The basketball-mad Atlantic Coast Conference will move to 20 league games next season, following the lead of Jim Delany's forward-thinking Big Ten.
Replacing some of those early-season romps with more conference games, plus the Gavit and ACC challenges, is just one way the Delany-led commissioners have enhanced fan enjoyment ... as did the Big Ten's move from eight to nine conference football games in 2017.
Basketball and football coaches went along grudgingly. They'd prefer easier games. Fans profited.
We can now recount Delany's accomplishments as he nears retirement after displaying amazing foresight in three ever-evolving decades:
— Reacting to what he perceived as a low-ball ESPN offer in 2004, he gambled on creating the Big Ten Network, which was launched to low expectations in 2007 and now enters 60 million homes.