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BIG TEN CONFERENCE MEDIA DAYS

August 2, 2010

Jim Delany

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

COMMISSIONER DELANY: Nice to see everybody as the summer comes to a conclusion and everybody gets ready for college football. The '9-'10 year was an energetic, productive year in many ways, not only on the playing fields and courts and everything, but with regard to change in membership.
We needed to have a good bowl season last year. We had it. We won a couple BCS games and beat some top-quality teams, and I think that was a good step in the right direction.
We continue to play outstanding competition. This year we'll have three SEC games on New Year's Day leading into the Rose Bowl. We'll have a couple of new games in Texas. And we'll also have an important game in Arizona as well as in Detroit.
So we're really excited about the bowl format. The bowl partnerships we have, we think we had great ones. We had to give up a couple to get a couple new ones. And I think with five games on New Year's Day, it's going to be a great competitive lineup for our fans.
College football continues to grow, and I think that's one of the really interesting story lines. It's controversial, because of the BCS, but it's also incredibly successful. If you look at the growth in attendance around the country, when you look at the television deals that were struck by the SEC and the ACC and the efforts that the Pac-10 is doing to raise brand awareness, you know, it's pretty clear to me that regular season college football is maybe as healthy as it ever has been with CBS, NBC, FOX, ABC, ESPN, BTN, all following these games week to week.
While a lot of people would like to see a more robust NFL postseason, it's undoubtedly true that college football is at one of the more popular points in its history and continues to grow.
When we announced our effort or interest in studying expansion in December of 2009, we expected to have a strong media interest. Didn't really expect it to be maintained throughout the winter and the spring. But it was an interesting phenomena, and I think those who participate in it probably feel the same way. We had a plan on how we wanted to go about studying expansion. We were able to do that.
It required some discipline and some focus. But our athletic directors and our presidents, ultimately our faculty and provosts, also participated in that decision-making process.
Like the BTN and some of the other larger initiatives we've undertaken, we went into it together and we came out of it together. We went into it in a way -- it was a serious effort to study the proposition without making any a priori decisions, but we came out of it with Nebraska as a new member of the Big Ten 20 years after Penn State was added. Penn State was added in the first week of June 1990. And in 2010, on June 11th, Nebraska became the 12th member of the Big Ten.
Both institutions represent and have a relationship with the Big Ten that I think combines iconic brands, broad-based programs, interest in honest competition, and both members of the AAU.
So when I look at the addition of Penn State and addition of Nebraska, I feel like in both cases the Big Ten became a better conference when Penn State joined it and has been over the last 20 years, and with Nebraska joining I think we're even a stronger conference as a result.
A lot of people wanted to know why we couldn't get it done faster. In fact, we went faster than we thought we were going to go, because Nebraska had some decisions it had to make, which required us to make some decisions that we were prepared to make. But, quite honestly, I thought it would happen in a slightly later time frame.
With regard to the future. When I talked to our presidents on June 11th, the day that Nebraska applied to the Big Ten, the day that the Big Ten accepted Nebraska as our 12th member, I asked our presidents how they wanted to couch future membership efforts on our part.
We had announced a 12- to 18-month study in December of '09. And they said, number one, full-speed ahead with regard to the integration, transition of Nebraska into the Big Ten, prepare the schedules, et cetera.
And, number two, we'll pause but we are not necessarily turning our back on expansion. We said we wanted to study it for 12 to 18 months. And we're only about six months into that study.
So I think what we've done is we've paused to spend the time necessary. Our staff has been in Lincoln. I've been to Lincoln twice. Tom Osborne is here today working with the other athletic directors on divisional structures.
I can see those studies taking weeks, maybe not months, but certainly weeks. And I expect when that's done a championship venue will be identified, a television network that televises the championship game will be identified, a new logo will have been prepared; that we will then come back with our presidents later in the fall and they will then make a determination what, if any, further steps would be taken in that study.
But we're not actively involved in any expansion initiatives at this point. But they did make clear to me that the 12- to 18-month time period remain the time period notwithstanding the addition of Nebraska.
But all of our energies, 100 percent of our energies at the present time are focused in on helping Nebraska transition into the conference.
A couple of other issues which I think we have our eye on, three years ago the NCAA Rules Committee put an increased focus on protecting defenseless players, whether they be quarterbacks or whiteouts. We've tried to be cooperative in that area.
There's a postgame video review we went through last year, and we'll go through again this year. We've had a number of NCAA officials as well as NFL officials to try to make the rules better, define them better. Bill Carollo has met with our coaches and our officials to make sure that the game can be as safe as it can be.
There's continuing research, epidemiological nature, to determine the effect of hits to the head on players who play the game at the grade school, high school, college, and professional level. We'll continue to be informed by them.
There's a continuing study on making the game as safe as it can as a result of changed equipment, and we also want to make sure we have the best rules and the application of the rules to protect the players. So we're going to make that continuing part of how we go forward.
So it's been a very exciting year, I think a productive year, a year in which we made a historic decision to expand the conference. We feel great about it. I presume we'll have a championship game. I think that's the direction we're going in. And I hope that within the next 30 to 45 days we'll have a divisional structure identified.
So let me stop there and take some questions.
THE MODERATOR: Questions?

