Big Ten expansion: Who’s next?

The idea that New York City is a Rutgers town has to be something a PR firm lazily coughed up on a deadline.

New York doesn’t uniformly rally around one of her professional teams, and it’s too full of people who came from somewhere else to be strongly associated with a single university. College football isn’t even part of the city’s identity; the Pinstripe Bowl and maybe one regular season game at the Meadowlands make for pretty thin gruel to feed eight million people.

“Ohio State fans in particular are sick of having to defend the league after winning 24 straight [2012 and ‘13] and still not getting the respect it deserves,” said Luke Zimmermann, founder of the Buckeyes blog Land-Grant Holy Land. “This is not in their mind anything more than adding another Indiana or Purdue.”

To which Delany says, “That’s not a compelling comment to me. If the standard for expansion is you have to bring in Nebraska or Penn State, no one’s ever going to expand. There’s only a couple of those out there.”

Remember when the Big Ten was moving to 12 teams and the Big 12 was moving to 10 teams, and everyone thought it would be a really clever idea to make the conferences switch names?

Well according to Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, former Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe did too, and he was serious.

We turned to our own experts around the SB Nation network to see what the new B1G initiates should know about each school and the conference in general.

Also, in the comments, please let the new kids in on some more Big Ten wisdom. Campus restaurant and bar recommendations are always a plus.

Sick of seeing conference realignment spread the Big Ten into the Atlantic Ocean?

On the surface, Connelly’s argument makes sense. From the Naperville Sun:

No one ever liked the Big Ten’s division names for a lot of reasons. The divisions were not totally geographically aligned, they were hard to remember, and they were strive-y management-speak in a place where “East” and “West” would have done just fine. “Leaders and Legends” are rooms at a country club, or maybe the name of a collection of expensive pens. They are not football divisions, and now never will be again.

No one liked them from the start, a development that surprised only conference commissioner Jim Delany when the Big Ten unveiled the rebrand in 2010. Not that Delany was going to yank the names immediately, or not give them a chance to survive:

The University of Maryland does not have a copy of its contract with the Big Ten, according to a story from the Washington Post. The Post filed an open records request to get information about the college’s move to the Big Ten, at which point the school told them not only that they simply didn’t have it, but that such practices were standard among major conference athletics.

The Big Ten, as a private organization, is not subject to open records laws, unlike the vast majority of its public institution membership. By holding the contracts, which apparently the ACC did with Maryland as well, those deals can’t be obtained by open record requests. With the value of TV rights contracts exploding over the past decade, it’s worrisome that those numbers simply aren’t available to the public.

Despite rumors that Virginia, Georgia Tech, and North Carolina were being courted by the Big Ten, Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith says the conference is not immediately seeking expansion, reports CBS Sports’ Jeremy Fowler, and that it isn’t really looking at anything down the line either.

Maryland and Rutgers’ entrance the conference in November was sudden, thanks to a non-disclosure agreement Maryland signed while negotiating the move that limited the amount of people in the know about the conference switch. The secrecy surrounding that move and second- and third-hand nature of reports that some school or another had an offer to swap conferences made it seem inevitable that somewhere, some form of realignment bartering was going on behind closed doors. But Smith seems to indicate that isn’t the case: that right now, the Big Ten is focused on ensuring Rutgers and Maryland join the league smoothly:

When you have something worth defending, you defend it with all your muscle.

And that thing right now is the Big Ten’s traditional division names, Leaders and Legends.

Rutgers is suing the Big East Conference for millions for jacking up exit fees, according to Joe Harris of the Courthouse News Service. Rutgers announced on Nov. 20 it was leaving the conference and joining the Big Ten. The statement claims that no other schools that left the Big East “were held to the 27-month/$5 million fee standard.”

The statement also alleges the Big East “turned a blind eye” to the school’s claims that it lost $1.3 million from losing a scheduled home game with TCU after it left the conference. Rutgers wants the withdrawal requirements and fees to be voided, according to the Courthouse News.

There are rumors that Georgia Tech and Virginia could join the Big Ten. There have been Big Ten rumors about those two schools for literally years now, but they’ve been showing up much more frequently this week.

If you’re interested in walking through the message boardiness and deleted tweetiness and anonymous sourcing business, Land-Grant Holy Land has a good and skeptical summary of that stuff. As far as actual reporting, the most definitive we’ve seen is one claiming the Jackets want in, not that they’re going to get in. Georgia Tech has sternly denied the whole thing, as has Virginia, but we’ve seen that in realignment official denials mean about as much as any of the rest of this does.

