More Changes On The Horizon In The New Big Ten?

The Big Ten is notorious for moving slowly.

This has occasionally caused many of its fans to grow impatient with the organizational aspects of the conference that has so much say over what happens with the athletics of their favorite school.

However, it is that slow-moving conservatism that has kept it from being in a situation like the Big XII, which has recently done a high wire act between utter collapse and simply having two teams leave; a high wire act that was surely of its own doing .

It is also that slow-moving conservatism that has kept it from the fate of the ACC, who jumped into expansion in 2004, and has since seen mixed results .

However, right now the Big Ten is in a situation where it might be forced to act more quickly than it is used to.

Due to the relative speed of the addition of the University of Nebraska to the Big Ten—speed in this case meaning about 12 months in the making—the athletic directors and university presidents are being pushed into making decisions and potential changes much more quickly than they'd probably prefer.

Contrary to what has been previously reported , the Big Ten has not decided to play nine in-conference games starting in 2011.

Rather, the Big Ten athletic directors are currently discussing how many conference games they should play in-conference in the future.

As ESPN Big Ten blogger Adam Rittenberg reports, these discussions are nothing new for the Big Ten.

However, with 12 teams in the conference starting next season, nine in-conference games becomes a considerably more realistic option than it has since 1993 when Penn State athletics joined the Big Ten .

According to Rittenberg's account, Wisconsin AD Barry Alvarez appears to be very much in favor of the move. Meanwhile, Nebraska's AD Tom Osborne is in favor of the change provided each team can be guaranteed seven home games each year.

Needless to say, this begs the question of how the teams would schedule their out-of-conference slate.

Would Big Ten teams drop Notre Dame from their schedule? Would Iowa drop Iowa State? Does Nebraska have any plans to continue its rivalries with Missouri or Oklahoma?

Will FCS opponents continue to blemish various teams' schedules? Will series like Ohio State vs. USC happen in the future?

There is no official timetable set for making this decision, but as the Big Ten schedules its games two years in advance, this will be a decision that will need to be made soon.

In other news, all of the bandying back and forth regarding who will wind up in which Big Ten division should be answered by August .

According to Purdue AD Morgan Burke, the conference will look at this through "a wide lens."

In other words, the conference will not limit their scope to how teams have done over the past 10 years.

Burke further notes, "Clearly, Michigan and Ohio State and Penn State and Nebraska , if you look at a 50-year history, are your four biggest brands...You’re not going to stack all four of them in one division. You’re going to try to create some level of parity."

Therefore, for those that have been hoping for and expecting a division of the Big Ten based on a line drawn between Indiana and Illinois , you will probably be disappointed.

Expect one division to feature Michigan and OSU and the other to feature Nebraska and PSU.

The rest of the divisions will grow out of that, with my own prediction being that the Iowa-Minnesota-Wisconsin triumvirate will be in the Nebraska/PSU division along with Indiana.

In the Michigan/OSU division will be Illinois, Michigan State, Northwestern, and Purdue.

This will maintain divisional parity and protect most traditional rivalries. Furthermore, those rivalries that will be broken up—Purdue-Indiana's annual game for the Old Oaken Bucket being the most notable—can easily protect their inter-divisional game.

Either way, expect these decisions to come quickly—or at least much more quickly than Big Ten fans are used to seeing their beloved conference come to conclusions, especially with the Big Ten Media Days and Kickoff Luncheon on the imminent horizon.