Ohio State will renew its annual rivalry with Michigan in Ann Arbor on Nov. 28, 2015. (Jamie Sabau/Getty Images)

By Zac Ellis

The Big Ten released its 2015 schedule on Monday for what will be the league’s final season before moving to a nine-game conference format in 2016.

The 2015 Big Ten slate kicks off with an East Division matchup between Rutgers and Penn State on Sept. 19. The 12 remaining schools begin nine consecutive weeks of league play on Oct. 3.

The winners of the 2015 schedule unveiling appear to be Nebraska and Wisconsin. The Big Ten powers avoid facing fellow conference heavyweights Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State in both 2014 and 2015.

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The Big Ten took in more than $315 million in revenue for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012. (Robin Alam/Icon SMI)

By Zac Ellis

The Big Ten reported record revenue in the league’s latest federal tax returns, upstaging even the SEC in profitability.

According to a report by Steve Berkowitz of USA Today, the Big Ten brought in more than $315 million in revenue for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012. That was $42 million more than the SEC reported for the fiscal year ending Aug. 31, 2012.

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Executive director Bill Hancock (right) expects four teams in the playoff for at least 12 years. (AP)

By Zac Ellis

The newly named College Football Playoff might be the next big step in the sport, but many hope the upcoming postseason model will one day expand to include even more teams. It might be a while before that happens, though.

On Thursday at the BCS Meetings in Pasadena, Calif., executive director Bill Hancock said the playoff will remain at four teams for at least the duration of the 12-year deal, which goes into effect after the 2014 season.

Hancock: "We know people are going to want eight [teams], and some are going to want 16, or 32. But it’s going to be four, for 12 years."—
Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) April 25, 2013

The current plan will pit four teams, as chosen by a selection committee, in two semifinal bowl games to earn a berth in the new College Football Championship Game, which replaces the BCS National Championship Game. The first title game in the new playoff format will take place at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas on Jan. 12, 2015.

Andy Staples on Jim Delany: “In a declaration filed last week in federal court in support of the NCAA’s motion against class certification, Delany threatened that any outcome that results in athletes getting a piece of the schools’ television revenue could force the schools of the Big Ten to de-emphasize athletics as the Ivy League’s schools did decades ago.”

Jim Delany to Andy Staples: “It’s not that we want to go Division III or go to need-based aid,” Delany said. “It’s simply that in the plaintiff’s hypothetical — and if a court decided that Title IX is out and players must be paid — I don’t think we’d participate in that. I think we’d choose another option. … If that’s the law of the land, if you have to do that, I don’t think we would.”

Internet’s reaction: Over there to your right.

Campus Union Feelings Collage on the subject: After the jump.

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An important lacrosse thing is happening here. (AP)

When we think of NCAA lacrosse at all, we think of East Coast schools, which is more than understandable; thanks to the prowess of Syracuse, Maryland, Virginia, Duke and North Carolina, there hasn’t been a Division I title game without a current Big East or ACC member school participating since 1987. But it’s the Big Ten that might be edging further into lacrosse territory, and further into Maryland, if it succeeds in wooing away Johns Hopkins as a lacrosse-only member for a brand-new league:

 Being a DI program in a DIII athletic department, Johns Hopkins has flexibility within lacrosse that nearly all of its peers lack — the best interest of the lacrosse team is the leading consideration in potential conference affiliation, not a byproduct of the football and basketball teams’ most lucrative TV deals, as has been the case in many recent realignment choices. As a result, coach Dave Pietramala, athletic director Tom Calder and the rest of the Blue Jay staff can consider the future of the program and its possible conference decision more narrowly than most of their counterparts. In a conversation with IL earlier in January, Pietramala said while his program hasn’t joined a league or been offered an invitation to join a league and no decision is imminent, Hopkins is considering its options to abandon its long-lived independence.

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Commissioner Delany, can we get a little Gator Chomp?

• From the “Things That Will In No Way End In Heartbreak” Department. The Chick-fil-A Bowl has set up a “Rivalizer” web app that allows you to accessorize the photo of your choice with paraphernalia supporting the ACC or SEC team of your choice. We have a modest example on the right here.

