Big 10 Football Conference

College football continues to shift conference alignments and splinter divisions as league commissioners play a sinister game of Hold’em poker with the stakes being the future of almost every big university’s economic health. Under the veil of being stewards of education these guys are really professional sports league CEO’s and going about their business in a shockingly ham-fisted manner. The Big 10’s leader, Jim Delaney, is the most recent man that threatened havoc and chaos to all of college sports. Now the dust is settling on the changed landscape, of his one “bold” move and illumination needs to be cast on some of the stranger turn of events in that conference.
Have you seen their new logo? The Big 10 changed up the logo now that they are 12 teams. The new logo reflects the fact it used to have 10 teams. It best can be described simply as “A joke.” It’s in a late 80s early 90s bold script in a terrible color. Like those T-shirts that went around spring breaks, at that time that just screamed, I’m a mindless lemming advertising some bar in Cancun with “Came, Drank, Passed Out” on the back of it in block letters.
It replaces a logo they got right. The last logo said Big 10 and had the number 11 slyly placed within the typography, because the conference had 11 teams. It made sense and was understated. In fact, they managed to explain away the logical incongruence of a conference named the Big 10 that had 11 members in one subtle amendment to their log … very, clever. The new logo, has a 10 embedded in it, to give tribute to the 10 original members. How stupid is that, the conference is still called the Big 10, why do you need to embed a 10 in the word big, especially when it’s sitting on top of the word Ten. You can’t miss it. Besides being redundant, why does the Big 10 need to pay tribute to it’s original members isn’t the now useless name tribute enough?
Not to totally condemn the slow, forward thinkers that the Big 10 are, after all they are just coming around to a conference championship when everybody else has been profiting for years with one. The Big 10 did right by signing up Nebraska, and though there are rumors they’ll have another wave of expansion in a few years, they should probably stop at one. Why chop up the money more ways especially as there are few schools worth taking (that they could take). The only ones that should interest them are ones that will significantly boost their revenues –to allow them to chop up a bigger pie.
Notre Dame fits the bill, and for the sake of symmetry they’d probably have to take somebody to go with the Golden Domers. Question is, when will the Big 10 take “No as No?” Notre Dame is getting passed by at this point, even if they don’t recognize it, so the Big 10 should just stop calling and move on.
Who else? The silliness about Rutgers giving the Big 10 the New York market is a bit of joke. Nonetheless, it gives them Jersey which is a concentrated population base that shouldn’t be underestimated. However, Rutgers simply playing the fallen greats that make up the Big 10 conference isn’t suddenly going to make that state, or NYC for that matter, suddenly care about college football. Just isn’t going to happen. Pittsburgh gives Penn State a natural rival but should only be brought in if say Notre Dame finally comes to their senses. After that there are few, if any schools the Big 10 could sign, that would be worth signing.
They also announced they are calling their divisions Legends and Leaders. How about Lame and Lamer. The selection is perfectly illustrative of the Big 10’s bloated, grandiose sense of worth based on dated accomplishments. Clearly, the Big 10 isn’t just recognizing the past they are living in it. What sportscaster is going to refer to a division as the “Legends” division. They just won’t say it, because it’s awkward, which kind of undermines the point of a name if it’s never spoken.
They also announced awards named after anybody that did something important as another reminder of how great the league used to be. The Big 10 should be looking forward. They have added an institution that should enrich the league, but once again the Big 10 is too busy tripping on its own history to look down the road.