Big 10, Bloated 14

Enough already.  The Big Ten athletic conference, once comprised of universities in a solid block of Midwestern states, is about to expand again.  Maryland and Rutgers will be joining in 2014.  They are making no bones about it -- they want a piece of the Big Ten's money-making pie. 

It started out as the Western Conference in 1896 with seven schools (Illinois, Northwestern, Chicago, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Purdue, Michigan).  Indiana and Iowa joined in 1899, and it could have become the Big Ten in1912 when Ohio State signed up, but Michigan had been kicked out in 1908 (for rules violations) and not readmitted until 1915.  The name Big Ten was first applied in1917.

The first misnomer -- a Big Ten with only nine schools -- came in 1946 when the University of Chicago dropped out, but the conference returned to its full complement in 1950 when Michigan State joined.  And that's how things stood until 1990 when Penn State came in, giving us a Big Ten of eleven.  Then last year Nebraska climbed on board, and in two years, there will be fourteen.

It is interesting that the states wherein the Big Ten/Fourteen schools are located will still be contiguous.  It won't be so neat a little bundle of states as it was when it was just the Big Ten, however -- they will stretch halfway across the country from sea to sea (that is, from New Jersey on the Atlantic Ocean to Nebraska's sea of grass).