Have these Wisconsin players just learned that Leaders & Legends will soon be naught but an unfortunate memory? (AP)

By Holly Anderson

As expected, the Big Ten has officially announced its plans to shift from the constantly-maligned Leaders & Legends divisions to geographical halves. The league has also decided to move to a nine-game conference schedule. First, the business, and lordamercy have they ever mathed this thing out:

The Big Ten Conference office announced football division alignments set to begin in 2014 and nine-game conference schedules set to start in 2016. [...] The new division alignments will feature Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State, Penn State and Rutgers in the East Division and Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Northwestern, Purdue and Wisconsin in the West Division. [...] Each school will play the other six schools in its division plus two teams from the other division in 2014 and 2015, which will serve as transitional years in which the schools will still be playing eight-game schedules. Beginning in 2016, each school will play three teams from the other division as part of its nine-game schedule. [...] With the start of the nine-game conference schedule in 2016, teams from the East Division will host five conference home games during even-numbered years, while teams from the West Division will host five conference home games during odd-numbered years. As a result of the nine-game conference schedule and the Big Ten’s schedule rotation, every student-athlete will have the opportunity to play against every other team in the conference at least once during a four-year period. 

Got all that? Right. Now, on to the important part: How we are all going to keep these straight without carrying around pocket globes. Using the first letter of each school’s name in a given division to form an anagram is possible (PRIM MOM for the East and WIMP INN for the West), but we prefer Tony Gerdeman’s technique:

Easy singsong to remember who's in the B1G East: "My Mother Made Seven Oreo Pies Rutgers".—
Tony Gerdeman (@GerdOzone) April 28, 2013

I forgot Indiana in my singsong! How accurate of me. Try "My Idiot Mother Made Seven Oreo Pies Rutgers".—
Tony Gerdeman (@GerdOzone) April 28, 2013

*Not sponsored by Ro-Tel or Barbasol. Close shave, internet.

“But can we all agree that Maryland and Rutgers are looking particularly leaderly this morning? Hello?” (AP)

By Holly Anderson

Friday night news from Sources McMurphy that bears repeating: Leaders and Legends are going the way of the dinosaur. Not in the re-released-in-3D way, but rather the selected-for-necessary-extinction way:

Legends and Leaders are no more, as the Big Ten will use geography to determine its new divisions and division names beginning in the 2014 season. The Big Ten will replace Legends and Leaders with East and West when Maryland and Rutgers join the league in 2014, league sources told ESPN.

[...]

“Just take a ruler and a map [and split the 14 teams],” a source said.

HOW HARD WAS THAT? Honestly.

Jim Delany to Andy Staples: “It’s not that we want to go Division III or go to need-based aid,” Delany said. “It’s simply that in the plaintiff’s hypothetical — and if a court decided that Title IX is out and players must be paid — I don’t think we’d participate in that. I think we’d choose another option. … If that’s the law of the land, if you have to do that, I don’t think we would.”

Internet’s reaction: Over there to your right.

Campus Union Feelings Collage on the subject: After the jump.

Photo credits:

Steve Spurrier: Getty Images

Ken Niumatalolo: AP

Mack Brown: AP

Mark Dantonio: Getty Images

Mark Richt: AP

Nick Saban: Getty Images

Paul Rhoads: Austin American-Statesman

Lane Kiffin: AP

Mark Emmert: Getty Images

Brady Hoke: AP

Kevin Sumlin: AP

Everything I’ve ever known is a lie. RT @ASUDevilscom: Brock Osweiler measured 6-foot-6 7/8 at NFL Combine without shoes.

— Gina Mizell (@ginamizell) February 24, 2012

• Can’t trust a blessed thing in this world. If we can’t depend on Brock Osweiler being 6-8, what can we depend on? Next thing you’ll tell us Ron Zook is, at best, a mediocre and unenthusiastic jetskiier.

• More like “leaders of the pack beating a fast trail out of Denton,” amirite, Hoosiers? The problem, in the end, with naming conference divisions “Leaders” and “Legends” is that every league, no matter how stacked, is going to have its Indiana. Smart and sassy Michigan internet fixture MGoBlog follows up our shoddy “research” with some “research” of its own — and speaking of shoddy, Brand Explorers still can’t spell “analysis.” Fun extrapolation from the ensuing comment thread: “This, combined with the the poll posted on the board yesterday, suggests that Michigan fans disapprove of the division names more strongly than they approve of Brady Hoke.” Who just won Michigan a Sugar Bowl, you might have heard.

• The state bird of Ohio. Is not football, but don’t mention that to the northern cardinal.

• Ricky Williams, graven idol. We can only hope that future civilizations, surveying the wreckage of post-zombie-apocalyptic America, will find these bronzed tributes to our beautiful game and build a religion around them.

• Dillon Baxter’s wrong foot appears to be his left. At least according to the accompanying photo here.

• About social media being a young person’s game. You can rake in the accolades as Rivals’ Big 12 recruiter of the year, but you had best familiarize yourself with the difference between a public Twitter reply and a direct message before you try to take your strat to the new media frontier.

• Tweet of the week. Miami safety JoJo Nicolas, you have our full and rapt attention.

I need bout 6 midget

— Jojo Nicolas (@GrindMode29) February 22, 2012

• Let’s work some high kicks into this square dance. The Texas A&M no-spirit-ladies-in-our-special-traditions debate will go on, but not forever: The Aggies play Ole Miss, LSU and Alabama this season, and exposure to the Rebel cheerleaders, Golden Girls and Crimsonettes can only move that needle inexorably in a single direction.

