Many of you who grew up with the Terps as founding members of the ACC are familiar with that history-how they joined North Carolina, North Carolina State, Wake Forest, Duke, Clemson, and South Carolina to break away from the Southern Conference in 1953 to form the Atlantic Coast Conference. Virginia, which had been independent since 1937, joined a few months later. The ACC was the second breakaway conference birthed from the Southern. You may have heard of the other one, the Southeastern Conference, which was established in 1932.
(You can discuss this on the BSL Board here.)
The Big 10, however, has much more organic beginnings and goes back a long, long time ago in a galaxy far away…
Sorry, wrong origin story. As I was saying, the Big 10 is actually the oldest Division I conference. It was established in 1896 with the catchy name of The Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives. The original schools were Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Northwestern, Purdue, Michigan (which replaced Lake Forest College following the initial meeting) and the University of Chicago. The conference quickly became known as the Western Conference, because back in the late 1890’s, the current Midwest was considered the west-most western states we have now were still territories.
Indiana and Iowa joined in 1899, and shortly thereafter the conference became known as the Big Nine-back then they apparently did math a lot better than they do now. Interestingly, Michigan was kicked out of the conference in 1907 for violating league rules. Ohio State signed up in 1912, then Michigan was readmitted in 1917, giving birth to the Big Ten.
You may have noticed I mentioned the University of Chicago as one of the founding members. Their football program (remember, the major conferences have ALWAYS been driven by football) was quite the big deal in those early years. Their coach was Amos Alonzo Stagg, who coached there from 1892-1932 and won 314 games during an era when seasons only consisted of seven or eight games.
Stagg was one of the greatest innovators in the history of football, introducing many aspects of the game we now take for granted. He was the first coach to use a huddle, a center snap, a playbook, an onside kick, a lateral, uniform numbers, forward pass, man in motion, hip pads, and many other ideas. Stagg left for the College of the Pacific in 1933, and Chicago dropped football in 1939. By 1946, the school had deemphasized sports and withdrew from the Big Ten.
Stories I found indicated that several schools were candidates to replace Chicago. One of them, Nebraska, had applied for membership in 1900 and 1911 and were rejected. They missed out this time too, as did, perhaps, Pittsburgh, Iowa State, Marquette (they had a football team back then), and Notre Dame, although I’m sure the Fighting Irish turned down the Big 10. The winner was Michigan State, which joined in 1949. I bet you thought they were an original member-go ahead and win a bar bet on that one. The conference was not legally known as the Big Ten until 1987, when they registered the name as a, try not to laugh, non-profit corporation.
Now that the league was officially the Big Ten, it was clearly time to screw that up and add a school. They wasted little time, adding Penn State in 1990. As far back as 1993, there were thoughts of expanding to 14 schools, considering Kansas, Missouri, and Rutgers (I had no idea there consideration of Rutgers went that far back). When the Big Eight picked up four Texas schools from the dissolved Southwest Conference in 1996 to become the Big Twelve (which now has ten schools) the Big Ten settled into its eleven school lineup (math, people, math!).
Nebraska finally joined the conference in 2011, followed by Maryland and Rutgers in 2014. Maryland became only the second school to leave the ACC. South Carolina was the first, bailing in 1971 in response to the ACC raising the bar for academic requirements. Veteran sports writer Bob Ryan has called this “the dumbest realignment move in college history.” Hard to argue with that.
So we now prepare for the fourth season under the current conference alignment. The ACC is now an amalgam of the ACC and Big East. The school that replaced Maryland, Louisville, has become a cesspool of everything that is wrong with college athletics, in my opinion. North Carolina, a bastion of virtue, has been under investigation for years regarding an academic scandal. When I pine away for the good old days of the ACC, I remind myself that there are probably fans of schools still there doing the same thing.
The announcement of the Big Ten conference basketball schedule last week was a reminder of what I find to be one of the most stupid results of the Big Ten’s eastern expansion. The conference tournament is being held at Madison Square Garden after being held in DC last year. Why is that stupid, you ask? Because the Big East, what’s left of it, still has a lock on the Garden for its tournament, so the Big Ten had to have theirs ONE WEEK EARLY to get into the Garden. That has pushed two conference games for each team into early December, which doesn’t really bother me, but now teams could have over two weeks between their last conference tournament game and the beginning of the NCAA tournament. That seems really stupid to me, even if the money grab is successful. I’m sure I’ll have lots, lots more to say about that later on.
That brings us up to the current day and the end of this column. Don’t forget, you can follow me on Twitter @The_BIGBlog and reach me by e-mail at big10blog@gmail.com. I also hang out on the message boards, mostly in the University of Maryland & NCAA sections, where I periodically post links to BIG news stories you might find interesting.
Football season is soon upon us, so my next column will take a look ahead at a full slate of opening week games. Also, it seems that there are other sports being played in the fall besides football, and I’ll take a brief look at how the conference stacks up in those sports. Until then, live large and have a BIG week everyone!
Jim Johnson spent most of his life in Maryland, growing up with the Orioles, the Colts, Terps, and later Ravens. He started his sports writing career as “The Courtmaster,” covering the Terps and ACC hoops and was a frequent guest on Bob Haynie’s old WNST show and other sports talk across the region. He is currently in his second run at BSL. After previously covering Maryland and Big Ten Football, he now writes about the NFL, primarily the action in the AFC North. Jim covers both current and historic stories, seeking perspective and having fun in the process.