Speak Up for The Game
Consensus is that, coming out of the B10 meetings in Chicago, momentum had somehow shifted away from keeping UM and OSU together in the same division and preserving The Game’s special place on the college football calendar. Fortunately, in a recent Q&A with Adam Rittenberg, Jim Delany seems to leave the door more open than many have been led to believe. He explicitly says that a final decision has not yet been made and makes it sound as if more than one proposal might even be placed before the ADs and Presidents for discussion. He also says that fans’ views are an important consideration that will not be cast aside lightly.
http://espn.go.com/blog/bigten/post/_/id/14868/jim-delany-talks-michiga…
So, instead of spending all of our energy complaining and attacking each other on MGoBlog, we have the next three to four weeks to make ourselves heard as loudly as possible on this issue. My suggestion to anyone who feels strongly about this issue and wants to do something constructive is to take Jim Delany at his word and draft a very simple letter (one or two paragraphs max) and mail copies to Jim Delany, Dave Brandon and Mary Sue Coleman. Emails and voicemails are easy to skip over and/or delete, but thousands of letters delivered by the Post Office every day are extremely difficult to ignore.
I plan to send 10 copies of my letter (one every day or two for the next two weeks) to each of the above. And my suggestion is not to bash Delany or Brandon or threaten them with season ticket cancellations or protests or boycotts, but simply to make it clear how many of us there are out here who strongly disagree with splitting the two teams and moving The Game. If fans' viewpoints matter and our letters outnumber those leaning the other way by a ratio of 10:1, the B10 might just think twice before changing the formula that helped create the greatest rivalry in college sports over the past 40 years.
I do not claim to know if this will make any difference. But the momentum on this issue has shifted once already and there is no reason to think that it cannot be shifted back again. Maybe all it needs is a little MGoPush.
Mailing addresses:
Mr. James E. Delany
Commissioner
Big Ten Conference
1500 West Higgins Road
Park Ridge, IL 60068-6300
Mr. David A. Brandon
Director of Athletics
University of Michigan
1000 South State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2201
Ms. Mary Sue Coleman
President
University of Michigan
2074 Fleming Administration Building
503 Thompson Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1340
August 25th, 2010 at 12:31 AM ^
Awesome post! I will be writing and sending letters ad naseum for the next month. I was thinking of bringing a sign to opener to display these exact sentiments. Let us grassroot the shit out of this.
August 25th, 2010 at 12:38 AM ^
Obviously the sooner the better.
August 25th, 2010 at 12:38 AM ^
Excellent idea, good sir. My letters will be written and mailed tomorrow.
August 25th, 2010 at 12:51 AM ^
Do you have emails for these people? A centralized blog "Save the Biggest Last Game of the Season in College Sports"? Gaining national news works far better at gaining attention than "letters". If 100,000 people participate in as a group for the world to see it impacts everything in a different respect that 100,000 letter sent by a mailbox. It is kind of like Missouri...The Show Me State" If we see others it helps us to become more motivated.
August 25th, 2010 at 12:58 AM ^
August 25th, 2010 at 1:26 AM ^
Mr. Gene Smith
Director of Athletics
The Ohio State University
224 St. John Arena
410 Woody Hayes Drive
Columbus, OH 43210
Mr. E. Gordon Gee
President
The Ohio State University
205 Bricker Hall
190 North Oval Mall
Columbus, OH 43210-1357
August 25th, 2010 at 1:05 AM ^
This is bull shit that this is even an issue.
August 25th, 2010 at 1:27 AM ^
You do not f*&k with The Game. Do you hear?
Mich, OSU should be the big dogs in one division. Banish PSU to the other.
August 25th, 2010 at 1:44 AM ^
That is what they logically should do, but I think they are trying to be sensitive to PSU. I am wondering if they made some sort of "promise" to PSU not to send them out West as a concession because JoePa wanted to add teams from out East as part of the expansion and the B10 picked NE out West instead.
I would be perfectly happy with a geographic split:
East: OSU, PSU, UM, MSU, IN, PUR
West: NE, IA, WI, MN, NW, IL
With NE, WI and IA together out West, it will be very competitive and as soon as they fire Ron Zook and hire Mike Leach at IL it might turn out to be stronger top to bottom than the East.
August 25th, 2010 at 7:19 AM ^
Historically, your divisions are out of balance
East: 5.8
West: 7.1
If you want UM, OSU, and PSU together and keep historical competitive balance, the split will have to look something like this.
East: OSU, PSU, UM, MSU, IN, IL
West: NE, IA, WI, MN, PUR, NW
This gives you:
East: 6.3
West: 6.6
To perfectly balance the divisions, you'd have to switch MSU and PUR. MSU would just have to be part of a permanent cross over game.
August 25th, 2010 at 9:19 AM ^
I happen to agree with you that the geographical divisions make the most sense when it's all said and done, but I wouldn't dwell on this when writing Brandon et al. By now I'd guess their eyes have glazed over from looking at all the permutations. In fact, I half suspect that fatigue from looking over division lists contributed to the whole screwup. At most, I'd throw in a sentence. If you think the two should be in the same division it would be fair to say that much. I certainly wouldn't include a division list though. At this point that would probably induce vomiting.
August 25th, 2010 at 7:00 AM ^
I am in, and I'll email my OSU contacts. (At least one of them, their whole Thanksgiving holiday routine revolves around the game.)
Thought: besides OSU and Michigan, there are 9 other voting members of the Big Ten. Does anyone think it is worth writing them as well? At the very least the "west" contingent who are more likey to have seasons without having to go through OSU and Michigan to get to the Big Ten Championship might want a extra set of talking points for the eventual debate.
August 25th, 2010 at 8:59 AM ^
If you have some sort of contact -- especially if you either live in-state or you went to that college at some point in your academic career -- then it's probably worthwhile.
August 25th, 2010 at 7:43 AM ^
if everybody is going to send off letters, emails etc. we should all send the same suggestions as for the divisions. I've seen a lot of we can't be in the same division or we have to be in the same division which is really less important than the game being the last game of the year.
August 25th, 2010 at 9:07 AM ^
Social media is the new mass marketing ploy these days. Start up a Facebook fan page and start circulating it among your contacts. I would but I have no clue how to.