Via ESPN and Adam Rittenberg’s Big Ten mailblog:
Red from Minneapolis writes: Love the blog, Adam. Help a die-hard Gopher out…with all this talk of expansion to a super-conference, (at least) one thing is really bothering me. In any theoretical where the Big 10 goes to divisions, protecting Minnesota’s (or Indiana’s or Purdue’s) interests will be at best secondary to making sure Michigan, OSU, PSU, Notre Dame/Texas/Nebraska et al are happy. I’m not seeing many plausible scenarios where we keep all of our rivals, especially considering OSU and Michigan would likely end up together in most realignment scenarios. So my question for you is, will I ever see the Little Brown Jug again? The quality of my week depends on your answer.
Red, I like you, man.
Having dedicated a few thousand words to the Jug I’m concerned about this as well. One thing that struck me – the long-term concern about remaining space for scores on the crock may be pushed out quite a bit but we’ll see.
Of course, any way the conference realignment goes down, hopefully, Red won’t be seeing the jug in Gopher hands anytime soon. So Red, in the meantime here’s a current look at the prestigious pot:
Related:
Little Brown Jug Lore
One Comment
98xjwolverine
However the expansion into plays out, I would imagine that multiple conference crossover games would be a necessity (though playing 5 non-conference home games *could* be an attractive idea $$$.) At the least, 1 or 2 crossovers would be played to maintain Rivalry games such as the LBJ. I have to believe that David Brandon would be in favor of keeping the LBJ game every year (or nearly so).
Of course, if Jim Delany is serious about not necessarily needing a Conf Championship game or Divisions, the solution is to have more than 2 protected games. The LBJ would be high on Michigan’s list IMO.