My first response to the news Jim Delany is stepping down as Big Ten commissioner next summer: Those are some enormous shoes to fill.
My second: Can he take Rutgers with him?
That about captures the legacy of the man who shepherded a league that gained the world, but lost a piece of its soul.
Delany came to the Big Ten in 1989, back in simpler times, when Ohio State and Michigan might have played a dozen games on TV between them and the Midwestern conference still folded into the creases of the map.
He boldly moved the league forward, stretching its footprint from the plains (Nebraska) to the valley (Penn State) to the sewer (sorry, Rutgers), launching a lucrative league network, and bringing in piles of money.
Fresh off brokering a six-year, $2.6 billion deal with ESPN and Fox, the conference distributes $52 million annually to each of its members — a per-school windfall equal to the athletic department budgets at Toledo and Bowling Green ... combined.
The league is richer than gout. Strong and stable, too.
So credit where due.
Yet for all of Delany’s clout as a power broker, the 71-year-old former lawyer could be maddening, too.
He is a man of contradictions, a stuck-in-his-ways visionary, an idealist and a glutton.
How do you reconcile the playoff obstructionist who waxes on about the nobility of amateurism — opposing so much as players being able to make money off their names — with the Gordon Gekko figure who would expand to Mars if it meant the TV execs would give him the moon.
How do you explain putting league football games on Friday nights?
Or moving the conference basketball tournament to New York and Washington?
Or the money-grab additions of Maryland and Rutgers in 2014?
Tradition mattered, until it didn’t. For me, the shotgun marriage with Rutgers was and remains the heights of Big Ten arrogance — a strong-arm play to foist its cable network on to the nation’s largest media market, whether it wanted it or not.
Hint: It does not. Only 11 percent of New York City residents consider themselves avid college football fans, according to Scarborough research. Compare that to, say, the Toledo market, where a study by the Media Audit found that 71.3 percent of residents regularly follow college football. (Birmingham, Ala., was the top metro market at 77.1 percent).
Have we mentioned nobody wants Rutgers?
In the end, Delany was complicated, fans cursing his name and university leaders swearing by him.
Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith called the criticism of Delany “disappointing.”
Put us somewhere in the middle.
If the heat was deserved, it was at times overblown. Don’t forget: He was at the forefront of a world in which Big Ten fans can watch every football and basketball game, athletes receive cost-of-attendance funds to supplement their scholarships, and, yes, money grows on Buckeye trees.
We can debate if the athletes deserve more of that money and at what cost it was obtained. But for better or worse, it allows the nation’s richest conference to keep pace in the arms race, and, cynicism aside, covers invaluable opportunities for thousands of athletes beyond the eclipsing shadow of autumn Saturdays. Ohio State, for instance, spent $49.6 million on its 34 non-revenue sports last year, according to federal records. (And still it couldn’t burn through $203 million in total athletic revenue, distributing millions to the university side as usual.) Even places like Purdue now rake in nine-figure annual revenue.
“People will talk about Rutgers’ competitive performance,” Smith told me. “However, when you think about our presence on the East Coast, it’s significant. Whether Ohio State goes to play at Rutgers or Michigan plays at Rutgers, the revenue generated significantly impacts our young people. I hope that people will pause and just think about the great things that [Delany’s] done to help our young people and institutions.”
He added: “Here’s one thing that people seem to forget about our move with Rutgers and Maryland. At the time, the ACC was looking to expand. Part of our move was to protect Penn State. Everyone forgets we had a teammate and partner institution that was on a [geographic] island, so what we did, beyond gaining exposure, is we further brought in a valued partner in Penn State. Had Penn State defected to the ACC, what would the conversation have been then?”
It is a fair point, and perfectly sizes up the sentiment on Delany, one of the most transformative and polarizing figures in college athletics of the last generation.
If it was hard for fans to live with Delany, it is harder to imagine where the Big Ten would be without him.
First Published March 5, 2019, 4:56 p.m.
