Perhaps the most impactful moment in realignment history took place on an overcast, cold afternoon on Dec. 15, 2009, in Park Ridge, Ill.
Nine days after the 11-member Big Ten Council of Presidents and Chancellors met in person at league headquarters, the Big Ten office issued a 287-word news release that shook college athletics like an earthquake. Its aftershocks are felt even today.
Advertisement
Of that news release, one sentence in particular set in motion one of the most chaotic periods in college athletics: “The COP/C believes that the timing is right for the conference to once again conduct a thorough evaluation of options for conference structure and expansion.”
Jim Delany was at the helm in 2009, and the Big Ten had expanded just once since Michigan State replaced Chicago in 1953. By a 7-3 vote in 1990, the Big Ten welcomed Penn State as its 11th member. Twice Delany sought Notre Dame as a 12th member, but he was rebuffed both times. Between Penn State’s acceptance and the Big Ten’s statement, the ACC added four new members, the SEC picked up two and the Southwest Conference imploded with four members merging with the Big Eight.
GO DEEPER
How close has Notre Dame come to joining the Big Ten? ‘There was no deal to be had’
“We announced our intentions to explore it but weren’t committed to do it,” Delany said. “But it had a very destabilizing effect on about everybody. And that wasn’t intentional, but it was obviously true.”
The Athletic engaged in multiple conversations with Delany, who led the Big Ten from 1989 through Jan. 1, 2020. The 75-year-old former commissioner discussed the factors that led to massive realignment beginning with Penn State through his retirement. In the first edition of our conversation, Delany said the 1984 United States Supreme Court case that unshackled conferences from the NCAA’s grip over television changed the landscape. The Big East’s lack of foresight in turning down Penn State allowed the Big Ten to secure one of athletics’ greatest brands and shuffled the chairs through the early 2000s.
The Big Ten’s 2009 announcement allowed for a 12- to 18-month window for evaluations. It was designed to be inclusive and transparent. It was just the opposite from what happened in 1990 when Delany stepped into a process led by university presidents without involvement from athletics. It nearly blew up on the league until Delany salvaged enough votes to bring in Penn State.
But in 1990, there was no Twitter and no daily college football television shows speculating on every possibility. It also gave seemingly secure institutions the opportunity to assess their options. ESPN analyst Andre Ware said the Big Ten should add TCU, then in the Mountain West. Chicago-based blogger “Frank the Tank” developed enough reasoning that Delany passed his analysis along to university presidents. Within two days of the Big Ten announcement, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon said his state’s flagship institution should “look at what options the Big Ten may have to offer.”
Delany: I thought we had screwed it up pretty good in 1990 by not vetting it. We gave ourselves 18 months so we can do a thorough study and analysis on those that might be interested, and we created a process for that to occur.
Schools jockeyed to join the Big Ten, in part because of Delany’s brainchild, the Big Ten Network. Delany rolled the dice against what he considered a lowball offer from ESPN and opened conversations with multiple networks for distribution. On Aug. 30, 2007, BTN debuted as an almost equal share between the conference (51 percent) and Fox (49 percent). A few years later, the percentage flipped. Fox then became a major player in college football, which led to ESPN losing “a quasi-monopoly,” Delany said. It also led to a wave of schools wanting in the Big Ten.
Delany: ESPN was trying to keep control of us, but we basically had a 400 percent increase. We went from about $50 million a year to about $200 million a year AAV (average annual value). So that makes everybody’s eyes pop. Everybody, just like they had Rose Bowl envy, they got that network envy. The ACC was 13 years late. The SEC did fine, but they were eight years after us. ESPN was paying them not to have a network, then they paid them to have a network. So they were doing fine. But ESPN lost control over pricing because we were able to show that you could do it. So they had to collaborate. Otherwise, people would do it against them.
Advertisement
We were the first major conference to trim ESPN engagement. We went with Fox as a network partner and gave all the other primary rights to ESPN. They paid us a billion for that and we got a billion from our network. So we had $2 billion and that was $200 million a year for 10 years.
After numerous conversations with Notre Dame even beyond their high-profile 1999 courtship, Delany believed Notre Dame was immovable as a football independent. He met with plenty of schools and both sides signed non-disclosure forms, which still prevent him from discussing those candidates.
Delany: With the exception of some private discussions with Notre Dame, we decide that we’re going to (expand) more than likely than not (but) we weren’t committed to it. We’re going to have a deep study, a deep dive, and we did. That didn’t add to stability, for sure.
While the Big Ten evaluated the potential for at least one and perhaps as many as five new members, other leagues weren’t about to let the Big Ten dictate the pace. On June 3, 2010, Orangebloods reported the Pac-10 wanted to invite six Big 12 members. The primary targets were Colorado, Texas, Texas A&M and Oklahoma with others under consideration. Schools like Nebraska and Missouri had value but were in limbo. Texas A&M was more interested in seeking SEC membership than heading west. The Big 12 turned into a realignment battlefield.
