Worst Moments in Big Ten Football History #5: If Ten Was Eleven, or Something Like That - FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

FanHouse is counting down the ten best, ten worst, and ten weirdest moments in the history of Big Ten football.

ABOVE: The sort of person it does not take to count to eleven.

Cue the jokes. You know the ones I'm talking about. "What do you expect from a conference that can't even count?" Let me give you a hint: unfunny. And old. If those jokes were kids, they'd be graduating from high school this spring. It's been that long since the conference announced Penn State would be joining, bringing the total membership of the Big Ten to eleven schools. The move became official in 1990, although Penn State's athletic teams didn't begin conference competition until 1993.

But, as I so often say, it's hard to argue with somebody when they're right, and the Big Ten haters are right. The conference can't count, or at least they didn't recount when Penn State came on board. Why should they have? One of the most basic rules of marketing is "don't mess with a successful brand," and everybody knew the name "Big Ten." Even if they didn't like Big Ten football, fans knew the name.
Of course, they also knew the name "Big Eight." Nobody complained much when that conference changed its name to the poncey "Big XII" (ooh, Roman numerals!) after it took in four teams from the great big smoking hole in the ground that used to be the Southwestern Conference. It's likely that no one would have said a word if the conference had gone ahead and changed its name to "Big Eleven."

It's not like the conference has always been the Big Ten, after all. "Big Ten" didn't become the conference's official name until 1987. It had always been legally known as the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives prior to that, and it went by several unofficial names: Western Conference (a curious name for a conference whose schools are mostly located in the Eastern time zone), Big Nine (1899-1917 and again from 1936 to 1950) and, of course, Big Ten.

So it's not like the name was handed down on stone tablets from on high. Would it have killed them, or the Big Ten brand, to give the conference a name that accurately reflected the number of schools in it?

None of this is to say that adding Penn State to the conference was a bad move at all. PSU, as a large land-grant university, was a logical fit. The addition also brought two large media markets, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, to Big Ten territory. Plus, Penn State fans did their part, immediately deciding that Big Ten football referees had it in for their team, adding some drama to a league that really needed some. (Seriously, just drop the name "Witvoet" on a Penn State message board. It's as hilarious as mentioning Rob Houghtlin to a Michigan fan.)

So if the Big Ten is losing any sleep over its image as a conference that can't even count, at least they have a great big pile of television money on which to toss and turn. But if/when they bring Notre Dame into the fold, they'd better go ahead and change the name.