Jim Delany puts the Big Ten in good hands

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Nexus

All-American
Four weeks ago, Jim Delany reminisced about his days as a college basketball player for North Carolina.
He started only a few games for Dean Smith's Tar Heels, but the Big Ten commissioner recalled one memorable moment. In the final seconds of North Carolina's 1969 regional final against Davidson, Delany passed to Charlie Scott, who made the winning jumper to send the Tar Heels to the Final Four.

Until Michael Jordan's shot to beat Georgetown in the 1982 national title game, Scott's shot was the most famous in school history.

Former South Carolina coach Eddie Fogler was a Delany teammate back then. He didn't remember Delany's pass to Scott, but he remembers - as best he can after 41 years - the play that made it possible.

"I think he drew a charge to get the ball back," Fogler said.

That was the kind of player Delany was.

"He was a hard-nosed, tough sucker who competed," said Fogler, who remains close to Delany. "He loved to take on a physical challenge. If you set a screen on Delany, he might make you pay for it so the next time you had to set a screen, you didn't want to."

The tenacity Delany showed in his playing career remains today, even if most of his battles take place behind closed doors at Big Ten headquarters in suburban Chicago.

Now in his third decade as commissioner, Delany arguably has become the central figure in national college sports thanks to his leadership of the Big Ten's expansion pursuit, which has already caused major changes in the sports landscape and might cause more in the next year.

"A regular Joe"

Jim Delany is a powerful person, but those who know him well say he doesn't carry himself like a big shot.

"Jim is a regular Joe in a lot of ways," Illinois athletic director Ron Guenther said. "Jim is not this buttoned-down corporate guy who's always on edge, always on stage. He's just not that kind of guy. He does it only when it's necessary and important."

Delany is not a dynamic speaker, often sounding like the attorney he is. Where Delany excels is in his willingness to grind away until he understands all aspects of an issue. He's an adept consensus-builder with a knack for understanding how events will unfold.

"You're not going to see Jim grandstanding," Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith said. "You're not going to see Jim trying to sit at the head of the table. He's not flashy; he just gets it done."

Smith has known Delany since his days at Eastern Michigan, when Delany was commissioner of the Ohio Valley Conference.

"He's extremely bright," Smith said. "He has a high IQ and a high EQ - emotional intelligence. He's more of a visionary and a strategic thinker. He engages people and is very inclusive."

Until the current expansion push, Delany's signature effort was the launch of the Big Ten Network. The way he approached that is instructive in understanding his approach toward expansion.

The Big Ten Network was in the works for many years before its launch, and it took time for the notion to crystallize in Delany's mind.

"His idea was that we really didn't have a television entity that's competitive with the other networks," Smith said. "(College sports) basically built ESPN with our inventory (of games). Now we're building ESPN2, ESPNU. Where's this going?"

Smith said Delany picked the brains of television executives and gradually learned their business.

"He didn't go and meet with other networks and say, 'Hey, I'm thinking about a network. Let's talk about it. Teach me,'" Smith said. "No, he secretly and privately, in conversations over time when people didn't know what he was doing, was assessing and learning and trying to figure out, 'OK, how would this work for us?' Then he began engaging us (in the Big Ten) in strategic thinking and discussions, and we built it from there."

The Big Ten Network went on the air in August 2007, with the conference owning 51 percent and Fox Cable 49 percent. It endured a bumpy start because of contentious negotiations with cable companies, but it has become a resounding success. Last year, the network paid out about $20 million apiece to conference schools. At a time when most college sports programs are in the red, that money has been indispensable and a major selling point for the Big Ten during this expansion process.

Tons of experience

Recently, Pacific-10 commissioner Larry Scott jetted from the West Coast to Oklahoma and Texas in a failed gambit to entice five Big 12 schools to join Colorado in bolting to the Pac-10.

Meanwhile, Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe had to pull out all the stops to keep his conference from imploding. He succeeded, but ended up giving Texas even more of the financial farm than it already had - which is what caused much of the resentment inside the league against the Longhorns in the first place.

