Reid Compton- USA TODAY Sports
It’s been a little over two years since the Big Ten football conference announced the names of their football divisions as the Legends and Leaders. The conference didn’t have many options when naming the two divisions and their finalized decisions were met with controversy.
Due to the negative feedback since, conference commissioner Jim Delany is considering renaming the divisions at the start of the 2014 season.
“I’m not sure it was a national survey [of people who didn't like the names], but people who hit the ‘send’ button,” Delany said. “I don’t take umbrage to negative reaction. I don’t necessarily change when I hear it. I think on the other hand, we said we would test-market it, and we have for a couple of years. We have the opportunity to look at it again. I’m sure we will. Whether or not we change or not is to be determined. I don’t have any presumption that we’ll change on it, but that doesn’t mean we’re not looking at it.”
Maryland and Rutgers are scheduled to join the conference in 2014 and the Big Ten has to decide which divisions the two teams will join once they are official members. There really isn’t a best division for either team as they join the conference and frankly it shouldn’t matter. However, along with deciding which two divisions to place the new members the conference will also get the chance to shake up the divisions as they are right now.
As of right now the divisions look like this: The Legends Division consists of Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Nebraska and Northwestern; the Leaders Division is Indiana, Illinois, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue and Wisconsin.
Will they look the same as 2014 rolls around? It’s not clear, but there is a possibility that they will shake up the divisions since there really isn’t a sorting process to group the teams. The conference will have some freedom to rename the divisions if they like but we all know how that turned out the first time.
Do you think that the conference should rename the divisions? If so what should they be called? Let us know in the comments section below!
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David LaRose is one of the featured College Football writers for Rant Sports covering the Pac 12 and the University of Colorado. You can follow him on Twitter or check out his Facebook page.
