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May 2, 2010 I have reputation as being, more or less, a stick in the mud on a lot of things. I respect and admire tradition, and at least when it works, rarely see a reason to change it. Here at the University of Michigan, an institution established in 1817, I fit right in. There is so much tradition, that even I complain about it at times. Nearly every sports team is near the top in all-time wins, and all have grainy black and white photos plastered all over the athletic department to prove it. If you’re a sports fan, you’ve undoubtedly heard that the Big Ten is looking to expand from its current 11 teams (that never made much sense) to 12 or possibly even 16 teams. The Big Ten also has a long and rich tradition. Originally founded in 1896, it became the Big Nine in 1899. After Michigan left the conference for a brief period of time, and Ohio State joined, it became known as the Big Ten. In 1939, the University of Chicago left the conference, Michigan State replaced it, and the conference has only changed its members once since then, adding Penn State in 1990. Now, as speculation on expansion is flooding sports talk radio and our newspapers, this tradition is somewhat threatened. The reasons for expansion all make sense. Adding new television markets will make the three-year-old Big Ten Network even more profitable. Currently member institutions make more than $20 million dollars annually on their 51% stake in the network. Adding another school with a large and geographically disparate alumni base (that’s you Notre Dame) or a school in a new and lucrative untapped media market (I see you Rutgers and Syracuse), makes a lot of economic sense. Further, all the schools mentioned would maintain the Big Ten’s requirement that its academic institutions remain among the most prestigious in the country. But there will be something intangible lost if the Big Ten expands. Adding Notre Dame would not tarnish tradition, as nearly all Big Ten schools play Notre Dame annually in most sports, and have lost-standing rivalries with the school from South Bend. But introducing teams like Missouri, Nebraska, or Rutgers, which previously had only very tenuous ties to other Big Ten academic institutions, will upset tradition, and alienate alumni. It may even hurt attendance figures at some sporting contests. Why? Look no further than the death of the KVC in 2008. The parallels are striking- the high schools allegedly changed conferences to reduce transportation costs (but adding Grand Blanc, nearly doubly the distance from Novi as its most geographically removed KVC rival makes little sense). And the KVC was rich in tradition. Novi played in the same league for 30+ years, featuring the same eight teams for more than a generation. I had teammates whose fathers competed for other KVC schools, and would talk about how difficult it was to cheer on Novi, as they were so used to rooting for NHS to lose. That tradition is gone, and with it the patronage of some alumni. Just as I would never come back to Ann Arbor to see a Michigan-Rutgers football game, and would instead wait for a Michigan-Penn State or Michigan-Ohio State match up, I am much less motivated to see a Novi-Livionia Stevenson game, than a Novi struggle against any of their traditional KVC rivals. There’s no history there, especially no personal history. This decrease may only occur for a handful of stuck-in-the-mud people like me. It probably has a negligible impact economically. But I always hear people bemoaning the fact that things are changing so rapidly in our increasingly wired society. We change jobs like we change shirts, we communicate with people across the planet in an instant, and fly around the globe for business trips like it’s no big deal. Our planet is on the move, and always busy. I guess the question is, what price do we put on “clinging” to some of the old. Is it too much to ask for just a few things to stay the same? (c) 2010 Novi
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