Big Ten

The University of Maryland's planned departure from the Atlantic Coast Conference has raised questions about the league's long-term survival, a sobering prospect for fans that grew up on games between the Terps and their Tobacco Road rivals. The first notes of panic emerged Monday, after Maryland announced plans to leave for the Big Ten and its far greater television riches in 2014. "I think the ACC is vulnerable right now," said Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski in taping his show Basketball and Beyond for Sirius XM Radio.

An attorney representing the University of Maryland argued Thursday that the Atlantic Coast Conference has left the college's athletic department with a vast budget "hole" by improperly withholding millions of dollars in shared conference revenues after the school decided to join the Big Ten. "They're taking it out of our pocket, and we don't have it," Maryland Assistant Attorney General John Kuchno said during a nearly three-hour hearing in...

While the majority of the University of Maryland's athletic teams will be trekking all over the Big Ten beginning in 2014, the Terps will have a few shorter trips when it comes to football. As expected, the expanding Big Ten will divide its 14 football teams geographically, according to a report Friday by ESPN.com. Maryland will be in the East division, the report said. Maryland and Rutgers, the other new conference member, will play in a division with Michigan, Ohio State, Michigan State, Indiana and Penn State.

Now that Johns Hopkins has opened the door for conferences to woo the illustrious program, the most pressing question centers on if there is one league that best suits the Blue Jays - and vice versa. If coach Dave Pietramala and athletic director Tom Calder are steadfast in retaining traditional rivalries, the Atlantic Coast Conference would appear to be the best fit. Joining that league would allow Johns Hopkins to maintain traditional series with North Carolina, Syracuse and Virginia, and the team would simply have to carve out space for Duke and Notre Dame.

While I deplore the Maryland decision to go to the Big Ten (they cannot even count in that conference) on traditions alone, I find the economic arguments totally without merit ("UM to leave ACC for Big Ten in '14," Nov. 20). One quote was that Maryland would make more money, estimated at $24 million instead of $17 million per year. After paying the penalty of $50 million, it will take seven years to break even. What makes anyone think the economics seven years from now are going to be the same?

Commissioner Jim Delany expects the Big Ten to hold a championship game next season, when Nebraska joins and brings the league to 12 teams. He also says teams likely will play nine conference games instead of eight in the future to help preserve rivalries. Ohio State is the media's pick to win the Big Ten and Buckeyes quarterback Terrelle Pryor is the offensive player of the year for the second straight season. Michigan State linebacker Greg Jones was tabbed the top defensive player again, making it the first time in 12 years that both preseason player of the year picks were repeat selections.

Everyone who predicted the Big Ten would be stronger this season was right. They just had some of the teams wrong. Four of the six Big Ten teams in last week's Associated Press Top 25 suffered staggering losses to unranked teams. Three of them let one loss add up to two. Michigan (No. 15 last week) was stunned in consecutive losses to Marquette and Alabama in the Old Spice Classic. Minnesota (No. 22) dropped games to Portland and Texas A&M in the 76 Classic. Illinois (No. 20)

Michigan State coach Tom Izzo recounts how Delvon Roe's hand frequently was planted firmly in front of Purdue center JaJuan Johnson's shot and how it just didn't matter. Loads of Big Ten opponents already know that moving Ohio State forward Jared Sullinger off the block is like trying to push a boulder with a pencil. One has been a work in progress for four seasons, the other an instant success. One has the power of strength, the other the skill of versatility.

As a former student athlete at the University of Maryland and current member of the Terrapin Club, I was shocked and angered by the University's move from the ACC to the Big Ten ("UM to leave ACC for Big Ten in '14," Nov. 20). Then I saw today's paper, revealing that of all the Big Ten schools, Maryland has the smallest endowment fund. And how much time Maryland coaches have to spend on fundraising at the expense of coaching. So while it's easy to blame the administration, it sounds like we Marylanders and Terrapin alumni haven't done a great job at supporting our university, and can blame ourselves as well.

Former ACC commissioner Gene Corrigan said Sunday night that he is "absolutely flabbergasted" to hear that Maryland is close to leaving the league for the Big Ten after a nearly 60-year association. "It's historic, all right. It's shocking to me," the 84-year-old Corrigan said from his home in Keswick, Va. "I don't get it. I don't get it at all. It just blows me away. They're a charter member of the ACC -- they're not just a member. Virginia wasn't even an original member. " Corrigan, whose association with the ACC dates back nearly as long as Maryland's, said that the ACC has treated Maryland well from a financial standpoint "because they haven't done a good job raising funds themselves.

