Big Ten realignment set for 2014, no more Leaders and Legends.

ESPN's Brent Murphy and Adam Rittenberg reports that The Big Ten will be realigning its confereces in 2014. That's when Maryland and Rutgers join the conference, expanding it to fourteen teams. Along the realignment, the Big Ten will be dumping the much-maligned "Leaders" and "Legends" names currently applied to its divisions. They will be replaced by the more logical East and West divisions.

Here's what the new conferences will look like.

East

Indiana
Maryland
Michigan
Michigan State
Ohio State
Penn State
Rutgers

West

Illinois
Iowa
Minnesota
Nebraska
Northwestern
Purdue
Wisconsin

The East (the former Leaders division) gets the new kids on the block (Maryland and Rutgers), along with former Legends division teams Michigan, and Michigan State. The West (the former Legends division) adds Purdue and Wisconsin.

The new divisions allows the preservation of the Big Ten's most important historical rivalry, Iowa vs. Purdue, with Purdue's addition to the Big Ten West. The rivalry between  Michigan and Ohio State also gets preserved, with both teams in the East. The only protected cross-protected rivalry (for now) is Indiana-Purdue.


(via ESPN)