CHICAGO — The Big Ten’s next realignment shifts 180 degrees from its last divisional layout, and the league’s athletics directors are happy with the change of direction. This fall marks the third and final year of the Legends/Leaders experiment, where the Big Ten split into football divisions based on historical competitive balance. The geography was awkward, [...]

The Big Ten’s seemingly perpetual wheel of expansion has decimated the league’s football scheduling process. The 2011 and 2012 schedules vanished with the addition of Nebraska. Three seasons worth of schedules, two of which were released with great interest last spring, also went up in smoke when the league chose to add Rutgers and Maryland [...]

As a schedule-maker, you’ll never make everyone happy when you’re scheduling teams to play eight conference games in a 14-team league. You can’t. Unless you give a team eight home games and none on the road. But that probably wouldn’t fly with the rest of the conference. The Big Ten released its 2014 football schedule [...]

Big Ten expansion has brought rivalry football back to its final weekend. Each school received a season-ending rivalry assignment for the 2014 league schedule, which was released today by the league office. The schedule was revamped to accommodate newcomers Rutgers and Maryland, who join the Big Ten in 2014. The league also shifted into East [...]

CHICAGO — Expansion talk has dulled to a whisper at the Big Ten meetings, a complete flip from the recent past. After adding Nebraska in 2011 and accepting Maryland and Rutgers as new members in 2014, the Big Ten appears content at the moment to stay at 14 members. It’s possible the rest of the [...]

CHICAGO — Any changes to the Big Ten’s basketball foundation will be subtle, not forceful, Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany said Wednesday. “There’s no appetite for regional divisions in basketball,” Delany said. “I think 18 games is about right. I thought this year, as enjoyable as the season was, as competitive it was and as [...]

  OK, the headline was an exaggeration. But the Big Ten bowl lineup is about to get a makeover, starting with the 2014 season. And Mikey likes it. Because it puts all sorts of bowls, and lots of ever-changing possibilities, in play. That’s good for a sportswriter in November. Great, in fact. If you think [...]

CHICAGO – These Big Ten May meetings took on a life of their own in 2010 when the conference was in the midst of expansion. The meetings are still going strong as far as news cycles go, with the B1G’s bowl lineup and future schedules being among the topics on Tuesday. Expansion wasn’t a topic. [...]

CHICAGO — The Jell-O mold of the Big Ten’s future football lineup is taking formation by the minute. An industry source said the Holiday Bowl and Big Ten are close to finishing a six-year agreement. The bowl will pick second in the Pac-12 and third in the Big Ten after the playoff and access bowls make [...]

CHICAGO — Iowa still has a few holes on its schedule for the upcoming basketball season, coach Fran McCaffery said. “We’ve got to schedule at least one more game, maybe two,” McCaffery said from the Big Ten spring meetings at the Sofitel Hotel. “We might go on the road. We’ve got a lot of things [...]