Ken Sugiura of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution cites school spokesman Matt Nagel and acting GT athletic director Paul Griffin as waving aside the whispers of more conference realignment. Griffin is quoted as being unaware “of any communications between university leadership and the Big Ten or any other conference. He further told Sugiura that Georgia Tech president Bud Peterson has denied any communication with the Big Ten to Griffin, “nor does he expect [there to be] any.”

The rumors come in the wake of heavy realignment in the college landscape, with Maryland and Rutgers bolting the ACC and Big East, respectively, for the Big Ten (which has now swelled to 14 teams). Meanwhile, the ACC will add Pitt, Syracuse and Louisville to its ranks, with Notre Dame joining as a non-football (and non-hockey!) member.

Last week, we saw conference realignment show its ugly head once again, as Maryland and Rutgers decided to leave their respective conferences for the Big Ten. As everyone braces themselves for the next round of seeing who will avoid being stuck outside the cool kids club for the next five to ten years, let’s focus on the two schools that have jumped ship. Today’s dish will feature food from both Maryland and New Jersey. I’m making lasagna for you!

STEP 1: Lasagna is a pretty easy thing to make. It’s just layers of stuff on top of each other, and then you bake it. You could put anything in there at all! Some people may insist on things like sauce and cheese and noodles, but those people are close minded. They are afraid to tempt culinary fate like us. We will start by separating each layer with a tortilla! Let’s put one in our casserole/Saturday cereal bowl.

Look through SB Nation’s many excellent college football blogs to find your team’s community.

While Rutgers University was making its move to the Big Ten Conference official with an afternoon press conference, its soon-to-be former league, the Big East Conference, and its commissioner Mike Aresco issued a press release wishing the school well.

”Although we are disappointed that Rutgers has decided to leave the Big East Conference, we wish them well. They have been a valued member of the Conference for many years.

Here’s some ideas on what Maryland could buy with 100 million smackeroos:

- This stupid house in Los Altos

We all have ways of celebrating Maryland going to the Big Ten. The internet’s? I won’t spoil it for you, but it does get a NSFW tag for a sexy image of Jim Delany humping a pile of money. Proceed at your own risk.

You know what it is. I lost it at Maury Povich nodding, because Maury Povich randomly nodding in the middle of anything makes it ten times better than it already was. (Via)

Good question. Read this Testudo Times post. It will tell you everything. The short version: The Terps need the money, and they really aren’t as tied, in terms of culture and rivalry, to the ACC as much as it would seem at first glance.

Are you kidding?

With the expansion of the Big Ten to include Maryland and Rutgers, the map and listings of most fearsome native party beverages in the Brewer’s Conference must be updated. The new list, in no particular order and arranged by school, follows.

Note: all beverages are made in the state they are shown in except for Iowa’s, whose laws prohibited the creation of large-scale brewing operations for much of its history. Choice Beer Advocate review excerpts follow.

The key points of Maryland’s press conference announcing its 2014 move to the Big Ten in all sports included money, money, money, money, money and money, plus academics, stability, money and money. The most critical quote might be when Jim Delany announced East Coast offices for the conference by declaring the Big Ten is no longer a Midwest conference. He does not say things like that by accident.

Also, there was a part where Delany started talking about the Rose Bowl, of course.

With the departure of Maryland to the Big Ten, many Terrapin fans are beginning to ask about the possible implications on recruiting. The answer? Not as much are you might think. At least not in terms of changing the caliber of player Maryland brings signs.

Over the last decade, Maryland has recruited at a top-40 type level. That much shouldn’t change, and this move should help to ensure that.

Update: Jim Delany denies the new alignment is set.

New divisional alignments for the Big Ten have reportedly been established, and no, they did not change those awful names. Maryland and Rutgers will join in 2014 and take their places in the Leaders division, which we can think of as the East division if that makes it easier (that makes it so much easier), while Illinois will slide on over to the West division, which is technically known as the Legends.

Look through SB Nation’s many excellent college football blogs to find your team’s community.

The Big Ten’s borders will soon span Nebraska to New Jersey, with Rutgers reportedly announcing on Tuesday that it, like Maryland, will accept entry into the conference. Rutgers was a founding member of the Big East, as Maryland was of the ACC. As for how Rutgers’ decision happened so quickly, there’s not much bureaucracy in the way there.

The Terps will announce their move Monday afternoon, and will join in 2014. Assume Rutgers will do the same.