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Big Ten officials downplay SEC rivalry
- Updated: May 18, 2016
4:03 PM ET
ROSEMONT, Ill. — The Big Ten Experience, an interactive museum on the first floor of the league’s offices, doesn’t contain a Nick Saban voodoo doll or a dartboard with the SEC’s logo in the bull’s-eye.
I checked.
This may disappoint our friends in the South, including my ESPN colleague Paul Finebaum, but the Big Ten isn’t completely obsessed with the SEC. To be clear, the Big Ten is acutely aware of the SEC’s recent success in football, an unprecedented run that largely coincided with a Big Ten nosedive. Big Ten officials, including commissioner Jim Delany, understand that the Big Ten and SEC are, by far, the richest, most powerful and most popular conferences in college sports.
There’s no shortage of rivalry kindling, from location to history to philosophy to coaches to results to massive fan bases incited by the mere mention of the other conference. Satellite camps, as insignificant as they are, became the latest wedge.
The Big Ten-SEC rivalry isn’t going anywhere. But many Big Ten officials don’t view the two leagues as diametrically opposed, even if it’s how they’re portrayed.
“There’s a good bit of collaboration,” Delany said Wednesday after the Big Ten concluded its spring meetings. “It doesn’t get covered very much.”
Delany, finishing his 27th year as Big Ten commissioner, recalls working with former SEC commissioner Roy Kramer to arrange bowl matchups in the early 1990s. He says there was more cooperation than discord between the leagues in shaping the College Football Playoff model. He praised the SEC for experimenting with centralized replay review this coming football season, adding that while the Big Ten isn’t quite ready to take the step, it will be watching closely.
“It’s natural to have a little healthy, competitive rivalry,” Purdue athletic director Morgan Burke said. “But knowing most of those guys down there, they’re going to compete and try to beat you on the field, but I also know they understand the importance of getting these kids educated.
“I doubt we’re as far apart as people think we are.”
There’s a gap between the two leagues on the football field, at least in winning national …
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