How conference realignment shaped college sports, in ex-Big Ten boss Jim

It’s almost inarguable that the most influential figure in collegiate sports during the past three decades and perhaps ever was former Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany. In leading the oldest and most financially advanced league from 1989 through his retirement on Jan. 1, 2020, Delany orchestrated many of the moves that altered the college sports landscape for generations to come.

Delany was 31 when he left NCAA enforcement to take over as the Ohio Valley commissioner. Delany was 41 when he became the fifth commissioner in Big Ten history. In an era he described as “bully ball” among the Big Ten’s presidents, athletic directors and coaches, Delany presided over a league that grew unified, added four members and soared beyond its peers in wealth.

While working with 71 presidents across 30 years in the Big Ten, Delany helped secure Penn State as the league’s 11th member in 1990. It was the first modern-era expansion and one that ushered 26 other major-conference football moves through 1999. The Big Ten missed out on Notre Dame in 1999, but its expansion search in 2009 and conclusion with Nebraska in 2010 caused major conference upheaval. The major conferences combined for 17 other moves through 2014 and the Big East and WAC collapsed.

Now 75, out of the limelight and living in the Nashville area, Delany reflected on expansion and conference realignment during his time as Big Ten commissioner in an exclusive interview. Delany identified the primary markers that set college sports on their current trajectory.

Delany had plenty to say, so much that his comments will appear in other stories during this series. He also chose not to elaborate on meetings with potential expansion candidates because of signed non-disclosure contracts. In this series of Delany responses to realignment topics — the first of two — the former commissioner spoke at length about what he believed drove expansion from the late 1980s through the early 2000s.

For Delany, modern realignment begins with two events, both of which predate his days with the Big Ten. The Big East’s formation on May 31, 1979, came one week before the OVC hired him as its commissioner. The Big East chose eight urban basketball-first members, and in concert with ESPN’s debut in September 1979, the league found national footing on television. The other marker came on June 2, 1984, when the United States Supreme Court ruled the NCAA violated the Sherman Act by price fixing and placing artificial limits on its membership through its television policy.

Both events work collectively to set the course for the 198 Division I football moves since 1990.

Delany: The first thing I would say is CFA defeats NCAA. That would be No. 1. No. 2, I think, maybe even No. 1 is a precursor to ’84, the founding of the Big East by Dave Gavitt on a media-based conference. They were mostly Catholic but not exclusively. They were on the East Coast. And TV underlined it. And there was no football…