There is a great beyond in college sports, a promised land flowing of milk and honey, and it is New York City. The largest metropolitan area in the United States, greater New York is home to more than 23 million people, and most of them do not claim a college team as their own.
Every conference would love to get a piece of this incredibly lucrative pie, but none have chased it harder than the ACC and the Big Ten. Sometime in the last three years, Jim Delany and John Swofford morphed into 19th-century prospectors, and the Big Apple is their gold mine.
The ACC struck first, adding Syracuse - "New York's College Team", as the Orange have branded themselves - and last month announced it would move its conference basketball tournament to Brooklyn in 2017 and 2018. The Big Ten has counterattacked by inviting Rutgers to its membership and this week announced it would open a satellite office in midtown Manhattan over the summer. The conferences will square off against each other in the Pinstripe Bowl beginning this fall.
With baseball season upon us, a more subtle competition has emerged: a battle for advertising space on New York Yankees broadcasts.