Athletic Director Joel Maturi spoke to Sports Headliners about subjects of interest to Gophers fans including Big Ten Conference expansion and division alignment. Maturi believes that with Nebraska becoming the league’s 12th team in 2011 the conference will decide how to group the teams by September 1 of this year.
No doubt there will be two divisions with six teams each but how will it look? “I don’t believe it will be solely geographical,” Maturi said.
School locales will be a factor but so too will be creating overall division and conference competitive balance, according to Maturi. Figuring out a balance between those factors will mean the Gophers likely won’t have an annual football schedule against all four of these historical and traditional rivals: Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan and Nebraska.
Maturi said the best the Gophers may hope for is to be in a division with two of those schools and through cross divisional scheduling face an additional rival each season. “You can’t keep them all,” he said.
Conference teams are expected to indefinitely continue playing eight league games and four non-nonconference. Maturi said the number of league games could be expanded some day but he doesn’t see it happening soon. One reason is that a nine game league schedule means some teams would have five home games, others four in any given year.
Maturi believes it could be awhile before, or if, the conference adds another team and perhaps moves toward what some have speculated will become a 16 member league. He and other leaders will want assurances that expansion doesn’t result in less revenue from Big Ten sources such as TV money for each existing member. Revenues per school are expected to remain the same or even grow for each school despite slicing the pie 12 ways with Nebraska coming into the league.
Maturi needs the over $20 million received annually from the Big Ten to maintain a 25 sport program of which he is proud. His athletic department has been able to operate in the black financially despite having less football income than most conference schools but more total sports than several league members.
Maturi said the Gophers expect to finish among the top 15 to 20 schools for this school year in the Learfield cup standings. That annual ranking of total sports performance by America’s colleges and universities frequently has the Gophers among the top schools.
Gopher athletes have been excelling in academics, including higher graduation rates as compared with the general student population, and also volunteering for projects in the community. Maturi said the school’s 750 athletes put in about 7,500 hours of community volunteer time during the past school year.