That's the press release from the conference announcing it, dated today.
Edit: Story about the press release, but still.
My main reason for creating a new topic was this confirms the start date of a B1G lacrosse conference, as well as the status of women's lacrosse within the Big Ten.
Yesterday's post was Inside Lacross reporting it would happen, today is the B1G officially announcing it actually happening. I think that is a threadworthy difference.
Except it wasn't posted already. Which is why people keep responding about why is it different than yesterday's thread.
Analogy time: what you are doing right now is the equivalent of going into the "Hello: Chase Winovich" post and complaining because there was already a "Buckle Up?" post. Official announcements are worth their own posts so people that have stopped following new posts on the old thread know it has gone from speculation to official.
Punctuation can make a difference.
There was another one before that, too.
I actually did see the thread yesterday and was following the discussion. I just wasn't sure what else to say, figuring the headline spoke for itself. I also hoped adding "officially" to the title would have made that clear, but apparently I didn't make it clear enough.
If we're talking soul moves, I would think that Howard is a likely choice for expansion.
a religious school.
I discounted that side as Catholics are holy on Saturday's and holy hell during the rest of the week. Or so I've been told...
It could make a difference.
And who says it has to be a Catholic school? I'm waiting for the addition of a Buddist school and a Hindi school to add all those tvs in China and India.
We should just scrap all the current sports and turn the B1G into a giant Japanese gameshow.
Mo money, mo money, mo money!
or Spelman.
Wow, maybe we have been doing it all wrong. Maybe we should follow this example and offer Notre Dame affiliate membership in football. We don't care about their other sports anyway.
I think the difference here is that lacrosse is JHU's only D1 sport (or am I wrong about that?). So, technically, JHU will be in the B1G in all their D1 sports. This isn't like ND picking and choosing when it would be convenient for a sport to be in the conference.
Which makes me wonder - will JHU use this to springboard a few more programs to the D1 level? Obviously, we are not talking about BB or FB, but I'd be curious to see if they would test the waters with some other non-revenue sports. It's not like they don't have the endowment. I'm guessing that they are not interested in expanding their athletics, but it would be crazy to think that the discussion was not broached during their talks with the B1G. JHU has a history of strong swim teams, among other sports. Stranger things have happened.
I'm not sure the latest NCAA rule changes would selectively allow Division III Hopkins to promote other non-revenue sports to Division I [1].
(I also am unsure that joining the CIC is in any way part of the expansion discussions.)
It has been true for a couple of decades that a Division II or Division III school could have 1 men's sport and 1 women's sport "playing up" to the Division I level. Now, it has been forbidden entirely (except for the sports already playing at the Division I level).
The only way for Johns Hopkins to move any more sports up to Division I would be for the entire athletic department to move to Division I, which I am certain they have no interest in doing. Yes, stranger things have happened, but this won't.
Hopkins was granted a big waiver to be allowed to continue their lax programs as D1 when the NCAA changed rules about 15 years ago to demand that a school compete in one division only. There are a few hockey schools with the same waiver as well.
If a what are you drinking thread is valid for everyday of the week, then a thread officially announcing the entrance of an elite academic institution to the B1G is more than thread worthy.
All official from the Big Ten now so I don't see why this shouldn't be posted.
I'm definitely excited about this from a lacrosse perspective. Michigan will now play in the strongest conference nationally that will get an auto-bid, and the conference will only be slightly behind the ACC now. It also gets Michigan a lot more lacrosse exposure on the east coast in the Maryland recruiting hot-bed. Both of those things will help Michigan become a nationally competitive program relatively quickly.
Only question remaining to be discussed is what happens with JHU's TV deal with ESPN. Big Ten has been reluctant to show lacrosse games, however if they are looking to get into TV sets on the east cost, this is certainly one way to do it.
...that Hopkins home games will continue to be be ESPNU, and that all of their conference games will be broadcast on BTN. Frankly, for the BTN to get a chance to broadcast Hopkins so often is a boon for lax programming on the BTN. It will also give much more exposure to the other conference schools. Hopkins has the #1 TV watching fan base out there for lax (OK, that is nothing compared to any other B1G school for football or basketball, but this is about growing lax programming on BTN)
Slightly behind the ACC? Are you out of your mind?
Syracuse, North Carolina, Virginia, Duke, Notre Dame...
Ohio State, Johns Hopkins, Maryland?
Sure thing, buddy.
Big ten has last year's laxpower #3, 5, 12, & 14.
ACC has #2, 4, 10, 15 & 17
4 top 20's vs. 5 top 20's. 2 top 5's vs. 2 top 5's. 4 top 15's vs. 4 top 15's. I stand by my slightly, while acknowledging that laxpower isn't perfect so there is of course plenty of subjectivity with this type of analysis no matter how you measure it.
Now, I really don't want to argue for the ACC here (because clearly my bias goes the other way) but this is a little misleading.
#3 for us is Hopkins, who didn't make the tourney. #4 for them won the national title, and played #10 in the championship game, while our three participants won one game between the three of them. The ACC had four teams in the tourney - one of them won it, two of them were knocked out by other ACC teams and UNC lost by one to a very good Denver squad.
Additionally, all 5 of their teams were in the top-20 (even with Virginia having a very bad year for them) and our 5th and 6th teams were at 44 and 54, respectively.
Our top two are absolutely even with their top 2, but there is a little drop off for our next two and a huge drop off for our last two. Right now.
HOWEVA, in not too many years, the Big Ten will be right on par with the ACC. If the BTN handles this well and starts putting Big Ten lacrosse on TV all the time during the spring (what else do they have?) then the Big Ten will catch up in a hurry. If I'm a recruit from Pennsylvania, Maryland or NY and I can either go to Michigan, OSU or PSU and be on TV all time or go to UNC, UVa or Duke and not, that might make up for a lot of other things. Ditto for kids from CA coming out East for college - their parents will never get to see them play in person, but with the BTN, they'll get to watch all the time. Combine that with the way lacrosse is growing in Michigan and Ohio and I bet the Big Ten runs step for step wih the ACC in less than a decade.
good chart explaining what lacrosse leagues would have looked like had they had their current members for the last four years: http://www.collegecrosse.com/2013/6/3/4392036/conference-realignment-big-ten-b1g-johns-hopkins-lacrosse-conference-ratings. Basically, the B1G would have had a strong case for anywhere between 2-5 over the last four years, and probably will get stronger. Also, someone mentioned that the deal is basically that Hopkins doesn't get BTN money, but doesn't give up any ESPNU money here: http://www.collegecrosse.com/2013/6/3/4391766/conference-realignment-big-ten-b1g-lacrosse-johns-hopkins-michigan-ohio-state-penn-state-maryland No idea if that's true or not.
The amount of money it takes to start a hockey program is insanely high. The reason B1G hockey exists at this point is PSU got a very large donation from Terry Pegula, which allowed them to construct the rink needed at start the program. Don't expect to see any expansion from hockey for a while, and if it happens, Illinois is the most likely candidate.
No self-respecting hockey league would have ever thought that could work.