So it's official: Maryland will join the Big Ten, and Rutgers is apparently planning to announce their arrival tomorrow. You can follow everything about the Big Ten conference expansion over at the .Com storystream about it that I linked to there, but I figured we need a place to talk about this.
Umm
What?
We know why this makes sense for Maryland - their school is broke - and we know how it makes sense for Rutgers - the Big East is a massive compilation of suck - but nobody can really figure out why the Big Ten is doing this. Does it REALLY make that much extra money? Isn't the league already flowing in cash? If so, does it offput the weirdness of a league that justified Nebraska to the conference on the school's geographical similarity, similar personality and football prowess adding Maryland and Rutgers, which have none of those three things?
I don't know. All I know is that the Maryland-Northwestern Big Ten-ACC matchup just got a lot weirder, and that I'm confused, and that hey at least the trip to Piscataway from New York isn't too far for Northwestern conference games. And hey, women's lacrosse!
Plus, hopefully this means we don't have to talk about the Legends and Leaders divisions anymore.
And everybody's busy crapping on Maryland and Rutgers, so, for good measure: welcome, guys. We don't understand why you're here, but if you're going to be here, let's be friends?