• DANCE BREAK. It’s catlab versus the SEC head coaches photo versus Dana Holgorsen’s Mountain Dew habit, and the winner, as always, is all of us.

Jim Delany and his B1G brethren have elected to stick with "Leaders" and "Legends" as division names. (US PRESSWIRE)

“Hey guys, I’ve come up with a new mnemonic for remembering which teams are in the Leaders division. Ready? Illinois, Indiana, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue and Wisconsin.” — A joke we have been working on, to no avail

While we were raised on one team and own many expensive hooded sweatshirts (and one spacey t-shirt) dedicated to that team’s supremacy, we are professional polytheists when it comes to college football. We have favorite teams in every conference, whose good fortune cheers us and faceplants sadden our days. We want the best for the best sport. We are also blessed with almost superhuman strength when it comes to liking dumb things ironically, but you guys: We are utterly unable to get on board with this “Leaders & Legends” thing the Increasingly Inaccurately Named Big Ten continues to insist is A Thing, a notoriously ill-conceived branding attempt we are now all apparently stuck with.

Our favorite pull quote from that Tribune report, and it’s not close:

The Big Ten plans to “work harder to help fans understand why the names were chosen” and “understand who is in which division.”

Now you know the exact percentage of people who understand anything about anything. It’s [33.333 - [haters]].

It was a diabolically shrewd plan on the part of Jim Delany and his ilk, when you think about it: Wait a year for the conference faithful to become inured to the idea, then toss out some “research” (conducted by a firm with a name straight out of a DOS game and that, as alert reader J. Clark points out, misspells “analysis” in a graphic on its front page) to prop up the campaign and count on inertia to do the rest. Plus, they already had all this stationery made.

Because it is February after Signing Day and we have nothing better to do, we conducted some highly unscientific “research” of our own. Here is a representative sample of tweets we gathered last week from a cursory Twitter search of “Leaders + Legends;” look for yourselves if you like and see if the winds have shifted any since then.

We then reached out to B1G readers on our personal and work Twitter accounts, asking for their thoughts. Their responses ranged all the way from outright hostility to grim resolution. A representative selection, presented in descending order:

That the B1G is investigating social media unrest by telephone is perhaps the most B1G thing ever, but all is not lost: Public relations, like football, is a game of inches.

Better and better.

 On June 11, 2010, the Big Ten Council of Presidents/Chancellors announced unanimous approval of the University of Nebraska’s application to join the conference effective July 1, 2011, with competition to begin in all sports for the 2011-12 academic year. UNL has already been granted admission into the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, a consortium of the Big Ten universities and the University of Chicago. These world-class research institutions have advanced their academic missions, generated unique opportunities for students and faculty and served the common good by sharing their expertise, leveraging campus resources and collaborating on innovative programs.

Nebraska’s first Big Ten event as an official member of the conference will take place at the 2011 Football Media Days and 40th annual Kickoff Luncheon. This year’s event will be held on Thursday and Friday, July 28 and 29, at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place and McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago. The Big Ten Football Media Days and Kickoff Luncheon feature all 12 head coaches and some of the nation’s top returning players.

Nebraska’s first athletic competition as a member of the Big Ten Conference will take place on August 19, when the women’s soccer team hosts North Carolina. One week later, the Cornhuskers volleyball squad will open its first campaign as a Big Ten program against New Mexico State on August 26 in Albuquerque, N.M. The football team kicks off its first season as a Big Ten school on September 3 against Chattanooga. Nebraska’s cross country, golf and tennis teams will also begin competition in September.  The Cornhuskers will open Big Ten competition in September, with the women’s soccer team hosting Northwestern on September 18 and the volleyball program welcoming defending national champion Penn State on September 21.

Nebraska’s football program will open Big Ten competition with back-to-back games against two of the three teams that shared the conference title last season. The Cornhuskers will make their Big Ten debut at Wisconsin on October 1, followed by a home matchup against Ohio State at Memorial Stadium on October 8. Big Ten football teams will now play in two divisions: the Legends Division and the Leaders Division. The Cornhuskers are joined in the Legends Division by Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota and Northwestern. The Leaders Division is comprised of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue and Wisconsin.  The winners of each division will play in the inaugural Big Ten Football Championship Game, with the victor earning the Big Ten Championship and the conference’s automatic berth into the Rose Bowl Game or Bowl Championship Series National Championship Game. The 2011 Big Ten Football Championship Game will be played in prime time on December 3 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis and will be televised by FOX Sports.  Nebraska’s cross country teams will have the first opportunity to compete in a Big Ten Championship, as the Cornhuskers will take part in the 2011 Big Ten Cross Country Championships to be hosted by Illinois on Oct. 30.

About the Big Ten Conference: The Big Ten Conference is an association of world-class universities whose member institutions share a common mission of research, graduate, professional and undergraduate teaching and public service. Founded in 1896, the Big Ten has sustained a comprehensive set of shared practices and policies that enforce the priority of academics in student-athletes’ lives and emphasize the values of integrity, fairness and competitiveness. With the addition of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the broad-based athletic programs of the 12 Big Ten institutions sponsor 298 teams competing for championships in 25 official conference sports, 12 for men and 13 for women. Big Ten universities provide in excess of $120 million in athletic scholarship aid to more than 9,500 men and women student-athletes. For more information, visit www.bigten.org.

*** PRESS RELEASE COURTESY OF  DAN MIHALIK AND THE BIG TEN CONFERENCE ***