While Gopher fans focus on who will coach the team in the future, at least they know this: There won't be any Big Ten games with Notre Dame, Rutgers or any new members.
The Big Ten "will not be actively engaged in conference expansion for the foreseeable future," the conference said Sunday in a statement, "and does not expect to be proactively seeking new members."
It's been a year since Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany set off a scramble for new conference affiliations by announcing that the Big Ten was studying expansion. That study is now over, the statement said, and the addition of Nebraska as a 12th member is as far as the league intends to go now.
"My colleagues and I can report that we believe that this process has reached its natural conclusion," Indiana president Michael McRobbie said in the statement. "We are pleased with the addition of Nebraska," which officially joins the league next July.
Though the Big Ten merely expanded from 11 to 12 members, rumors of far more extensive growth circulated last spring, prompting the Big 12 to give Nebraska a deadline for declaring its intentions. The effect of conference shuffling was far more pronounced in the west, where the Pac-10 added two members, and the Mountain West and WAC underwent extensive shuffling.