After adding Nebraska as a 12th member a few years ago, The Big Ten, in a long range plan, had pinpointed Maryland and Georgia Tech as possible future targets.
But the conference backed off of Tech because Atlanta was too firmly entrenched in SEC, and to a much lesser extent, ACC territory.
Maryland was ripe and so was New York, where Rutgers and Connecticut were flirting with any conference that expressed an interest.
During the past several months, Delany and the Big Ten sped up the process. They had meetings, they did studies and they checked with both Maryland and Rutgers. Both were interested.