Badgers Hit the Big Time

ESPN has officially crowned the basketball Badgers as a big-time program by assigning them to play at Duke in next season's ACC-Big Ten Challenge.

The Big Ten has also decided to go with an 18-game conference schedule rather than the 16-game schedule that left teams playing 4 conference opponents only once and really robbed the regular season crown of some of its meaning. The resultant unbalanced schedules could dramatically tilt the difficulty of a team's opponents. I would prefer a full 20-game, home-and-home round robin that would give you a no-questions-asked legit champ every year. This change also hopefully means two fewer of the cupcake games that take advantage of season ticket holders.