Nebraska emerged as a strong Big Ten candidate, but there was an agreement among Big 12 schools to either recommit to the league or seek other options within a week. Delany chose to expedite the expansion process, and the Big Ten’s Council of Presidents and Chancellors welcomed Nebraska as a 12th member on June 11, 2010. Speculation immediately swirled BTN was a factor in the decision to expand.
Delany: It wasn’t a network play because there aren’t any cable networks in Nebraska. It was a brand play and a football play and a broad-based play and a geographic play. My belief was that notwithstanding it not being a cable play, it was a mega-TV play. Because Nebraska had one of the top five brands in football in the country, having won three national championships in the previous 20 years. And that Nebraska-Ohio State, Nebraska-Michigan, Nebraska-Iowa, Nebraska-Wisconsin, Nebraska-Penn State resonated. And I thought that was the biggest game in town.
We were seeking something that made a lot of sense from a lot of perspectives: geographic, academic, historic, cultural. And so when we made that announcement, undoubtedly, it had a destabilizing effect because people want to come. But it’s not like people didn’t understand that seismic changes were occurring. They’ve been occurring over the last 19 years. Otherwise, how do you explain the growth of the Big East? The growth of the ACC, the growth of the Big 12, the merger/acquisition between the Big 12 and Southwest? How do you explain the WAC growing to 16 and falling apart? All these things were happening. So it’s hard to say what caused what.
GO DEEPER
The superconference that wasn’t: How the Pac-16 plan changed college sports
The Pac-10 became the Pac-12 by adding Colorado and Mountain West power Utah. The Big 12 seemed semi-stable, but concessions given to Texas, including the Longhorn Network for third-tier rights, caused a major upheaval in 2010 and 2011. Mutual interest between Texas A&M and the SEC led to an invitation and a potential lawsuit by Baylor. Oklahoma openly lobbied for a Pac-12 invite. Missouri was caught in the crosshairs, and it became an SEC target once the league accepted Texas A&M.
Concurrently, the Big East was crumbling. The ACC took Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College in 2005 and 2006. In 2011, the ACC invited Syracuse and Pittsburgh. The following year, the ACC reached an agreement with Notre Dame for all sports and five football games annually. The Big East added TCU, which then backed out for a Big 12 invite. West Virginia then left the Big East to replace Missouri in the Big 12.
The Big East’s crisis coupled with the ACC’s aggressive moves led to Delany reassessing the landscape.
Delany: It was an inconvenient truth that the ACC occupied the old Big East space, and the SEC occupied part of Missouri and the ACC occupied Pittsburgh, Syracuse, other parts of the Northeast and parts of Indiana. So my view was, “OK, we’re moving.” And so I thought, by doing what we did, it was a great network play because we can monetize it.
But primarily, it was to grab territory from D.C. to Baltimore to Philadelphia to New York and there’s no other FBS conference there.
Delany saw demographics as the Big Ten’s future challenge. As a Midwest-based conference, the Big Ten had stagnant population growth at around 1.1 percent. The Sun Belt was growing much faster at 4.4 percent, which gave the SEC footprint around 90 million people. The ACC was anchored in four regions, and the West Coast was booming. Big Ten country included about 60 million people.
With the Big East folding as a football entity, some conference could fill the northeastern vacuum. Delany saw Maryland as pivotal to growth. It also was an ACC charter member, but Maryland chancellor Wallace Loh previously was the provost at Iowa and welcomed Big Ten overtures. Their negotiations were done in stealth and ultimately violated Maryland’s open records laws.
Delany: We have all of our studies done internally. But since we screwed up the Penn State approach, and since we screwed up by being transparent, we kind of combined opaqueness by keeping it private with internal collaboration. So everybody knew what was going on that needed to know. And we took Maryland and Rutgers.
Advertisement
That was a reaction in part to the idea that we need to be in two regions. Because the way I was doing this, it was consolidation for media purposes, but it had to meet the standard of AAU in a contiguous state. While Nebraska didn’t have many TV homes and had a big brand, you would say that Maryland and Rutgers didn’t have the Nebraska brand. But they had good brands and had good academics and they were in the most densely populated area of the country, albeit a pro sports area primarily, but you don’t need to get 10 percent; you just need to get 2 percent.
GO DEEPER
Great moments in conference realignment history: a 124-year timeline of drama
With 1.2 million alumni from Washington, D.C., to southern Connecticut and 26 million people within a 50-mile radius of New York City, the expansion added 3 percent to the Big Ten’s geography but 18 percent of its total population. While the fan intensity for Rutgers and Maryland paled when compared with Penn State or Nebraska, the volume of Big Ten fans in the northeast enabled BTN to command immediate market penetration. And revenue skyrocketed.