• Well, now we KNOW he’s lying. Nick Saban, betraying his true form by acting like he’s some kind of mortal being with a defined lifespan: “I really enjoy what I’m doing here right now. I’m getting old now.” For the record, we hope he stays at Alabama forever, just to see if he ages more slowly than his statue outside Bryant-Denny Stadium.

• Roster blotter. Alabama’s Barrett Jones continues to rest his injured foot … Oregon’s Kyle Long has lost his eligibility appeal … Washington State’s Jeff Tuel will try his luck at the NFL draft … Missouri’s Ka’Ra Stewart has been dismissed from the Tigers following a drug possession arrest.

• Quote of the day. “The [university] presidents and athletic directors need to wake up about these [non-automatic qualifying] conferences and understand that they don’t have the fan appeal.” — Gator Bowl president Rick Catlett. “His SEC/Big Ten game is going for $2.50.” — Stewart Mandel.

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The Big Ten and Pac-12 sure do love the Rose Bowl. But will that love cause the rest of us to resent the Granddaddy? (US PRESSWIRE)

Hey, neato, BCS honchos are exploring new formats for college football’s bloated and occasionally nonsensical postseason! USA Today has a cache of documents with all the details, and included among them is one horrifying scenario that’s either an elaborate prank of admirable intricacy or a dire klaxon that signals the triumph at last of #feelingsball over reason.

[Proposed plans include] a heretofore undisclosed four-team playoff proposal that could expand the semifinals to preserve an annual Big Ten-vs.-Pacific-12 matchup in the Rose Bowl.

In the latter plan, the four highest-ranked teams at the end of the regular season would meet in semifinals unless the Big Ten or Pac-12 champion, or both, were among the top four. Those leagues’ teams still would meet in the Rose, and the next highest-ranked team or teams would slide into the semis. The national championship finalists would be selected after those three games.

For the record, here’s what that plan would have looked like if it had been in place the past five seasons. Are you not entertained?

And you know what else rankles? Apart from making a mockery of the definition of the Redbird Reading Group-level term “semifinal,” it turns swaths of sports fans, however tangentially, against the Rose Bowl, and the Rose Bowl is one of our very favorite things. (If you’ve never been, change that. Even if you get an Illinois-USC matchup and don’t like your baths bloody, there’s still the parade and the golf course tailgating and Pasadena to explore.) We lived 20 minutes from the stadium for a few years after college. It is our favorite place on earth. And if we  now lived someplace where the weather in January was at all similar to Chicago in January, we, too, would probably make complete prats of ourselves to score a guaranteed trip to Southern California on an annual basis. But surely Jim Delany makes more than enough fat bills from his cashy conference to score a sweet timeshare in the ‘Bu, somewhere. Must we really all suffer, must our precious game suffer, so that one man may savor his Pie ‘n Burger in prosaic silence?

A curated selection of sporting types responding to this development, after the jump:

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Jim Delany and his B1G brethren have elected to stick with "Leaders" and "Legends" as division names. (US PRESSWIRE)

“Hey guys, I’ve come up with a new mnemonic for remembering which teams are in the Leaders division. Ready? Illinois, Indiana, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue and Wisconsin.” — A joke we have been working on, to no avail

While we were raised on one team and own many expensive hooded sweatshirts (and one spacey t-shirt) dedicated to that team’s supremacy, we are professional polytheists when it comes to college football. We have favorite teams in every conference, whose good fortune cheers us and faceplants sadden our days. We want the best for the best sport. We are also blessed with almost superhuman strength when it comes to liking dumb things ironically, but you guys: We are utterly unable to get on board with this “Leaders & Legends” thing the Increasingly Inaccurately Named Big Ten continues to insist is A Thing, a notoriously ill-conceived branding attempt we are now all apparently stuck with.

Our favorite pull quote from that Tribune report, and it’s not close:

The Big Ten plans to “work harder to help fans understand why the names were chosen” and “understand who is in which division.”

Now you know the exact percentage of people who understand anything about anything. It’s [33.333 - [haters]].

It was a diabolically shrewd plan on the part of Jim Delany and his ilk, when you think about it: Wait a year for the conference faithful to become inured to the idea, then toss out some “research” (conducted by a firm with a name straight out of a DOS game and that, as alert reader J. Clark points out, misspells “analysis” in a graphic on its front page) to prop up the campaign and count on inertia to do the rest. Plus, they already had all this stationery made.

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