Beyond Coast-to-Coast: Could the Big Ten Return to its Great Lakes Roots?

The college sports conference the BIG 10 was once solidly Great Lakes country. The conference was a historic powerhouse of academic and athletic premiere institutions in the Midwest.

Today with the complete upheaval of traditional regional college football into the leviathan business it now is, much of what some cherished about the sport is gone.

The Shifting Landscape of College Football Conferences

The BIG 10 stretches from coast-to-coast, from Rutgers in New Jersey to four former PAC-12 schools on the Pacific.

But what if there was a rule that to be a BIG 10 member, a school must be located within a reasonable driving distance from a Great Lake?

The "Chicago Rule": A Geographic Proposal Emerges

The proposal came up on the subreddit dedicated to College Football on Reddit. The original question was asked, what school would you want to see added to your team's conference? One commenter gave this as a basic tenant for BIG 10 membership:

I think if you cant reasonably drive to Chicago you should be out of the BIG 10. Conversely If you can reasonably drive to Chicago you should be in the BIG 10

We could widen that definition to the entirely of the Great Lakes, perhaps.

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While Chicago, which not coincidentally where the BIG 10's offices and television production are headquartered, does collect the schools from Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa, some now-standard conference schools like Penn State would be left out.

Expand the definition to all of the Great Lakes and keep Ohio State and Penn State in. Nebraska is a bit on the bubble, as is, perhaps Iowa. But New Jersey and Maryland get a little more difficult to defend as members. The west coast schools are still out.

When framing the BIG 10 through a Great Lakes lens, it is interesting that there is only one school, Northwestern in suburban Chicago's Evanston, with a campus actually on a Great Lake. That is the image above of Northwestern on Lake Michigan.

👇🏼BELOW: Check Out These Official Out-of-State Official License Plates Honoring Michigan State and the University of Michigan👇🏼

While the proposal will never happen, it's an interesting dream to imagine a Great Lakes-centric college athletic conference again.