The Madness of Jim Delany
By Kevin Ross
July 26, 2012; Chicago, IL, USA; Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany speaks during the Big Ten media day at the McCormick Place Convention Center. Mandatory Credit: Reid Compton-USA TODAY Sports
Earlier this week while perusing my Twitter timeline, I noticed a slew of conference realignment jokes made by our own BanditRef directed toward Big 10 commissioner Jim Delany. It usually takes a special kind of stupid to provoke the ire of the Bandit, so I figured that Delany must not have been satisfied with adding football powers Rutgers and Maryland to his already formidable stable of gridiron giants such as Indiana, Purdue, Illinois, Northwestern and Minnesota.
It turns out that the ever-wily Delany has his eye on a much bigger prize: Johns Hopkins University.
I must admit I was taken aback when I read that Hopkins was the target, since the Blue Jays are a Division Three program. If I didn’t happen to have a good friend who played defensive back at Hopkins I would not have even known that the school had a team.
It appears that Delany’s reasoning for pursuing Johns Hopkins is actually to beef up the B1G’s lacrosse credentials, which makes about as much sense as adding a Division Three football team. Nothing against lacrosse, it looks like it is a lot of fun to play and I wish it had been available in the part of the country where I grew up. A revenue sport it is not, however.
The only rationale for such a puzzling development is that when Jadeveon Clowney hit a Michigan running back so hard this past New Year’s Day that his helmet flew completely off, it caused a chain reaction that caused the entire B1G to go insane.
Let’s journey down the rabbit hole of madness and speculate on which schools might be next on Jim Delany’s wish list. After all, if Rutgers and Maryland and possibly Johns Hopkins are in bounds then nothing is too crazy to consider.
The Connecticut School of Broadcasting. Coupled with the Rutgers acquisition, the ConnBroad could provide the B1G with a stranglehold on the New York City television market. Seizing the largest market in the country would be a coup de tat for the conference, never mind the fact that the vast majority of New Yorkers do not care about college football, which is B1G logic in a nutshell. As a bonus, the Connecticut School of Broadcasting’s incessant airing of its infomercials would dovetail nicely with the Big 1o Network.
Hamburger University. This prestigious culinary institute is located in Chicago so synergies abound, and besides, who doesn’t love a Quarter Pounder with Cheese?
Boise State University. Just kidding; nobody takes you seriously Boise, go back to missing extra points.
Gallaudet University. The nation’s leading university serving deaf students would spare B1G fans from having to hear the SEC! SEC! SEC! chant. All kidding aside, the fact that a university exists to better the lives of kids with hearing impairments is a pretty awesome thing about our country.
Auburn University. Since Auburn is incapable of beating an SEC team, they would fit in splendidly with the B1G, and the chance to add the greater Opelika television market does not come along every day. And by television market, I mean tube televisions with coat hanger and aluminum foil antennas.
The offseason is merciless for college football fans. Fortunately we have Jim Delany and the B1G to keep us laughing until autumn.