Q. Once expansion regains momentum with you and the presidents, how important will it be to look east?
COMMISSIONER DELANY: That's presuming that the presidents want to do more. I think what they wanted to do was to study thoroughly the opportunities and the options, the risks and the rewards.
And our time frame was changed, quite honestly, when the Big 12 wanted a commitment. And so we moved forward in a way that we thought was appropriate.
And I asked at that time, as I mentioned earlier, how do you want us to proceed? And they said, We said 12 to 18 months; that's what our standing statement will be. Work hard to get Nebraska in, and then we'll discuss it in December.
So I can't presume that they're going to do anything beyond that. So whether it's east or west, north or south, I probably wouldn't comment on that. So they'll make a judgment. I'll see them in the fall and then I'll see them in December. And we'll get some guidance from them at that time.

Q. Traditional rivalries are the lifeblood of Big Ten in many ways. Particularly Ohio State-Michigan. What do you think has to happen to protect the Ohio State-Michigan game from losing some luster with all this change?
COMMISSIONER DELANY: I think that's exactly right. I think the Ohio State-Michigan game is one of the -- not only the great games in the Big Ten but one of the great national games. We have other games that are very important also.
As we're looking at these issues, you know, we think that having -- if you're going to have two divisions and the divisional champions are going to get a chance to play for the championship, that divisions need to be as balanced as they can possibly be made.
And I think competitive fairness from the perspective of the coach, the player, the fan, media, it's got to be seen in those divisions. But they also have to be constructed in a wise way that does everything we can within that first principle or consistent with that first principle to preserve traditional rivals.
I don't know how many trophy games. We may have 15 trophy games, rivalry games that are in that same number. We'll need to do everything we can to preserve those. Whether or not we'll be 100 percent able to preserve every trophy game or every rivalry game, I'll tell you we'll go to great length to make sure that the tradition and rivalries are respected.
I've seen other expansions where expand your conference, you don't increase the number of games, you play each other less. And I think one of the great things about being in a conference is you're in it because you want to be in it. Penn State wanted to be in it. Nebraska wanted to be in it. We want them in it.
So what we have to do is do everything we can to make sure that we play each other more, not less. And I think that will be very serious consideration to get to a ninth conference game so we can play each other more.
We probably can't do it immediately, but I think eventually we'll get there because, as I say, a conference is about playing each other more, not less.

Q. Can you just go over what divisional alignments are on the table, what's being discussed today and tomorrow?
COMMISSIONER DELANY: Right now we're just talking about the principles that we would look at. And I think that competitive equality or competitive balance is an important principle. I think preservation of traditional rivalry games is an important consideration.
I think another important consideration is geographic -- we've got integrated rivalries, integrated markets. We've got fans that like to travel. We have some stadiums that are sold out. We have other stadiums that aren't. People like to travel to ones that are not. I think there's a geographic consideration. And so those are probably the three things that need to be balanced.
And there are a lot of different ways you could do it. I'm sure if you gave people this opportunity to look at these three principles and then divide up, you could probably get 10, 12, 15, 20.
After you look at the data -- and one of the things we're really looking at is all of the data, just like you would look at it in a basketball committee room, where you're looking at national championships, you're looking at BCS games, conference championships, conference won-and-loss records, nonconference won-and-loss records, nonconference records that are influenced, how many BCS opponents did you play, Sagarin ratings, composite BCS ratings.
So all of those data points will be absorbed by our athletic directors. We think probably the appropriate time frame for measurement probably starts around 1993 when Penn State came into the conference.
We moved from 95 to 85 scholarships back in those years. It was the beginning of the Coalition, Alliance, BCS Continuum. And we think that's sort of the modern Big Ten. So we're looking at that 17-year stretch and trying to assess where institutions fall out, what they've accomplished and using that sort of as the basis to determine what would be a balanced and fair, competitive segmentation of divisions.