While others had to react frantically to fast-moving developments, Delany kept a low profile. Other than a celebratory trip to Lincoln, Neb., to welcome Nebraska into the Big Ten, Delany said little. Throughout the process, he has chosen his words carefully, usually by not using any at all and urging others in the Big Ten to do the same.

But his preparation has made a microphone unnecessary.

Delany has been through expansion before and learned lessons from it. Shortly before he took over as Ohio Valley Conference commissioner in 1979, the OVC added Akron and Youngstown State. But those urban Ohio schools did not fit with the rest of the more rural Kentucky and Tennessee schools in the conference and eventually departed.

"It just didn't work," Delany said.

In preparation for the Big Ten's current push for expansion, that experience remained fresh in his mind. He also studied other conferences' expansions.

"We spent a lot of time looking at what had been done right, what had worked, what had been successful, what didn't work, why it didn't work," Delany said. "We tried to identify the things to avoid. So many times, conferences ended up with institutions they never planned on."

The process began early in 2009, long before the Big Ten announced its intentions in December. That gave the conference a huge advantage when events came to a head.

It is now clear that one target of the Big Ten's affection was Texas. The Longhorns were probably the "hr" (home run) that Delany referred to in an April e-mail to Ohio State president E. Gordon Gee. But as the Big Ten studied other schools, it also came to covet Nebraska.

When the Big 12 issued an ultimatum to Nebraska and Missouri to declare whether they intended to stay, the Big Ten was ready. The conference had done its homework on Nebraska and felt comfortable that the Cornhuskers would be a good fit.

"Plan A was gone," said Illinois' Guenther, who wouldn't confirm that Texas was indeed Plan A. "We went to Plan B."

Ignoring the critics

Delany knew expansion would be a big story, but the amount of media coverage surprised him.

"The articles, they just keep going," he said. "It is on the front of everyone's mind, and I've never seen anything quite like it."

Delany has taken some shots from critics who bemoan the potential consequences from the Big Ten's decision to pursue expansion. Delany isn't particularly bothered by that.

He said that 98 percent of the coverage has been fair. The other 2 percent he can endure. It helps that his wife, Kitty, is a former newspaper reporter.

"Some of the comments have been more complimentary than I deserve," Delany said. "The Big Ten has a lot of resources, so anyone who sits in this chair benefits from it - the credibility of the place, the tradition of the place."

Smith believes that those who've directed barbs at Delany are misguided. All he's doing, Smith contends, is what any successful executive does - surveying the terrain for opportunities and pitfalls to avoid being left behind by other innovators.

"If you don't sit back and look at where you're going, we could sit here 15, 20 years from now with major problems in our business because we didn't change with the landscape," Smith said. "I'm one of those guys that always says, 'Where are we going?'"

Wherever the Big Ten is going, Delany will lead it, with the full backing and trust of league officials.

"We're positioned to get to where we want to be because we've done our due diligence," Smith said. "Where we are is a great place. If it ends here, we're in a great place. If it keeps going, we'll be in an even better place."

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Texas was turned down because Nebraska was a better fit.

Explains a lot of the actions taken by Texas, what with their big egos bruised so.

 
The two comments about the compatibility of Texas that kept echoing in my head during the expansion craziness were:

1) “The Big Ten is a ‘Check your ego at the door' conference" Link

and

2) Texas does not play well with others.

That's what it came down to. Maybe the Big 10 is socialistic, but its brand of socialism has resulted in stability and financial security.

 
Delany is truly one of the more fascinating people in the world of college athletics. He's not dynamic or particularly charismatic, he doesn't appear to throw his weight around, he prefers to work silently behind the scenes. But when he speaks, everyone involved in college sports holds their breath.

The Big Ten Network is Delany's crowning achievement. I love how everyone was laughing at the Big Ten when the network launched and now everyone is frantically figuring out how they can start their own network.

 
Nice read, Nexus. If college football was The Andy Griffith Show, Jim Delaney would be Sheriff Andy Taylor. Don Beebe would play the role of both Goober and Gomer Pyle. I almost would say Texas would be Barney Fife, but I liked Barney way too much to embarrass the late Don Knotts like that. ;)

 
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