Big Ten joins long list of those who have run off to Las Vegas for a surprise wedding

LAS VEGAS — The walk through the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino to the 2.1-million square foot Mandalay Bay Convention Center takes you past an 11-acre recreation area featuring a beach with 2,700 tons of sand and a 1.6 million-gallon wave pool.

That’s a lot of big numbers. Some more:

You keep walking and pass an aquarium with 2,000 animals including sharks. Not far away is a wedding chapel. If you angle off, you’ll find yourself at the 12,000-seat Michelob ULTRA Arena that is home to the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces, a team that sells out here more often than not.

That’s all after you passed a slot machine or two. Or all 1,200 on site.

This is where this week’s Big Ten football media days are being held. Not Chicago, where they had always been pre-pandemic. Not Indianapolis, where they were held the last four years. But Las Vegas, located in a state with two Mountain West Conference teams and zero in the Big Ten.

It’s throwing the Big Ten’s four former Pacific-12 Conference teams and their media a bone when it comes to travel issues, while seeing to it that Rutgers and Maryland get another reminder that they’re no longer a hop or skip from much in their own league.

Viva Las Vegas? The Big Ten? As Dorothy said, we’re not in Indiana anymore.

Indianapolis has 22 streets named after U.S. states. Las Vegas has streets named after Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Wayne Newton. The latter still is alive, one of the last living links to a time when a dinner and drinks cost pocket change here instead of the net worth of many Caribbean nations.

A foot-long Subway Club sandwich in the food court on the walk to the Convention Center costs $19.99. That’s not a misprint.

Welcome to Las Vegas. The city, which not long ago became part of the NFL and NHL and will have a Major League Baseball team before the decade is over, is embracing the Big Ten and vice versa.

Nonetheless, having the football media days here sounded like a one-off when you heard Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti speak here Tuesday.

“This was a logistics thing,” Petitti said. “There were some things going on in Indianapolis. It just wasn’t possible this year and then we had to make some decisions about where to go.

“Obviously, we are a conference that goes coast to coast, so having some presence closer to our West Coast members is not a bad thing.”

Vegas and the Big Ten are going to get to know each other better. The city is hosting the Big Ten’s men’s and women’s basketball tournaments in 2027.

For fans of the teams that lose their opening games here and can’t or won’t change their flights home? Well, they can probably find something else to do before heading home.

SIZZLING CIGNETTI: The highlight of the podium sessions of the six head coaches who appeared here Tuesday probably came from Indiana’s Curt Cignetti.

Cignetti was asked about Indiana dropping a home-and-away series with Virginia in 2027-28 and adding a game against Kennesaw State in 2027 and one against Eastern Illinois in 2029.

“We just figured we’d adopt an SEC scheduling format,” he said.

Indiana went 11-2 last year and reached the College Football Playoff in Cignetti’s first season.

“So I get questions, how you going to sustain it?” Cignetti said. “We're not looking to sustain. We're looking to improve it.”

Indiana plays at Iowa on Sept. 27.

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