On realignment

If the Big Ten is going to expand, and they are, let's do it right. If that sounds like I have skin in the game, maybe I do and maybe I don't. When you've grown up breathing the air and hearing the language of midwestern college sports, it feels like it all matters deeply, because it does. Herewith some gut responses.

1. Keep the name. The 'Big Ten' brand transcends the actual number of universities in the conference, so don't get hung up on 11, 12, 14, or whatever the business arrangement becomes. It's the Big Ten, and it shall remain the Big Ten.

2. Screw Notre Dame. It would be like marrying the biggest prima donna in the senior class. Better off without her.

3. Organize the expanded conference into divisions based on geography AND history AND economics AND mob psychology. What is this, social studies? Yes, as a matter of fact, it is.

Now make a graphic organizer comparing the market size, football bowl appearances, basketball tournament record, academic research funding, and level of alumni fanaticism in each of the following:

East: Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State, Indiana, Purdue.

West: Northwestern, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska.

4. While you're at it, add Missouri and Kansas. Not right away, because the Big Ten doesn't make impulsive decisions like those other, lesser, mercenary enterprises to the East, West, and South that lack our sense of history, decorum, stodginess. Hrmph. Give the current configuration 20 or 30 years to make sure its a prudent move, then see if Missouri and Kansas are worthy. By that time, the Big Pac WAC Tex Mex 18 will have morphed into any number of Frankenleagues.

Come to think of it, that recent interloper Michigan State, which joined just the other day in the 1950s, is really still on probation, and the jury is definitely still out on this new outfit from State College.

5. Not Pittsburgh, not Syracuse, not West Virginia. Not Connecticut, not Rutgers! Let's not get carried away. Okay, maybe Pittsburgh and/or Syracuse, at least they're not coastal, but wait until some time in midcentury. Or Kentucky! Why is Kentucky in the SEC anyway? But no.