Q. What are the chances that you would rotate that championship game site as opposed to having it in one place? And are there pluses and minuses of playing the game outdoors?
COMMISSIONER DELANY: One of the things we've got going is we're trying to do these divisionals, trying to move forward with the transition, trying to identify a championship site and then dealing with the rights to the game.
So there's a lot to do over the next 120 days. I think you can see why all of our energies are focused to make sure that 2011 -- that we're ready for the 2011, 2012 season.
I have not given -- we haven't had a lot of discussion, and I haven't given a lot of thought. Obviously I've talked to people who represent different cities and different venues. Some indoor, some outdoor. To be honest with you, I'm not sure whether in the next 90 to 120 days we're going to have the time to do what I would describe as a fair due diligence process to visit a half dozen venues.
One of the thoughts that I've had is about whether or not I will go the our athletic directors and presidents and say something like with all that we have on our plate today, would we be wise to simply identify a site for one year, do a good, solid, arm's-length contract, let us get it done, and then this spring go out and spend more time with more venues and more cities both with respect to the men's basketball tournament and also the football championship game.
I just think that the selection, the philosophy, the economics around a championship venue may require more focus, more focused energy than we have right at this moment. So rather than try to do something in a short time frame without adequate time to study, I think it might make some sense to defer that.
Now, if our athletic directors and presidents say we want you to undertake a six or seven-venue due diligence RFP process, we'll do that. But I'm not sure at this time -- and I'll probably have to figure that out in the next ten days or so talking to our athletic directors and presidents. I just don't know the answer to your question now.

Q. Is there a possibility when you're looking at the divisions that you'll be looking at football and maybe doing it strictly looking at programs and the history of them, and then when you look at the nonrevenue sports perhaps, different divisional lineups, more geographical, along those lines?
COMMISSIONER DELANY: That could be the case. We've got some people looking at the divisions. Rick Boyages is talking to our basketball coaches as well as our athletic directors. I'm not sure divisions make sense in basketball. I know some people have them, some don't.
The reason you have them in football is you'll have a championship game, and you need to have a divisional champion to do that. In basketball we have a tournament where everybody gets to go. And I'm sure that will be maintained. We have an NCAA tournament where we put four, five, six, seven teams in a year, so they have those national opportunities.
I don't know what a divisional configuration does in women's and men's basketball that would be an improvement on what we're doing.
With regard to the Olympic sports, sometimes they play each other round-robin, even double round-robin, and sometimes they only have a season-end competition. They don't have any regular season. I think there's an opportunity in some of those cases maybe to create some regular season competition that would be efficient, geographically sensible.
So I don't think that what we decide in football has to be binding on other sports. I think they have to sort of look at what makes sense for themselves. And that's being looked at now.

Q. Beyond the criteria that you've already set out for the divisions and how to divide them, what considerations as sort of the profile or the popularity of the programs, how does that matter? Specifically, is there anything that you would see a problem with Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State being in one division together when those three programs have been sort of the three most high-profile programs in the league over the past several years?
COMMISSIONER DELANY: I think when we get finished looking at the data, the data will sort itself and we'll be looking at which teams cluster together based on their performance. And we would be inclined to try to create and move teams into divisions where the east division is as powerful as the other divisions.
I don't want to make a statement about Northwestern and Minnesota and Iowa, nor would I want to make one about Michigan, Michigan State, and Ohio State for that matter.

Q. Dan Beebe said last week he had a call in to you about doing a straight name trade if you could get it through waivers. Have you given consideration of that? Or is the Big Ten the Big Ten regardless of number?
COMMISSIONER DELANY: I think the Big Ten is the Big Ten regardless of the number. By the way, Beebe did not call me on that one. And, by the way, one of the amazing things about the world that we live in, from a commissioner's perspective, is that Dan followed me. I was at the Ohio Valley Conference for ten years, and then he followed me and he was there for 13 years.
And I recommended to Kevin Weiberg, who was then commissioner of the Big 12 and my former deputy, Dan to be his number two person and supported Dan to become the commissioner of the Big 12. And so, you know, that's why the things, the expansion, tensions are hard on fans and schools and the college community in general. But they're also hard on people who are friends.
And one of the things I can tell you is that Dan and I are still very close friends. And I'm very proud of how he represented his conference and how he fought for their survival. And I told him that. I said, I don't know if it will all hang together for you or not. But I have a tremendous amount of respect on how he represented his institutions, and at the beginning of the process we tried to create a process that would allow us to communicate with each other and maintain respect for each other.
And to that extent I think we made some progress as compared with other processes perhaps in the past that really made it very hard for friends who are collaborators on certain days and competitors on other days to sort of move forward together.
But Dan is a good friend and a colleague who I respect tremendously.

