The team joins fellow football factories Ohio State and Michigan in a conference rife with gridiron tradition.
The Cornhuskers gained as much prestige and more money by joining the Big Ten than the conference did by adding them. Though the Pac-10's shrewdest moves have been nabbing Colorado early and jumping on the bandwagon started by the Big Ten, it figures to be the biggest quantitative winner, with no fewer than six Big 12 teams expected to join the Pacific powers. Delany didn't just successfully woo one of college football's most legendary programs and pave the way for a mouth-watering conference championship game (Soldier Field, anyone?), he managed to expand the conference without Notre Dame, which has long spurned the Big Ten and now finds itself scrambling to keep up with realignment. Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany has become a latter-day Roy Kramer, the former head honcho of the Southeastern Conference, and the catalyst for college sports' last major realignment 20 years ago. Over the next two weeks, the Big 12 is expected to dissolve, and the Pac-10 will most likely gobble up Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State.Ĭonfused? Let's sort it out with a look at the winner and losers of the Great Conference Shakeup of 2010.Īlready flush with the overwhelming success of the Big Ten Network, the conference now gets its long-coveted 12th team. Thanks to Colorado joining the Pac-10 and Nebraska joining the Big Ten in a span of 24 hours, that is the likely scenario in what is expected to be the largest college sports realignment in two decades. What? Nebraska's in the Big Ten? Colorado and Texas are in the Pac-10? The Big 12 doesn't exist anymore? What happened? Casual fans of college sports who tune out the NCAA during the summer are in for a shock come September.