In 1896, a group of administrators from Midwestern colleges met in Chicago to settle the rules for what was then called the Western Conference, which would later be known as the Big Ten. They agreed in writing, according to an account in the next day’s Chicago Tribune, “to keep inter-collegiate athletic contests within their proper […]
Deciding what’s a “football school” or a “basketball school” is an inexact science. Longstanding tradition — not wins and losses — often determines whether most fans’ hearts belong to the gridiron or the hardwood. Culturally, Florida State didn’t stop being a football school during its recent stretch of substandard performance, nor did Michigan adopt the […]
If it were up to me — and I grew up in East Lansing, Michigan, where you could literally hear the roar of the crowd from Spartan Stadium in my backyard on game days — the Big Ten would have stopped expanding after 12 teams. Penn State, added in 1990, and Nebraska, in 2011, were […]