BEARD: Big Ten not staking claim to football supremacy yet

One national football championship in more than a decade doesn’t hint of a dynasty rising, which perhaps explains Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany’s low-key approach Friday as he talked about the conference’s accomplishments over the past year. During Delany’s turn at the podium at Big Ten Football Media Days in Chicago, the first team he mentioned wasn’t even Ohio State, the defending national champion in the sport that pays most of the conference’s bills. Instead, he quickly zeroed in on Johns Hopkins University, which joined the Big Ten as a men’s lacrosse-only member. “They had a great year winning the inaugural tournament championship. And both Maryland teams played for the national championship in lacrosse, the women winning it and the men losing to Denver in the championship game,” said Delany. “We probably had our best competitive year in our history where we won 10 national championships.” That’s all nice to know, I suppose. But let the record show that when it was time for the commish to answer questions from more than 600 writers in the room, no one was peppering him for more tidbits about lacrosse or any other sport. After all, when paying $250 a night at the media hotel, room taxes not included — and then surrendering a king’s ransom to get a car out of the garage, sports writers aren’t incentivized to let their minds wander off topic. Delany did eventually acknowledge that the Buckeyes were the defending national champions in football when he mentioned that Ohio State linebacker Joshua Perry would be one of two players to speak during the league’s kickoff luncheon. But even then, Perry was given second-billing to Indiana quarterback Nate Sudfeld. Ohio State is No. 1 in the USA Today Coaches preseason poll, but Delany has been around long enough to know that college football rankings mean very little at this time of year…

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