FratHouseSports

That was quick. Just a few days after Big 10 commissioner Jim Delany hinted that they would most likely be having a title game next season when Nebraska joins, today he announced that the game will be held at the Indianapolis Colts Lucas Oil stadium.

Not a bad choice. The stadium is state of the art. All the schools are close (Nebraska is the furthest away at at 640 miles, while Purdue is the closest at only about 65). And the best part about Lucas Oil Stadium is, it’s a dome so the game will be played indoors! Now all the Big 10 has to do is figure out how to align the divisions and redo the logo.

Statement from Jim Delany below…

I’m not sure why the conference have media days. After weeks of nothing happening, finally someone dropped a bombshell today at the Big 10 media day…commissioner Jim Delany announced that next year they’ll be hosting a title game. Cha-Ching!

With addition of Nebraska they’ll have 12 teams starting in 2011, so it only makes since to have a title game. The conference hasn’t decided where to hold the game, but the decision should be made within the next 4 months. The more pressing matter that the conference has on their hands is how to break up the teams into two six team divisions, which they are planning to resolve in this month. Here is how we think the divisions will breakdown.

As you have probably heard by now The Dispatch has somehow gotten their hands on some emails sent from Ohio State president Gordon Gee to Big 10 commissioner Jim Delany, and guess what they are talking about…expansion plans.

The emails are below, but for those of you that like to read the last page of the book first here’s a quick summary: Texas is basically in the middle of a bidding war between the Pac 10, Big 10, and Big 12. The Big 12 wants them to stay, the Pac 10 and Big 10 want them to join their conference. These emails reveal (3) major points:

• The Big 10 has spoken to Texas about joining them
• Because of political reasons the 3 Texas schools (Texas, Texas Tech, Texas A&M) are a package deal, if you take one you’ve got to take the other two
• The Big 10 expansion plans have in fact been fast tracked

Read more…

Today is the 2nd day in a row that someone claimed they had insider info on the Big 10 expansion. Yesterday it was sports radio station 810 WHB saying, “the Big 10 had extended initial offers to join the league to Missouri, Nebraska, Notre Dame and Rutgers“.

But that rumor was shot down quickly by both Nebraska’s Chancellor and Missouri’s AD. Sidenote: we chose to ignore this one because you are a dumbass if you think an AM radio station full of low lifes would be the first to break news this big.

Then today there was another rumor started by The Detroit News, who said they heard “the Big 10 is likely to expand to 16 teams and four divisions with details to be finalized by 2011“. Now apparently like me the Big 10 Commissioner Jim Delany is tired of all the rumors and emailed all of the conference officials today assuring them that no school had been offered a chance to join the league. So nothing to report here.

As it turns out the Big 10 hasn’t accelerated expansion plans as had been reported or has it. Basically all Big 10 commissioner Jim Delany told us today was that he was in fact evaluating teams to potentially join the Big 10 and talking to the bigwigs at various schools about the expansion, but he wasn’t going to talk about the details with anyone.

The truth is we’re not going to know anything for sure until Delany holds a press conference and says, “here are the teams joining the Big 10″. And the fact nobody knows when that day will come means there’s going to be plenty more rumors and an insane amount of speculation until then. So you can either chose to join in and gossip about the endless possibilities or tune it all out…and we’ll be here to separate fact from fiction.