Pat Forde does his usually excellent job summarizing the Rutgers dumpster fire and the mess this has created for Jim Delany and the Big Ten.
But he also throws in an interesting nugget that explains some of the motivation behind targeting Rutgers in the first place. Big Ten dictator Jim Delany IS FROM NEW JERSEY, and his obsession with getting the Big Ten exposure in the New York market led him to the mediocre program.
Not surprisingly, people outside of the unimaginative folks at the Big Ten don’t like the new division names that the conference will roll out in 2011. In fact, people hated the new names (Leaders and Legends) so much that Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said the conference might change them.
From ESPN.com:
Delany said during an interview with WGN AM-720 in Chicago on Thursday that the names Legends and Leaders were picked to highlight the conference’s rich history, and that “to a great extent it’s fallen on deaf ears.” Many fans have instead mocked the names and asked officials to reconsider, which Delany said could happen after the first of the year.
“I think we have enough experience with names, and expansion and development of divisions, to know that you never, rarely, get 90 percent approval rating,” Delany said during the interview. “But to get a 90 percent non-approval rating was, you know, really surprising.”
Compounding the issue was the fact that the new Big Ten logo looks like it was done in MS Paint. Delany might want to reconsider doing something about that while he’s busy thinking about new division names.
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