Big Ten Media Days Primer With Key Topics, Questions For Matt Rhule, Huskers

Big Ten Media Days are upon us and there’s change everywhere in the conference and in the sport.

Nebraska football coach Matt Rhule and three Husker player representatives — Isaac Gifford, Ty Robinson and Ben Scott — will converge on this year’s event, which is being held at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis for the fourth consecutive year.

Rhule speaks Wednesday at 11:30-11:45 a.m. on the big stage, then again at a podium off camera from 12:15-1 p.m. Gifford, Robinson and Scott will begin their 30-minute non-televised interview sessions from 2-2:30 p.m.

The Big Ten is the last of the power four conferences to begin its media days, as the SEC and Big 12 have already completed theirs while the ACC’s four-day event started Monday and runs through Thursday.

There will no doubt be a different look and feel to the preseason showcase. Instead of your standard 14-team Big Ten, which has been the case since 2014 when Maryland and Rutgers joined the group, the conference has now evolved to a monster 18-team league that stretches from coast to coast with the additions of Oregon, UCLA, USC and Washington, a quartet that used to play in the now-dissolved Pac-12.

Remember the East and West Divisions of the Big Ten? Those are gone as well, ensuring the best two teams will play for the Big Ten championship.

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The College Football Playoff has also grown from four teams to 12. The field will be built from the five conference champions ranked highest by the CFP selection committee, plus the next seven highest-ranked teams.

Settlements in antitrust lawsuits against the NCAA have also dramatically changed the sport and what it will do for student-athletes. Athletic departments will soon be allowed to share around $22 million in revenue with all athletes, though details on how exactly that will work haven’t been finalized yet. Scholarship caps will be eliminated and new roster limits — perhaps around 105 or 110 — will be implemented in the near future. Schools are now allowed to use a scholarship on every member of a roster as long as they stay within the new limit.

The three-day event begins today with Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti kicking things off with a state of the conference address that is slated to begin at 10 a.m. central time. He’s expected to discus all of these topics and more for about 30 minutes.