Delaney expands on issues

When it comes to speculation about a potential Big Ten expansion, the cart hasn't just gotten ahead of the horse.

It has lapped the entire field several times.

That's straight from the horse's mouth of Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, who was both amused and bemused last week to discover his relatively innocuous comments to the Des Moines Register turned into national headlines and sports-talk fodder.

When the stories included a guessestimate that the Big Ten might turn to Rutgers or Syracuse as its 12th school, Delany felt obligated to call Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese to clarify his stance.

"I said, 'I want you to know two of your schools were mentioned in articles, however none of them were mentioned by me," Delany said. "We don't plan to expand. We analyze it on a regular basis, and we'll continue to do that.

"As the stories get reiterated in other media, whether it's blogs or talk radio, I think one would believe we're on the cusp of expansion. And that's probably not an accurate characterization.

Expansion, or lack thereof, was one of several big topics Delany tackled Tuesday as all 11 Big Ten football teams fulfilled media responsibilities at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Chicago.

(The media, by the way, tabbed Michigan as the league's preseason favorite. Wisconsin and Ohio State, both of which won 12 games last year, were next in line).

While the Big Ten will re-evaluate expansion in the next year or two, it took the lead recently in the fight against banned substances.

According to Delany, the conference's athletic directors and presidents voted unanimously to implement a drug program that goes further than NCAA and individual university tests already in place.

With this initiative, the Big Ten will test solely for performance-enhancing drugs. A positive result will result in a year's suspension.

"It will (test) approximately 10 percent of our (8,500) athletes annually," Delany said. "We now have three lines of defense. It's not only a competitive advantage that could result in cheating and unfair outcomes, but also it's a serious health challenge."

And with rogue NBA referee Tim Donaghy all over the news recently, Delany felt it important to outline all of the steps the Big Ten takes to prevent a compromised referee from affecting its games.

"I've always said, if there's one issue that could bring intercollegiate athletics to its knees," Delany said, "it's the gambling issue because it goes right to the integrity of the game.

"For the last three years, we've had a program in place to do background checks on our football officials, basketball officials, women's basketball officials."

On a few occasions, the Big Ten's thoroughness has discovered a few red flags that prompted more questions. In every case, though, Delany said their additional queries received satisfactory answers.

Other problems? The Big Ten's football coaches are unanimous in their desire for a bye week, but there's dissension when it comes to determining whether to start the season earlier or join the rest of the nation and play season finales after Thanksgiving.

"I did not ask our players last year, but I asked them a year ago and it was unanimous that they all want the Thanksgiving break," Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz said. "They were 100 percent in wanting to come in a week earlier."

Other coaches, such as Illinois' Ron Zook, are in favor of extending the season beyond Thanksgiving.

One schedule extension that seems unlikely is the addition of a lucrative title game, which many of the Big Ten's peers stage on the first Saturday in December.

In fact, Delany said the specter of such a game, which adds another rugged step in a team's road to a national championship, could help kill expansion talk.

"There's obviously financial and marketing opportunities attendant to a championship game," Delany said. "The negative is that they tend to minimize the value of season-ending traditional games, which we think we have as many as anyone in the country.

"They also tend to create a loser, which affects your bowl lineup a little bit. The losing team in that championship game is not as attractive."