Jim Delany, Protector of the Realm
"We're just so scared of what could happen to us..." (Photo courtesy: USA Today Sports)
In the last few months, Jason Belzer of Forbes.com has done a handful of M.B.A.-style case studies involving situations from the world of college athletics, how Kevin Sumlin handles his talent at Texas A&M to Boise State football's organizational culture. His latest, dripping with guru-ese, delves into Jim Delany's leadership of the Big Ten during the conference realignment craze.
One part of the article stood out to me:
During this relatively quiet time, the Big Ten began to analyze the college sports landscape and attempted to determine what was ahead of the curve that their rival conferences weren’t seeing. They played game theory and asked themselves what would be both the obvious and unintended consequences if they expanded again. They eventually came to the realization that there was far more risk in defending the status quo than being proactive and making a new acquisition. What might not have made a lot of sense fifteen years ago made imminent sense now. For the Big Ten, it became clear that it wasn’t a question of whether the conference should expand anymore, but rather what school they should add.
So the Big Ten decided to throw the college football landscape into disarray in a preemptive strike to protect itself? Dick Cheney approves.
And here all this time I was thinking that this was just a naked cash grab.