A look at Jim Delany, the man behind the Big Ten

IOWA CITY - Four years ago, critics scoffed at Big Ten Conference Commissioner Jim Delany and his latest invention, a 24-hour-a-day television network to spotlight his league and its institutions.

Amid questions about its programming and financial relevance, the network launched Aug. 30, 2007, with distribution challenges - Iowa's largest cable provider, Mediacom, did not air it for a year. The league and network stood its ground, eventually reached agreements with the nation's largest media companies, including Mediacom, and now penetrates more than 75 million homes nationally.

Delany, a 62-year-old former attorney and captain of the North Carolina basketball team, acknowledges some satisfaction from the network's success.

“I do, not so much because of what people said, but more because of how difficult it was,” he said.

Whether it's adopting instant replay for football, revising the league's gender-equity policy, adding a television network or expanding his conference, Delany is at the forefront of all things Big Ten. He's revered and feared, ambitious and disliked, depending on your perspective.

Few collegiate leaders are as identifiable as Delany, who has led the 114-year-old Big Ten Conference for 22 years. In 2007, BusinessWeek ranked Delany as sports' 31st most-powerful person, second only to then-NCAA President Myles Brand among college officials.

When Delany announced plans in December to explore expansion, his statement triggered a frenzy among media, fans and college officials, causing a near ripple effect of conference shake-ups. Ultimately, in June, the league added one school, Nebraska.

“I think Delany is a heck of a good commissioner,” said 79-year-old Beano Cook, a longtime national sportscaster and college football historian. “I really do. He's doing what the ADs and the presidents want him to do. He had to get permission to expand, he did it. He got Nebraska. That's the best steal since (Thomas) Jefferson got the Louisiana Purchase.”

Delany ruffles observers of the game with his brashness, but his political acumen is astute. The same year the league launched the Big Ten Network, Delany renegotiated all its media contracts. The Big Ten's annual dispersal to its schools nearly doubled from the previous year, with the University of Iowa athletics' share rising from $10.7 million to nearly $18.5 million.

Since 2001, Iowa's Big Ten revenue has soared from $7.055 million to nearly $22.2 million budgeted this year.

The Big Ten Network, of which the league owns a 51 percent share, became profitable by 2008. Its creation altered collegiate sports and its media dealings in the past three years. Media companies doubled their payments to conferences to keep them from launching similar networks, and schools such as Texas declined expansion overtures from the Pac-10 Conference to implement a similar network.

“He's always a step ahead,” said Dave Revsine, the Big Ten Network's lead studio host and a former ESPN broadcaster. “He's positioned in the conference beautifully. You really feel that he has such a clear vision for where he wants this to go, and it's been neat to be along for the ride.”

There are detractors, of course. Cook compared Delany to Napoleon Bonaparte in the summer wave of expansion and was “infuriated” when Delany wrote an open letter in 2007, touting his league's virtues and mix of academics and athletics - to the detriment of the Southeastern Conference - one month after Florida throttled Ohio State for the national football title.

Cook also respects Delany, as do most of the people who work with him and alongside him. Delany fought to improve Title IX compliance in the late 1980s, when the league's athletes were 71 percent male. He pushed schools to add female athletics programs and gender equity now is almost 50-50.

“We did that by driving more revenue, by selling more tickets, doing a better job in TV, because we really increased the number of participants by 2,300 almost exclusively on the women's side,” Delany said. “We were able to maintain men's numbers and grow the women's side.”

In the early 1990s, the Big Ten became one of the first leagues to secure deals with second-tier football bowls. In 2004, the league became the first to add instant replay in football games. One month ago, the league realigned its football members into two, six-team divisions based on competitive equity rather than geography, beginning in 2011.

Even with its progression, the league has shown its conservative traits. When other conferences expanded to accommodate a lucrative title game, Delany made offers based solely on fit. He staunchly defends college's bowl system, despite opposition among his peers clamoring for a national playoff. He touts the league's academic prowess - each research institution is a member of the Association of American Universities - before mentioning athletic success.

“We've tried to shape some of the changes, but I think that the key word has been to sort of rely and appreciate and recognize the great traditions we have and to build on those,” Delany said. “We're appropriate to pivot toward innovation and change that makes sense for us - not for anybody else, but for us.”