Jim Delany retiring
- Thread starter simply1
- Start date
Given Gary Barta's track record of outstanding decision making I'd say Delany's job is his to lose. Although I'd hate to see him go.
Hawk fans say what a great $$ generator he is. That is what the big ten wants in their guy.
I honestly hope bowlsby goes there, I can't think of one positive thing he has done.
Yep that's the one thing he wasn't able to pull off. But he just wasn't willing to have the B1G bend over and take it from ND the way the ACC did. Their football program will always remain independent and that's the only program that matters.
Record payouts to schools? Stability? Football Championship Game Cash? Every league basketball game on National TV?
I didn't ask what Neinas gave us (everything you listed was from Neinas before Bowlsby showed up)
Stability???? All the current teams were in place or accepted before he took over. He led the embarrassment of, Who Wants to Joint the Big 12?; and then I guess we aren't expanding, deal.
He also was the one who promoted that since we were round robin that we would have one true champion. Then the first year of it, TCU and Baylor tie, the BCS asks who the champ is and Bowlsby won't say Here is our champ. He goes with, uuuuhhhh......I don't know, you pick. And pick they did.....some other conference because we couldn't get our crap together. .
This is what Bowlsby has given us. Not much.
Jim Delany did a good job for the conference, which was his job. He did a bad job for the sports of basketball and football. Which he didn't have to care about.
If you did a bad job for basketball and football, you did a bad job for the conference. Football and then MBB is what pays the bills, you have to make sure those are taken care of the most.
Edit: I don't think he did that bad for football. He probably thought NE would rebound and PSU was decent. They have their blue bloods so they didn't need to hop stuff up. He did a nice job of making the east the premier one and the also rans into the west.
I think that we as ISU fans should be rooting for someone good to be new Big 10 commish that would go to bat for Iowa State to be able to join that conference if for some reason it would ever come to it. I do have hope for the Big 12 to stay intact for the long haul, but I am not naive enough to believe the conference couldn’t get blown to bits during the next round of tv contract negotiations. It would be nice to have a backup plan and the Big 10 would be a great place to end up.
Last edited:
I just don't see this ever happening. Just like if for some reason the big ten got shaky, Iowa would not be looked at for addition. The state of Iowa does not move the needle enough.
Yes, I do too think that the odds are incredibly small that the Big 10 adds us, but If someone was commish that saw value in ISU then our odds hopefully go way up. I guess short of JP being Big 10 commish that probably won’t happen.
Also, facetiously, Iowa would be welcomed with open arms into the Big 12 because Iowa opens up the Chicago market to the conference.
I meant as far as Football across America. Not big 10 football. I should have been more specific. He did good for Big 10 football. It just hurt football in general. He is not the only one responsible though.
The American college football consumer is responsible. Because of the absurd need to a have a "true" national champion CFB marches toward the NFL model; more money for fewer teams. There will be four 16 teams leagues until that's too many and then there will be two 16 team leagues and all the idiots that could't wrap their heads around shared or disputed championships will be satisfied.
Last edited:
...and now conference play sucks now. (see empty seats in the stands) That will (is?) catching up with the big conferences and my hope is the future conferences are again aligned regionally, smaller, and teams in conference actually play each other every year.
Compared to 20 or so years ago, I agree. But the money-driven expansion was inevitable and it can't all be pinned on Delany. The Big 12 formed in the mid-90s after gobbling up the SWC and broke into divisions, the ACC raided the Big East in the early 2000s and did the same. Delany didn't go to 12 teams and divisions until 2011. If the Big 12 teams didn't get poached the conference would still be at 12 and divisions with weak conference play. Kudos for not adding teams to get back to 12 and keeping round robin but that's been more a result of few worthy candidates for addition.
You forgot penn state joining the big ten to mess up even scheduling. That was what got the changes happening. Who was in charge of the big ten then.
Bringing in a blue-blood independent was a great move. Sure it messed with scheduling but not nearly as much as going to 12 and breaking into two divisions.
