Hello: Johns Hopkins?
Inside Lacrosse is reporting that Johns Hopkins will joining the Big Ten for Men's and Women's Lacrosse. The Women's team will start in 2014 and the Men's will start in 2015. Details aren't known, but look for an announcement tomorrow (Monday).
Conventional wisdom suggests MSU (once had a D1 program) and NW (has a dominant women's program, is in Chicago) would be the next ones to jump on board. However, I've heard rumblings that Minnesota is the most likely Big Ten team to add it next. Minnesota is a very all-sports focused athletic department, and high school lacrosse is pretty big in the state of Minnesota. There are four schools in Minnesota with MCLA1 club teams (including U of Minnesota) and a couple of them are actually very good, so there's talent there.
but I heard talk way back about Cornell joining up. It would never happen, but their football team at least is not BCS, so that's not an issue, so maybe this opens up them joining in hockey and lacrosse, or something, as well. I imagine that even if they sponsored soccer or something, the B1G conference as it stands could accomodate them fairly easily if it so chose, so they would technically be a member for "all" sports as well.
The Ivy League sponsors lacrosse. Soccer, too. In whose bizarre acid-laced fantasy world does the Ivy League let Cornell just mosey on over to another conference, or Cornell even want to leave?
Yeah that seems like a ridiculous idea. Cornell already has rivalries with the Ivey schools, and is much closer to them geographically. And competes on an even playing field with them. Outside of a few sports, Cornell would get absolutely crushed in the Big Ten.
We can remove the ? in the title.