After announcing their plans for expansion, the rumor mill began to spin out of control for weeks about which school, or schools, would be joining the Big Ten. Through it all, no one expected this:
Wayne State has joined the Big Ten.
The announcement sent shockwaves through the entire college sports nation, most particularly the Midwest. There was pressure to add bigger schools with more face value and more rich tradition.
The expansion committee hired a Poll House of New York research group to conduct research for the conference in an effort to see how they could maximize their profits depending on what school they added as their 12th member.
The original idea was to form a super conference. That would have merged the entire Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference and the Big Ten Conference. But that quickly faded away when it became apparent some of the schools weren’t able to come up with the $240 application fee.
What helped swing the vote into Wayne State’s favor was a generous donation to help finance the school’s necessities. The money will be spent to rent Ford Field every other Saturday in the fall for home football contests. The donor’s only request was to make sure no city official touches the money.
WSU has agreed to operate with direct deposit PayPal account only.
The school has decided to keep the donor’s identity a secret, but some speculate it could be eccentric billionaire Carlisle Vanderjac.
All calls, e-mails and telegrams to Vaderjac’s office went unanswered. His answering machine directed all calls to the office of a water park.
While Wayne State gladly embraced the invitation, officials from other schools were not as pleased.
“You’ve got to be kidding me with this,” said one rival school official in disgust.
The most curious response of the day was an email sent to the Big Ten office from a personal hotmail account with the visual “WTF!?!” copied and pasted over and over again.
The call for expansion was to increase the conference’s football exposure and to hold a championship game. That piece of information is what caused Wayne State athletic director to jump quickly at the opportunity.
“I thought it would be a nice change of pace. We could actually see a football team from Detroit win a few times for once.”
However, the jump to the bigger conference brings bigger aspirations and expectations. Analysts had predicted Wayne State to finish fourth in the conference in football for the coming season. This was after learning the NCAA had granted running back Joique Bell a sixth and seventh year of eligibility.
Upon hearing the good news to revive his college career, Bell announced his intention to transfer to a Division II school and aspirations to be invited to the Super-Senior Bowl.
So far, redesigning the conference logo has left visual artists everywhere baffled. Upon learning the best suggestion was to simply add the letters “ish” to the end of the conference name, delegators decided to sleep on it and revisit the plans at a later date.
However, the tagline has been updated: Big TENish conference – Now Ten-er than ever.
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