The Big Ten office announced the conference schedule for the 2014 football season today, as approved by the Big Ten Directors of Athletics. The 2014 schedule will consist of eight games for each of the Big Ten’s 14 teams, feature a new division alignment, include the conference debut of Maryland and Rutgers and culminate with the fourth annual Big Ten Football Championship Game.

When Jim Delany speaks, people listen.

At its spring meetings in Chicago, the Big Ten may discuss if it should have divisional play in basketball, as Rutgers and Maryland are set to join the league in 2014 to make the conference a 14-team entity. My advice: The Big Ten should take a lead from the other major conferences—ACC (12 teams), SEC (14), Pac-12 (12), old Big East (15), Atlantic 10 (16)–and not have divisional play.

The announcement of the new divisions created a buzz across the Big Ten landscape. Leaders and Legends are gone. East and West are in. And a nine-game Big Ten schedule is coming in 2016. Here are 13 observations about the new arrangements.

In a 20-minute interview Sunday, BTN’s Dave Revsine talks to Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany about the conference’s new football division for 2014, an expanded nine-game conference football schedule, and the state of the BCS. Delany explains why and how geography came to be the driver for the seven-team East and West division.

So the Big Ten Conference will move to two new football East and West divisions in 2014 and a nine-game conference schedule in 2016. In an interview with BTN on Sunday, Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany said, “Being broader, being larger, geography had to play a larger part.”

In a move that had been speculated for months with Rutgers and Maryland poised to join the Big Ten and make it a 14-team league in 2014, the conference is apparently set to announce divisional realignment based on geography. Conference presidents and chancellors will reportedly vote on the divisions, new division names, and an expanded league schedule format on Sunday.

News that the ACC announced a grant of rights agreement may put the kibosh on conference realignment, including any future plans the Big Ten may have had. The grant of rights agreement pledges a school’s media rights to a conference for a set number of years. If a school leaves a conference under those terms, it would forfeit those rights to the former conference.

It looks like we are getting closer to divisional realignment in the Big Ten in anticipation of Maryland and Rutgers joining in 2014, according to an ESPN.com report. The big remaining question: Will Indiana or Purdue have to play in the West Division?

Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany issued a statement to the Big Ten Network on Tuesday saying the league will look into a nine- and 10-game league schedule in the future.

It seems the moment the Big Ten announced in 2010 that it would name its divisions “Leaders” and “Legends,” there was an outcry from people who found names are pretentious, arrogant and just downright confusing. Others preferred simple geographic names like, say, East and West.

We’ve already argued for and against divisions in Big Ten basketball. Today, we discuss whether every member of a 14-team Big Ten should be allowed to play in the Big Ten tournament.

BTN asked for your feedback on three ideas for Big Ten divisional realignment, and thousands of viewers and readers sounded off. On Monday night’s “BTN Football Report,” our experts kicked these ideas around and discussed the topic of divisional alignment.

One of the hottest debates around the Big Ten Conference’s announced plan to expand to 14 schools revolves around the future look of the two divisions. Currently, Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Nebraska and Northwestern reside in the Legends Division while Illinois, Indiana, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue and Wisconsin are in the Leaders Division.

With the Big Ten expanding to 14 teams, there is an open question as to whether basketball should go to divisions. Here’s our take on it.