, Iowa-Minnesota, and Indiana and Illinois. But what about Wisconsin-Minnesota? Is this the end of their rivalry? Will fathers from the Midwest finally bury the hatchet and have large state crossing barbecues with their fellow red-shaded brothers? The answer is an emphatic, earth shattering, “No!” The forces in power are expected to enact a consistent crossover game system akin to that presently seen in the Ohio State-Michigan tandem.
With things ever-changing it was only natural for an almost 100-year tradition to come to an end. But with all the love these mid-western fans show to their sports one thing is for certain: the competitive spirit will never die, and no matter what lines are drawn that very special “all or nothing, fight to the last, live free or die hard” spirit of The Big Ten will live on.
It may be separated into two camps, but that is just a recipe for another rivalry. One that pits entire divisions against each other, and in the spirit of competition, who doesn't want that?
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