Doyel: Big Ten tournament in New York City is stupid and everyone knows it

INDIANAPOLIS – There goes the Big Ten, shamelessly chasing the money again, this time all the way to New York City. It appears to be instinctual, something the Big Ten was born to do, like a dog chasing a squirrel even if the squirrel runs into traffic because SQUIRREL!

Here goes the Big Ten this week into Madison Square Garden, playing its men’s basketball tournament in the wrong place at the wrong time because MONEY!

On the bright side, nobody’s paying attention. No, wait, that’s the downside. And it’s not the only downside. It’s not even the biggest downside. But let’s not ignore how badly the Big Ten has devalued its basketball tournament, even if the city hosting the damn thing will in fact be ignoring its basketball tournament.

To shoehorn this traditional Midwest conference into Madison Square Garden, the league had to schedule its conference tourney a week ahead of schedule, alongside the Atlantic Sun and Big South and Ohio Valley, because serious basketball leagues play their conference tournament the week before the NCAA tournament — and the Big East has dibs on Madison Square Garden that week through 2026.

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Well, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany wasn’t going to wait that long because MONEY!

So he — and let’s be clear here: this is Jim Delany’s fault — agreed to a bastardized Big Ten schedule this year that has seen the league play some conference games in December, the conference tournament at a weird time and then have a layoff of almost two weeks before the NCAA tournament begins. The extended layoff seems damaging to the league’s chances in the NCAA tournament, but the Big Ten didn’t concern itself with that because MONEY!

To his credit, and let’s not go overboard crediting the guy, Delany knows he screwed up. He told the Chicago Tribune last week that he wouldn’t do this again, condensing the conference schedule — Indiana, to name one school, played five games from Jan. 19-30, losing four of them — to squeeze the conference tournament into New York City. He defended the original decision, though, for reasons that are intellectually dishonest:

“The objective,” Delany told the Tribune of the thought process that led to the Big Ten tourney being played this week, “(was) to give the players and the teams and our fans there a chance to see the Big Ten in the Big Apple.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong. The objective was to make money. In its original release in 2014 announcing the decision to play this week in Madison Square Garden, Delany said “this pairing is a natural fit for us as we continue to extend our brand and live in two regions of the country.” In the statement, the league crowed about “a significant branding presence both inside and outside the building.” All of that gobbledygook about “branding” is closer to the truth, a lot closer than giving players “a chance to see the Big Ten in the Big Apple,” but it wasn’t the primary objective, either.

The objective, if you can believe this, was to lure Rutgers to the Big Ten.

Rutgers!

That’s where this whole thing started, the same place where so many stupid decisions in college sports started: conference realignment. The biggest conference tournaments staged their own hunger games, eventually devouring the Southwest Conference and devaluing the Big East, but they didn’t get bigger intelligently. They got bigger stupidly because MONEY! The Big Ten wanted to expand its geographic footprint, a phrase I’m putting in italics because you need to hear it as I’m trying to write it: as an obscenity.

There’s no going back, but somehow the Big Ten is stuck with Maryland and Rutgers (!), and to get those schools to leave their own conferences, the Big Ten had to make all sorts of promises including this one: We’ll bring the men’s basketball tournament to you. Last season the Big Ten tournament was in Washington, D.C., where it was sparsely attended, and this year it will be in Madison Square Garden, where it will be sparsely attended. Put the Big Ten tournament in two of the four most populated areas in the country — greater New York City is first, greater Washington, D.C., fourth — and the league can’t fill the building. Why? Because those markets don’t care about the Big Ten.

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Absurd that the Big Ten thought it would be otherwise, but that’s what Delany and Co. did several years ago because MONEY!

Put the Big Ten tournament in Chicago, and Chicago will probably fill it. Put it in Indianapolis, and we’ll definitely fill it. A city like New York, the Big Ten tournament just doesn’t register.

Last time the Big Ten did something this brazenly greedy, this unthinkably damaging, it was deciding in 2016 to play football games on Friday night because MONEY! Delany saw a chance to get the league on networks other than the Big Ten, so he took it. To a man, league football coaches hated it because they know it alienates some of the most pivotal people on the recruiting trail: high school coaches. The only people who thought the decision made any sense at all were the commissioners, Delany and the IHSAA’s Bobby Cox, Delany because he’s greedy and Cox because half the time he has no idea what he’s doing.

But again, the bright side: Delany says the Big Ten won’t compress its schedule to play its conference tournament early — in other words, the league will no longer cut off its nose just to spite its own face — ever again. On the downside, he says the league will try to put its men’s basketball tournament back in New York City someday, and plans to play it on a somewhat regular basis in Washington, D.C., and that Big Ten hotbed of Philadelphia (!).

Do what you do best, commissioner: Set your teams up to fail. And count your MONEY!

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter: @GreggDoyelStar or at facebook.com/gregg.doyel.