Baltimore Sun reporters Don Markus and Jeff Barker and editor Matt Bracken weigh in on the three biggest topics of the past week in Maryland sports. Given the 2014 schedule announced Thursday by the Big Ten, how tough will Maryland's road back to respectability become? Don Markus: Maryland's $52 million exit fee from the Atlantic Coast Conference after next season seems exorbitant, but its indoctrination into the Big Ten is pretty steep in its own right. Everyone knew the Terps would be stepping up in class in football by switching leagues.

The reality of Maryland's first season in the Big Ten became a little clearer Thursday, when the league announced the 2014 schedule for its 14 members. The Terps will play their Big Ten opener Sept. 27 at Indiana and their home opener a week later against Ohio State at Byrd Stadium. Maryland will also play at home against Iowa (Oct. 18), Michigan State (Nov. 15) and Rutgers (Nov. 29), and on the road at Wisconsin (Oct. 25), Penn State (Nov. 1) and Michigan (Nov. 22). Iowa and Wisconsin represent the two non-East Division opponents.

— Joining the Big Ten means that Maryland's football team will soon have Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan and other schools as new division opponents. But it also means the school's nonconference schedules are being upgraded and that some previously-scheduled games could be dropped. The Big Ten wants Maryland — which joins the conference in 2014 — and its other members to stop scheduling Football Championship Subdivision opponents. As a result, according to multiple officials, Maryland may drop at least some of their planned games with FCS schools in future seasons.

Combining Maryland's seventh-place finish in the Atlantic Coast Conference last season and the recent decision by 7-foot-1 sophomore center Alex Len to leave early for the NBA, most figured that the Terps would not get a marquee matchup in next season's ACC-Big Ten Challenge. There was also some speculation that Maryland's departure from the ACC after next season for the Big Ten might make the Terps a candidate for exclusion - something that had not happened to Maryland in the first 14 years of the series.

Baltimore Sun reporters Jeff Barker and Don Markus and editor Matt Bracken weigh in on the three biggest topics of the past week in Maryland sports. Is Maryland better off developing Roddy Peters and Seth Allen as its point guards rather than bringing in Antonio Barton for one season? Don Markus: A lot of college coaches, Mark Turgeon included, want to take advantage of the NCAA's fairly recent legislation that allows players who have graduated from one school to finish their careers at another as long as they can find a graduate program that doesn't exist at the first school.

Penn State has had a run of the neighborhood for as long as anyone can remember, from its years as the most successful independent Division I-A football program on the East Coast and a national power, to a little more than the past two decades in the Big Ten. As the Nittany Lions continue to rebuild and rebrand in the aftermath of the off-field child abuse scandal that ended the legendary career of Joe Paterno in 2011 and brought unprecedented sanctions...

Terps fans may remember a spate of stories from 2010 - including a couple by me - about possible early interest by the Big Ten in Maryland. One of the issues that surfaced then from Terps supporters was travel. There were two concerns - the time spent by the athletes (and ardent fans) to get to Big Ten venues in the Midwest, and the travel costs. So, I was not surprised to learn recently from multiple sources that - in its private negotiations with the Big Ten this year - Maryland raised the issue of travel expenses.

Although a charter member of the Atlantic Coast Conference with 60 years of tradition, Maryland did not respond to a couple of phone calls from the ACC commissioner before approving the move to the Big Ten. This courtesy was owed to the commissioner and does not speak well for Maryland. An institution of our standing should not have been dictated to by the Big Ten Conference. We kowtowed to their terms by not receiving input from all those affected by this change - the students, faculty, student athletes, alumni and former athletes.

While the University of Maryland won't be able to reap most of the rewards of joining the Big Ten athletic conference until the move becomes official in July 2014, it will start benefiting from its academic counterpart — the Committee on Institutional Cooperation — this year. Officials from the university and the CIC met this week in College Park to start hammering out the details in preparation for this July, when Maryland and Rutgers University are set to join the 13-member cooperative, which includes the 12 Big Ten schools plus the University of Chicago.

While the majority of the University of Maryland's athletic teams will be trekking all over the Big Ten beginning in 2014, the Terps will have a few shorter trips when it comes to football. As expected, the expanding Big Ten will divide its 14 football teams geographically, according to a report Friday by ESPN.com. Maryland will be in the East division, the report said. Maryland and Rutgers, the other new conference member, will play in a division with Michigan, Ohio State, Michigan State, Indiana and Penn State.