The total dispersal to Big Ten members jumped from $317.2 million in fiscal 2014 — the final year without Maryland and Rutgers — to $684.6 million in fiscal 2018. Both schools (and Nebraska before them) had to wait six years before becoming fully vested conference members.
Delany: We had an asset that was worth probably between $1 billion and $2 billion in the Big Ten Network and they were going to become an undivided owner of that in an undivided way when they became a full member. We weren’t just handing it over to them. There was a buy-in.
This is not Christmas. Iowa and Michigan and Northwestern put sweat equity into creating that asset and took a lot of risks. So if you come to the Big Ten, you had better bring a lot.
Whether it was a retaliation attempt for losing Maryland or a way to take advantage of the Big Ten penalizing Penn State during the Jerry Sandusky situation, the ACC extended overtures to Penn State and at least one other Big Ten school. Ultimately, the ACC invited Louisville to replace Maryland.
Delany: That was after we had taken Maryland, I believe. I don’t know about any contacts between the ACC and Penn State before our move with Maryland. I do understand that calls went into Penn State at that juncture. But there was no interest.
Once Maryland, Rutgers and Louisville changed leagues in 2014, major realignment paused the rest of Delany’s tenure. The SEC maintained its athletic superiority, especially in football. The Big Ten remained a financial powerhouse with on-field prowess. The ACC won national titles, the Big 12 stabilized under Bob Bowlsby and the Pac-12 made a series of financial missteps that coincided with limited football success.
ESPN started SEC and ACC networks. The Pac-12 formed its own television network without help from a cable company. Its lack of distribution led to financial disparity and sowed discontent among its membership.
Delany: I won’t call it mismanagement, because it’s also fair to say the Big Ten, Notre Dame and the SEC, you could argue that a monkey could do it. They’re powerful brands, great locations and powerful fan bases, but you could still screw it up. People used to say the WAC has more reindeer than it has TV sets.
(Former Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott) misjudged and he thought, “Well, we can do this network, and we can own it all.” He didn’t know enough about it to know that he couldn’t do it. The ACC, to be honest with you, gave away too much. They wanted it so bad, they did a 20-year deal for their primary rights.
The SEC was powerful enough by bringing in Texas A&M and Missouri. They were always paid well because they’ve won 12 of the last 15 football championships. I mean, we were doing it on the basis of good middle class, good upper class, good markets, good branding, good timing. But it wasn’t because we were mowing people down. Hell, we won one basketball championship and three football in 30 years. So we were doing something else. But our brand didn’t suffer, because we got way ahead of the curve on the media side.
Advertisement
Even after Delany’s retirement, the realignment wheel has kept spinning with more movement involving major brands than at any time since the early 1990s. In 2021, the SEC accepted Texas and Oklahoma as new members. Last year, in perhaps an even more shocking move, USC and UCLA were accepted for Big Ten membership. Those moves take place in 2024.
The Big 12 replaced Texas and Oklahoma with BYU, UCF, Cincinnati and Houston. The Pac-12’s instability has led the Big 12 to make persistent overtures to multiple western schools, especially Colorado and Arizona. The ACC’s grant of rights should keep its schools from bolting, if only because of the prohibitive cost. But don’t expect a network like ESPN to orchestrate moves such as Clemson, North Carolina or Florida State to the SEC while it owns the ACC’s rights through 2036.
Delany: These networks already have control of these rights at 50 cents on the dollar. Why would they pay somebody more for something they already own?
GO DEEPER
ACC realignment rumblings: How airtight is grant of rights?
As for the Big Ten and SEC, which have emerged as the nation’s most powerful conferences, Delany issued a cautionary note should either contemplate adding more spoils to the realignment war chest. While political factions have interfered in realignment, a dominant Big Ten or SEC could shift government officials from grandstanding to legitimate investigation.
Delany: If I look at the SEC, I see that they should have pretty much everything that they need. I think the Big Ten probably has everything they need. I think the others may be threatened. But I would say if somebody goes beyond 16, whether it’s the Big Ten or SEC, they’ve got to ask them the question about size and scale and market power. The NCAA was found to have had market power in 1984, and their hold on college sports TV was ruled to be excessive. I don’t know where that point is.
Conferences became the natural inheritors of the marketing of the TV rights. I don’t know when that line gets crossed, but I think that — certainly if the Big Ten and the SEC combined, which I’ve never heard any discussion of — I don’t think there’s any doubt that would cross the line. The question is what crosses the line beyond 16 because at a certain point, you’re gonna have more people in your group than you can even play.
I would hope there would be a healthy Pac-12 and a healthy ACC. I’m really happy that there’s a healthy Big East in basketball. I hope there’s a healthy MAC. Everybody doesn’t have to live in a gated community.
Editor’s note: This story is part of The Athletic’s Realignment Revisited series, digging into the past, present and future of conference realignment in college sports. Follow the series and find more conference realignment stories here.
(Top photo of Jim Delany: G Fiume / Maryland Terrapins / Getty Images)
