Quest for relevance may lead to a bigger Big Ten

The identities of the teams that will play for the BCS championship were revealed on the first weekend of December.

On Saturday, there were playoff games to decide the champions of the Southeastern Conference, the Big 12 and the Atlantic Coast Conference. On Sunday, the BCS announced final ratings and the matchup for its four prelims and the title game.

The Pacific-10 and Big East also had selected December games that turned out to be decisive in choosing a champion.

The Big Ten was alone among the six BCS entities in not playing a significant game during that dramatic week. There were two nonconference games -- Fresno State at Illinois and Wisconsin at Hawaii -- and that was it.

Jim Delany is the Big Ten's powerful commissioner. He also can get very agitated when it is suggested that his conference trails the SEC, Big 12 and Pac-10, to name three.

The commissioner's agitation level had to be enormous on that first Saturday of December, as the TV announcers told him time and again that Alabama and Florida were the two best teams in the country, and then Texas outlasted Nebraska in an epic defensive battle.

Throw in Cincinnati's memorable comeback at Pittsburgh, and it was a great football Saturday -- and with the Big Ten playing no part.

There's also an emotional reason: the irrelevance Delany had to feel on Dec. 5.

The Big Ten's representative in the Rose Bowl was determined on Nov. 14. That means that while a national frenzy built for Alabama and Florida, Delany's league went three weeks without a vital game.

The schools gaining the most mention as a potential 12th team are Missouri from the Big 12, or Pittsburgh, Syracuse or Rutgers from the Big East.

Missouri and Pittsburgh make sense geographically. Rutgers makes sense if it's a decision based on exposure for Big Ten Network. Syracuse makes sense only if basketball was important to expansion, which it's not.

This is about football -- about two six-team divisions and a title playoff to share the spotlight on what has become championship Saturday.

It also would leave Indiana and Purdue to chase the traditional powers -- Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan, as well as Michigan State -- in an East Division.

"We're really jumping ahead of the game with that," said Morgan Burke, the Purdue athletic director. "We went through this in 1998, and again in 2003, and stayed with 11.

"Who would've guessed five years ago we would have our own network, and you could stream games live on the Internet -- that we would have all these ways to present our product. The world keeps changing and geographic boundaries are no longer as important.

"If we go to 12, it will be with an institution that fits academically, and also benefits us economically. There are 11 slices of pie now. Old Morgan here at Purdue, and your guy Joel wouldn't be happy if there was a 12th slice and the pie was the same size."

Joel Maturi, the Gophers athletic director, was asked about Missouri as the "regional fit" for the Big Ten.

"One thing we do have to remember: If a Rutgers becomes the 12th team, it's more than for football and basketball. The tennis team, the golf team, all of our teams, would be making trips to New Jersey."

A 12th team would lead Maturi to support an increase from eight to nine conference games in football.

"If we tried to play nine now, with 11 teams, one of us would only play eight," Maturi said. "To me, the chance to play nine conference games would be an advantage to adding a 12th team."