[NU Sports] 2011 & Divisions

[Jonathan Hodges]

I watched the expansion special on the BTN this evening (which was well done
despite the short notice) and the issue came up there.  Delany seemed pretty
clear that there would be a conference championship game (even though, based
on previous comments he has made, he doesn't necessarily like it).  And in
terms of scheduling, the following three factors are key (in order of
importance):

1. Competitive balance
2. Rivalries (noting some are more important than others)
3. Geography

I think we'll hear more about how the conference is divided (they may not
even go to permanant divisions) sometime over the next 6 months.

I think Delany also made it clear that they will continue to study expansion
over the next year or so and will leave the door open to future moves, but
right now a lot of the effort will be put into integrating Nebraska into the
conference before a very aggressive deadline of July 1, 2011.  Remember that
it took Penn State over 3 years to fully integrate into the conference
starting in 1990.

BUT, Delany and the Big Ten are smart and will move when necessary, as they
did in moving their timeline to get Nebraska on board, so if things get
crazy over the next few weeks I would imagine they would be open to further
moves IF the schools meet all of their criteria.


Jonathan


On Jun 11, 2010 9:47 PM, "Jim Leonard" <jleonard518 at yahoo.com> wrote:

I just read the announcement on bigten.org. There is no mention of two
6-team divisions. I would think this would all be ironed out if the
conference management team knew we were stopping at twelve teams.

My guess is that we get two more teams before the dust settles.  My gut
tells me we lose out on Texas (fine by me) but add Missouri and Notre Dame.

Has there been any talk of divisions if Nebraska were the only new team?

Go U UN :-)
Jim




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