Oh Delany What New Devilry Is This?

Do you love college football? Well I love college football too, and we all know that settling the national champion on the field would be only the right thing to do. Even crazier than that, Jim Delany might finally be starting to agree with you. In a reversal of policy that seems a little too good to be true Northwestern athletic director Jim Phillips said the following regarding a playoff:

"We have to listen to the fans; we cannot be tone-deaf," Northwestern athletic director Jim Phillips, the chair of the Big Ten's Administrators Council, told the Tribune. "The Big Ten is open and curious."

Shotgun on The Open and The Curious as new Big Ten division name candidates to replace Leaders and Legends. Delany has always struck me as two things. The first, in the movie Hot Tub Time Machine they say the line, "He's an a-hole, but he's our a-hole". The second, Delany introduced the concept of a network devoted solely to a conference when he launched the Big Ten Network in 2007. He's been the indisputable winner of the conference retooling by landing Nebraska. Nebraska is excellent at every sport except the one where you put the round orange ball in the cylindrical thing, the state is the Bermuda triangle of basketballs.

If Delany is going to relent at this point it's because he's figured out an angle. It's not fan pressure, that's been there for 15 years. It's not dollars, at least not overtly, those dollars have been there for 15 years. It's because he's figured out a way to put the Big Ten in a strong position through this proposal. On an interesting and certainly unrelated note from the Big Ten/Pac-12 Partnership article in the 12/28 New York Times.

The collaboration could lead to the conferences creating bowl partnerships and postseason games that would be shown on their networks. Delany pointed out that ESPN and the NFL Network both run bowl games.

While Delany and Scott said the idea of starting a bowl game shown on their networks had not been formally discussed, both said they were open to the idea.

So wait, you're cool with a playoff now AND you're also cool with Big Ten/Pac-12 Bowl Games shown on those networks? Hm, if Delany gets his way I'd be a skosh itchy if the bowl I ran didn't have the word Rose in it.