Q. How big a player do you see Notre Dame as in the future of expansion?
COMMISSIONER DELANY: I'm sorry, I missed the first part of the question.

Q. How big of a player do you foresee Notre Dame as a player in the future expansion?
COMMISSIONER DELANY: I don't see them as a player, really. I think Jack Swarbrick has been consistent from the beginning about their commitment to the Big East and their commitment to independence. And so I see Notre Dame playing in the Big East for many years to come. And I see Notre Dame playing as an independent in football for many years to come. So I take at face value Jack's statements in that regard.

Q. Commissioner, when looking at expansion, just previously and in the future as well, do you guys take into account the health and well-being of the NCAA and other conferences in any of the decisions you may make?
COMMISSIONER DELANY: I think that the NCAA is the NCAA. They manage our championships and they provide an umbrella under which we make rules. Their involvement in expansion is minimal to none. And that was true for the last 20 years. I think there have been 255 changes in Division I, and 72 or 73 in Division I-A.
And, to be honest with you, I think their dog in the fight or stake about whether an institution desires to be in another conference or that conference desires to have a member that wants to join it, I don't think it's an NCAA matter at all. I think it's a matter between an institution's desire to compete against certain institutions and to collaborate with other institutions.

Q. Jim, in order to preserve some of those rivalries and create appealing match-ups for television, do you anticipate going to a nine-game football schedule in the future?
COMMISSIONER DELANY: I do. I think that would be really helpful to us. I think there's a consensus among our athletic directors to do that. How quickly we can do that, we can't do that in the next year or two. I'm hopeful we can make progress in years three and four. Hopefully it's not more than that. But it could be depending upon contractual commitments. It would have to be modified.
But I think it would be really good. I think to play each other more is what our fans want, and I think that's what the athletes want. And to be honest with you, the nonconference schedules that we've seen develop as we've added a 12th member have not been good for I don't think the fan base nor have they necessarily been embraced like they might be embraced by the players. I think players want to compete. And I think fans like to see good competition.
So I understand why things happen that way, and I think a ninth game at this juncture would serve everybody's interests.

Q. Do you think it's important to keep Michigan and Ohio State in the same division?
COMMISSIONER DELANY: I don't want to prejudge it. That's why our athletic directors are going to be meeting. I think you could do -- you could conceive of a divisional setup that had them in the same division. I think you could equally conceive of a divisional setup that had them in different divisions. I think the important thing is that they play.

Q. With Nebraska coming in, a lot of people talk about that being the fourth team in the league that is among the top ten all-time winningest. But, to clarify, you're talking about as far as competitive balance, since '93, you're looking at wins and losses over the last 17 years or whatever rather than looking at that long view of all-time programs.
COMMISSIONER DELANY: Nebraska has won three national championships in that time frame. So they've pretty good in that time frame; they were pretty good before that time frame.

Q. Because of the finality of the decisions that are going to be made as far as division alignment, when you pick your seat at the table, that's where you're simply going to be until maybe expansion happens again. How are the discussions amongst the ADs? Do things get intense during this period because, once you're in that division or once you guys set those divisions, they don't change?
COMMISSIONER DELANY: We've had -- we probably had about -- we actually -- we did some hypothetical planning before Nebraska was a member, when we were preparing to think about expansion, because I don't want to see the conference expand and not have any idea what it means, with the logistical challenges that growing larger.
So we went through some hypothetical, just like when we experimented with replay, we experimented with it hypothetically before we did it actually.
And so they're aware of when you press over here, you know you have to give over there. So they know how the ying and the yang works.
So I encouraged them to be patient, to really speak from their heart on what they want, to identify the principles that we should be following and that we should try to be adhering. There's no principle which is absolute.
And there are lots of times you have two principles that are in collision and you simply have to make a determination about how you're going to resolve it.
But if you know our athletic directors, you know that there's a high degree of mutual respect. They've done a lot of really important things together. They're great competitors but they also know how to collaborate on big issues. In fact, it's one of the most gratifying elements of the job that I have is to work with the people in this conference, because they take conference very seriously. It's rare.
I mean, I could tell you, I can't remember a 6-5 vote. We don't have 6-5 votes. We try to figure out what it is we want to do and we try to figure out how to get there. So I'll probably encourage them to make sure that they really state how they feel but that they're not rushed to closure. Everyone has given this a lot of thought.
I expect it's going to take more than one meeting and probably more than three or four meetings before we get where we want to get to, but I think we'll get there when we walk out. I think everybody will be together.

