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 [...]

  CHICAGO — The buzzwords you hear on the Big Ten’s new bowl lineup are “national,” “diverse” and “recruiting.” The conference has seemingly achieved national with bowl deals from the Holiday Bowl in San Diego to the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium in New York. The diversity stems from the less sexy word, “fatigue.” Many [...]

IOWA CITY —— The most important development in college athletics this year won’t happen on the football field or basketball arena. Instead it will occur in a federal courtroom. Ed O’Bannon, a former All-American basketball player at UCLA, field an antitrust suit accusing sued the NCAA, its licensing company, all NCAA schools and conferences of [...]

CHICAGO –The Big Ten could be due for a bowl shakeup in its next round of agreements. The league will remain tied to the Rose Bowl and likely the Capital One and Outback bowls. But beyond those, the league could be set for a new round of bowling. “It could be a lot,” Big Ten [...]

IOWA CITY — Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany often uses punctuation — usually a period or a comma — to describe his league’s status on expansion. Now a semicolon seems more appropriate. The Big Ten Conference will move forward in 2014 with 14 members, but officials acknowledge the number could change depending on the college [...]

IOWA CITY — Big Ten officials approved a scheduling philosophy Sunday designed to keep its member schools from scheduling Football Championship Subdivision opponents beginning in 2016. But the guidelines are loose and ambiguous. “It isn’t a matter of not being allowed, the question really is will be there opportunities,” University of Iowa President Sally Mason [...]

Perhaps no Big Ten official had more reason to be miffed about the Big Ten’s initial divisional alignment than Wisconsin Athletics Director Barry Alvarez. Wisconsin was placed opposite from Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska when the Big Ten split into two divisions for the 2011 football season. Wisconsin was scheduled as a permanent cross-divisional rival with [...]

The Big Ten made a big deal out of competitive equality when it split into divisions for the 2011 football season. Competition was the No. 1 component in balancing divisional play, and rightly so. The newest member, Nebraska, was part of an acrimonious geographical split when the Big Eight morphed into the Big 12 back [...]

IOWA CITY — Student-athletes missing extra class time and extended travel have members of Iowa’s President Committee on Athletics concerned about the recent wave of Big Ten expansion. Maryland and Rutgers, both of which are located between 900 and 1,000 miles from Iowa’s campus, accepted Big Ten invitations last week and will join the league [...]