Academics of Expansion

Everywhere you turn in college sports one is confronted by the fact that Big 10 is holding the rest of us hostage with their expansion waffling. They are trying on every shoe in the department store looking for the “right fit” Inevitably the talk shifts, after football and footprint, to “academics”. The subject becomes the Big 10 scholarly superiority and how all Big 10 institutions are members of AAU – THE Association of American Universities, spoken through the nasal passage which is pointed northward.

Membership allows presidents to exchange their neckties for ascots and a bow tie, exchanging their shorty for a phat stogie. Alliance allows a university to go from being a great place for higher learning to academic aficionado. Faster than Keith Jackson can yell “Whoa Nelly!”, translated for our esteemed fellows’ means au contraire, I wish to raise a couple of points. First in terms of being academically elite, not even all Ivy League institutions are members of your little club. Second, the school that you are just salivating and bed wetting over to join you (ND) is not a member. Gawd knows how well they are thought of in terms of being a traditional power and tough curriculum. They share with the mere mortals the same song every waking breathe. The Big 10 points out that association with them and THE AAU brings in truck bed load of cash. No, it really doesn’t scream superiority, but it does say that you are connected to some slick politicians who pile on the pork – slicker than the Louisiana coast line.

Most of the Big 10 comes from the same seed or acorn where the SEC brethren originated. They have a foundation of being a land grant universities, agriculture and teacher colleges. (Wisconsin, Penn State, Iowa….) They both have grown doing scientific research in myriad of areas of study. Every school has the same microscope posed scene played back in the self promoting video during a telecast. Furthermore, no matter how many times Michigan touts itself as “The Harvard of the Midwest” doesn’t make true, not once in any era!

I get so daggum sick and tired of that hoity toity attitude, I could just spit. Here a cup of shut-up juice, actually a 64 ounce Big Gulp glass for the Big 10. Your champ for the decade – THE Ohio State – try on a 0 for 10 for size. How does that feel?

Take a spin on that during the next meeting of your golden guild.