Misplaced

The Big Ten Tournament lands in the Big Apple starting today, and heaven knows if it will make a sound. It's hard for a rational person to believe it will. It's harder yet for a rational person to understand the irrationality of dragging your conference tournament so far from its ancestral home -- or rather, homes.

Let's bring in Rand McNally, shall we?

Ol' Rand says it's 935 miles as the crow flies from Madison, Wis., home of the Wisconsin Badgers, to New York City. He says it's four miles shy of a thousand miles (996) from Iowa City, Ia., home of the Iowa Hawkeyes, to New York. And it's 773 miles from West Lafayette, In., home of the best Purdue basketball team in a long stretch, to NYC.

That's a hell of a lot of cab fare.

It's also a hell of a naked cash grab on the part of Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany and the boys, who so lusted after those lush East Coast markets that they brought in an ACC school (Maryland) and a doormat Big East school (Rutgers) a few years back. This not only stretched the Big Ten's geographic footprint comically out of shape -- it stretches from Nebraska to New Jersey now, not so much a footprint as a topographical feature -- it betrayed its cultural footprint, which is and always has been uniquely Midwest.

Well. This week it's abandoning all that for the bright lights of the big city. Madison and Iowa City and West Lafayette? Pffft. Soooo Yokel Central, man.

Never mind that loyal fan bases that filled tournament sites that made sense -- Chicago and Indianapolis -- didn't do that when the Big Ten abandoned them for Washington, D.C. last year, and they won't in New York no matter how Delany and Co. are packaging this. Madison Square Garden or not, it will be an event swallowed up by the Event that is New York City itself, and one which the locals have zero connection to.

Well, unless you count Rutgers over there in New Brunswick, N.J.

Who'll be sure to draw huge throngs considering the Scarlet Knights are 13-18 overall and finished dead last in the conference at 3-15. Yeah, boy. The home team will just pack 'em in.

 Of course, the Big Ten doesn't care about any of that, and hasn't for some time. It's those East Coast TV markets it cares about, and so this is all about exposure, which translates to "money." How cash-hungry are Delany and Co.? Why, they don't even care that they had to jack around with their schools' schedules to make the New York thing happen.

The Big Ten tournament, see, is being played a week ahead of all the other major conference tournaments. Which means Big Ten schools who make the NCAA Tournament will have almost two weeks of down time before they next play, while everyone else will still be in full tournament mode.

A thousand miles from Iowa City.

935 miles from Madison.

773 miles from West Lafayette.

Two idle weeks to lead into college basketball's big show.

Pffft. Let 'em eat branding.