While today the Pac-10’s commissioner was authorized by his bosses to look into leasing a bulldozer that may or may not plow it’s way through the collegiate landscape, his Big Ten counterpart was sitting on his own piece of expensive and valuable earth-moving equipment.
And not inclined to put into gear.
“No action on our end,” Big Ten commish Jim Delany said, paraphrased, when the talk turned to the Pac-10 getting into the super-conference market first.
Delany has been steadfast and headstrong in not plowing ahead of his initial 12-18 month timeline for his conference deciding on expanding or not. Well, at least publicly he has.
Over the last few days, however, the expansion landscape has changed.
The Pac-10 is seemingly in line for an unprecedented conference land grab. While Delany is singing the same ol’ tune publicly, at least one of his bosses is admitting that the speculation swirling around the Pac-10 and their rumored plans has caused the league to recognize that, yeah, we might want to expedite what we’ve been drawing up.
“Our announcement in December has caused institutions to consider their future and conferences to consider their future,” Michigan State president Lou Anna K. Simon said according to ESPN.com. “That has had an impact on our deliberations. ... We had targeted a timeline that was as long as 18 months. It’s possible that the timeline may be altered, but not the process.
“The actions of others are obviously important to us and they impact us, but the process is as we’ve outlined it.”
Yep, same process. Different timeline.
The Big Ten, now, has no choice but to answer Larry Scott, the Pac-10 and a group in the form of CAA that is pushing for sooner rather than later.