Q. How does the possibility of further expansion affect the discussions you guys have over divisions now if it does at all?
COMMISSIONER DELANY: Well, we have to go ahead. Nebraska is going to be with us next year. And we don't know about the future. A lot of it will depend upon the direction we get from our presidents in December. So we're full-speed ahead with the transition integration of Nebraska, the creation of divisions, the selection of a venue, the identification of a television partner, and then the scheduling of all the other sports.
So I'm not giving any thought to other expansion as we work through the establishment of divisions in football schedules next year.

Q. To be clear, do you expect there to be a championship game next year or the year after?
COMMISSIONER DELANY: I expect there to be a championship game in '11, December of '11.

Q. Jim, a few offsite games this year, Ford Field, Wrigley Field, Landover, unusual for the Big Ten. Talk about the pluses and minuses what you see going forward.
COMMISSIONER DELANY: Sort of interesting, there's something that's going on maybe in sports in general in professional sports that are taking games to other continents, other countries. In college sports, Jerry Jones has a stadium in Dallas, there's a kickoff game in Atlanta, we're playing in Wrigley Field. NHL looking at an outdoor game each week.
So I think people are interested in marketing their game, marketing their sport into other areas of the country and to other countries in the world. And there's some really unique venues. Wrigley is one of them. There are other ones, too.
I think people look at those as opportunities to create something unique that will appeal to the fans. So it's happening to us a little bit. And you see it happening around the country for other reasons.

Q. With the talk moving to nine games, every other year going to create five road games for teams, are you afraid that some athletic departments will push back a little either from the loss of revenue of that game or that you may see a decline in the some of those high-end home-and-home series?
COMMISSIONER DELANY: I think it will put a pressure on a number of areas. I think it might affect some of the schools that are now scheduling quality opponents on a home and away basis. We're going to try to work with them so they retain those high-quality opponents, because I think the fans like it. Certainly the television partner likes it. And it certainly helps us participate at a high level in college football. But I think a lot of it has to do with trying to fit in the 5-4 into the rotation of those home and aways.
But I think we've had -- I don't know if it's been quite a decade how long we've been at 12 games. But I think in some ways we've pushed it about as far as we can because the guarantees that are going to schools for no return games are getting more and more expensive, and in many cases I'm not sure that our fans appreciate those games the same way they do a conference game.
So I think that there's a good consensus among our athletic directors; we've sort of yet to decide when that will happen. But I hope it happens in two and no more than four years, and we might need to help them with some of their existing contractual commitments.

Q. For so many years at this event people bring up expansion, and you would say it's on the back burner. What are a few of the factors for why at this particular point in time there was the momentum to end up making it happen?
COMMISSIONER DELANY: I think it has to do with the fact that if you're responsible for running or leading a conference, you know, you have to look at what's happening around you.
As you know, it was not only Coach Paterno but other coaches who felt like a championship game playing in December would be good for us. I said at the time and I would say now that's not reason enough to expand. But certainly he raised that, and I think he raised it in an appropriate way.
I think that many of the conferences have gotten comfortable with a 12-team configuration. We had been so absorbed in 2006 and '7 and '8 and '9 on launching -- founding and launching and then going through the distribution challenges that we didn't really have time to deal with membership issues. Penn State had been with us for almost two decades.
And so we just thought it was time to study it. And that's what we announced. And, to be honest with you, the speculation and the coverage was enormous, but that wasn't enough to make us do something that we didn't think would be good.
We took our time and in the process of taking our time, you know, we learned more about a variety of institutions. And then an opportunity arose -- I don't know that it would have arisen otherwise, but it certainly arose in the Big 12 where Nebraska had to make a choice. We had to make a response to their interests. And based on the due diligence we had done, we saw incredible fit, breadth of program and breadth of competitiveness and commitment to equity and AAU membership and geographic contiguity, and we thought it was a great opportunity.
And I wouldn't have known that that would have been our decision when we started in December of '09. But after completing what I think was a pretty respectful and thorough process, it achieved unanimous support by our presidents, by our athletic directors, and by our provosts.
So I think that -- and they can only play eight conference games. They could have 11 because everybody wants to play them. So I just told them they can only have eight and not everybody can play Nebraska.
But I think it's going to be a tremendous addition to the conference and tremendous -- will make us a better conference over the next 50 years.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much.

End of FastScripts

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