INDIANAPOLIS — Bow down to everybody’s new college sports overlord. What once seemed unthinkable has now become reality.
The Big Ten really is the best around and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it.
This weekend in the Circle City has been a display of Big Ten might in the centrally located meeting point for so much of the conference over the decades. Illinois fans blanketed the area on Saturday night before their eventual loss in the first semifinal and neatly—and begrudgingly—handed over the baton to turn Lucas Oil Stadium into a sea of 70,720 fans packed with maize and blue two days later.
Now, in the wake of Michigan’s 69–63 victory over nouveau-riche blueblood UConn on Monday to capture the league’s first hardware in 26 years on the hard court, it’s undeniable: the Big Ten really is the big bad bully it was always capable of becoming, but had not put into practice until now. Things were already trending this way on the gridiron, but the Wolverines’ triumph fully cements it, after the conference won the women’s tournament in dominating fashion courtesy of fresh faced UCLA.
Big brands, big fan bases, now the B1G logo on the hardware to go with it all. Perhaps the only thing preventing the necessary gloating that should come with it is the Midwestern niceties and ethos that still anchor the coast-to-coast entity to this part of the country.
What has to scare the rest of College Sports Inc. is that such dominance does not show signs of natural decline anytime soon. The coffers of athletic departments continue to be some of the largest around thanks to the largess of Big Ten media deals. The large state institutions that keep churning out alumni by the thousands will also remain a factor in finding ways around the revenue sharing cap that was supposed to flatten the competitiveness of college athletics.
Flattened it has been, courtesy of a Big Ten hammer pounding this corner of the sports world into submission. The Wolverines previously kicked off a run of three consecutive football championships and the league will have a bevy of favorites this fall to make it four in a row 10 months from now. It still deserves a double take that, when exiting the Indianapolis airport to come to this year's Final Four, everyone had to walk by a giant banner advertisement at the exit with the Heisman Trophy winner celebrating a national title at Indiana of all places—now the home to the most recent undefeated teams in football and men’s basketball with the 1976 Hoosiers being honored at halftime 50 years after they cut the nets to seal perfection.
Up is down, down is up, and the league which once boiled under the surface at being labeled lovable underachievers has now swelled into a beer-drinking, corn-fed behemoth of the highest order.
After years of seething at hearing the S-E-C chants break out and watching the Big East and ACC triumph on the hard court each March, perhaps it really is time to gather in unison to shout B-I-G from the mountain top.
The folks at Big Ten Network are too professional to do so on air, but they sure can train their cameras on others doing so on a loop. It probably warms the hearts of some in the conference offices that it can now be done so in stunning 4K instead of re-running highlights of the last time it was the case during the days of black and white television.
What should be top of mind now is not how the Big Ten has managed to finally unlock such success or who might be capable of putting an end to it, but rather if all the ring-chasing is going to go to the head of commissioner Tony Petitti. The former television executive never said no to a misguided idea that could reshape the enterprise before, what’s he going to do now that he can peacock off the backs of both hoops and football supremacy?
At this rate, you might even give him a fighting chance to fix his beloved baseball in the league. If Indiana can win it all in football and have UCLA and Michigan get over the line in basketball, anything is truly possible north of the Mason-Dixon line.
Hopefully, it at least gives Petitti pause in his destructive pursuit of both College Football Playoff and NCAA tournament expansion. He may still want to keep trying to shoehorn teams into the postseason—he can now claim both Iowa football and basketball as the preferred citation of an overlooked team that needs an opportunity now—but maybe what his conference is actually doing between the lines will be enough to change his mind.
Because it’s working quite well right now after Michigan capped off the sweep of revenue sport national championships this season to unleash a wave of jealousy from others not included in the league from every corner imaginable.
As coach Dusty May and much of his team were still celebrating as Monday night bordered on the verge of Tuesday morning between flakes of confetti on the court, they all got to experience the sweetest hugs possible in the business—the ones being accompanied by Queen’s eponymous ballad “We Are the Champions.” Though it was the first time any of the players (and quite a few staffers too) were alive where such emotional celebrations included the Big Ten logo on their shirts and jerseys, you have to admit that it’s becoming a much more regular occurrence to see it pop up in such places.
It’s the Big Ten’s sporting world and we’re all just living through it.
About the only thing missing was a full complement of the Wolverines band playing their school fight song on repeat from start to finish, because you have to salute the effort and tip your hat at it all.
Hail to the victors, indeed.
More March Madness From Sports Illustrated
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as It’s the Big Ten’s World. The Rest of College Sports Is Living in It..
