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Jul. 21—These days the “big” is much more accurate than the number in the name of the football conference that is home to Ohio State.
The Buckeyes are still part of the Big Ten, but this summer it is underoing its most extensive membership change since forming in 1896.
With every league member set to be in Indianapolis this week for the league’s annual Football Media Days, here are 10 things you need to know about the new 18-team Big Ten:
1. Change is not new, the but league has never added this many teams at once.
The University of Chicago, Illinois, Minnesota, Northwestern, Purdue, Wisconsin and Michigan came together to form a new conference in 1896.
It grew to 10 teams with the addition of Indiana, Iowa and Ohio State then expanded again with Michigan State in the 1950s (after Chicago de-emphasized sports and left in the ’40s). Penn State joined in early ’90s followed by Nebraska in 2011 and Maryland and Rutgers in 2014.
2. The old name might fit better now.
Because college football originated at Ivy League schools in the east (and East Coast newspapers still dominated the media landscape), what’s now known as the Big Ten was called the Western Conference in its early years.
That moniker might have confused fans of later decades, but there is a whole western wing now with USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington becoming members this year.
3. New members means a new scheduling format.
Of course the league stopped playing a true round-robin schedule decades ago, but the old divisional alignments meant some teams (such as Ohio State and Iowa) faced each other relatively rarely.
To avoid that, the league will be using what it calls the “Flex Protect Plus” model for scheduling because it protects historic rivalries such as Ohio State-Michigan, Iowa-Wisconsin, Minnesota-Wisconsin, etc. while allowing every team to face each other at…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/10-things-know-big-ten-140800603.html
Author : Dayton Daily News, Ohio
Publish date : 2024-07-21 14:08:00
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