Will Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany become Emperor Delany?

UPDATE: The following post was written Thursday. On Friday, the Big Ten released a statement saying "giving emergency powers to the commissioner to fire personnel is not under consideration" by its 12 presidents and chancellors.

So, that was fun while it lasted. Bizarre, too.

Has Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany gone quite mad, or is the following a reasonable response to an unreasonable situaton?

The Chronicle of Higher Education, a publication that the Hlog has never previous linked to, reports today that the Big Ten is discussing a proposal that would give Delany the authority to fire Big Ten coaches himself.

The proposal would give Delany and a committee of conference presidents the ability to penalize individual members of a league institution should their actions significantly damage the league's reputation.

One proposal has Delany and that committee of presidents given the power to punish individual athletic officials with sanctions that include “financial penalties, suspension, or termination of employment,” according to Chronicle reporter Brad Wolverton.

This obviously is a reaction to the Penn State fiasco. Iowa President Sally Mason is quoted in the Chronicle, saying “This whole situation is unprecedented. It's sports-related, but there were very significant moral, legal, and institutional failures.

Until all of our presidents and chancellors sit down and talk in depth, I have no idea of what the outcome is likely to be, and I wouldn't want to predict.”

Is this mostly a public-releations ploy, a chance to try to take some moral higher ground and state the Big Ten is way above the sins of any of its individuals? Well, of course.

But is it a legitimate proposal? Delany is a serious person. He knows better than anyone that his conference has always prided itself on having that moral high ground, of supposedly holding itself as accountable as any major conference in college athletics, if not moreso.

However, are university presidents really willing to cede their own authority to remove athletic-department employees who have brought disgrace to their institutions? Would they basically say they can't be trusted to properly do a part of their job that they have been entrusted (and compensated) to do?

Secondly, you want to give that kind of power to a conference commissioner? Really????? As John McEnroe once told a tennis chair umpire, you cannot be serious!

But then you take a closer, calmer look at what Delany is proposing, and ... I don't know, maybe. Ty Duffy of The Big Lead thinks it makes perfect sense.

Duffy wrote this: Penn State did not just hurt Penn State. They hurt every school in the Big Ten. There are abstract branding and reputation issues, but most importantly the decline/potential demise of the football program costs everyone money. Penn State is one of the top revenue earners in the country. The Big Ten sells television packages and advertisements on the basis Penn State will be a national power and draw national interest. A Penn State decline reduces the value of collective conference deals. A Penn State death penalty places a conference rooted in insular stability in a precarious position. From a business perspective (in addition to the obvious moral one), that is unacceptable.

This is all a side issue right now. The bigger -- and only -- question right now is what's going to happen with Penn State. Football season approaches ever so quickly. The league's football press conferences in Chicago start next Thursday. There will be no place to hide for anyone connected with Big Ten football, starting with Delany.

What about Penn State?