Neither Rutgers University nor the University of Maryland has been considered a traditional football powerhouse. In the last decade, though, both have invested heavily in coaches and facilities in the hope of competing with the likes of Ohio State and Alabama. On the field, the outcomes have been mixed. Financially, the results have been dismal.

A year ago, the Rutgers athletic department’s deficit was nearly $28 million, bringing the hole it has dug since 2005 to $190 million. To offset the losses, student fees have been raised and state funds reallocated. Last summer, Maryland’s athletic department cut seven varsity sports in trying to patch a $21 million shortfall.

Both schools have hit upon the same solution to their athletic and fiscal troubles: Next summer, they will join the Big Ten, among the most storied conferences in college football. To understand how Rutgers and Maryland — and college athletics in general — got to this point, you need to understand Jim Delany, the Big Ten’s 65-year-old commissioner, now in his 25th year on the job. It was the Big Ten, which will crown a football champion when Ohio State meets Michigan State on Saturday, Dec. 7, that Forbes magazine recently proclaimed the “cash king” of college sports.

The conference generated $315 million in revenue in the fiscal year ended in June 2012, the most of any conference, and was expected to reward most of its member schools with a split of $25.7 million each the next year. The primary source of the money has been television — most of it coming from a lucrative contract that Mr. Delany negotiated with ESPN and from the conference’s own cable network, which Mr. Delany was mostly responsible for creating in 2007. “Jim is a superstar,” said E. Gordon Gee, a former president of Ohio State, a Big Ten stalwart. “He knows the power of TV better than anyone.”