2010–14 Big Ten Conference realignment

The 2010–14 Big Ten Conference realignment refers to the Big Ten Conference dealing with several proposed and actual conference expansion and reduction plans among various NCAA conferences and institutions from 2010 to 2014. U.S. sports media credited expansion plans by the Big Ten as being the trigger for a massive wave of conference realignment during this period. While no Big Ten members announced plans to join other conferences, the league announced expansion from 11 members to an ultimate total of 14 full members and one single-sport associate member, with one full member joining in 2011 and the remaining schools joining in July 2014.

The Big Ten, founded in 1896 as the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives (which remained the conference's legal name until 1987), had been for decades one of the more stable major college conferences. Before the 2010–14 realignment, the conference had seen only three changes in membership since World War I. In 1946, the University of Chicago, one of the league's charter members, chose to de-emphasize varsity athletics and left the conference, although it continued its academic affiliation until 2016, when the Big Ten decided to limit its academic arm, originally known as the Committee on Institutional Cooperation and now as the Big Ten Academic Alliance, to full conference members. In 1949, Michigan State University joined the conference, bringing its membership back to 10. The next change came in 1990, when Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) joined.

The first hints of the coming realignment came in December 2009, when Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany announced that the league would consider adding one or more teams. Media reports then indicated that the Big Ten had two major motives for expansion. First, adding one or more schools would increase the reach of the conference's cable network, the Big Ten Network. The conference reportedly received as much as 88 cents per month for every subscriber to the network in the Big Ten member states, and in the 2008–09 fiscal year, the Big Ten Network alone distributed $6.4 million to each of the conference's 11 schools. Second, expanding to 12 or more schools would allow the conference to launch a potentially lucrative conference championship game in football.

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