Let’s start spelling like Ke$ha. B10 TEN After colleges and universities finished realigning their conferences this past year, some major changes were made. The Big 12 Conference lost Nebraska and Colorado. The Big Ten Conference added Nebraska to its team roster and split the conference into two divisions named “Legends” and “Leaders”. Colorado, along with Utah, agreed to join the Pac-10 Conference, which will change its name to “Pac-12” at the start of the 2011-2012 school year. The Pac-10 conference will be split into North and South divisions. Principal Spence Evans, graduate of and former football player at the University of Iowa, believes that Nebraska joining the Big Ten “is a definite plus.” “It’s great for the conference to bring in such a great school. It will make [the Big Ten] stronger,” he said. “The obvious rivalry between Iowa and Nebraska will be fun to watch.” The Big Ten and Big 12 kept their names after making their adjustments, but these names contradict the number of members in the conference: the Big Ten now has twelve schools, and the Big 12 has ten schools. The Big 12 has decided to keep its Roman numeral logo, but the Big Ten and Pac-10 have designed new logos to better represent their new rosters. The layout of the new Pac-10 logo is similar to its last logo. Both have “Pac” near the top of the emblem and “10” beneath it. The use of the mountain and wave in the center of the new logo is a better representation the terrain of the western United States than the generic sunburst used in the last logo. Once Pac-10 is changed to “Pac-12”, the zero will be replaced with a two. “Legends” and “Leaders” for the new Big Ten division names is misleading. “I was wondering if the ‘Legends’ are worse than the ‘Leaders’. The Big Ten should reconsider these names,” said Evans. They had considered “Great Plains” and “Great Lakes”, but the conference couldn’t be split along those lines nor could they be separated into north and south or east and west because of parity according to a press release. Unsurprisingly, feedback to the new logo and divisions was overwhelmingly negative. In an interview with WGN radio in Chicago, Jim Delany, commissioner of the Big Ten, said, “You never, rarely, get 90 percent approval rating. But to get a 90 percent non-approval rating was, you know, really surprising.” It will be interesting to see if the Big Ten decides to make any changes to their logo and division names because of fan disapproval. It will also be interesting to see if the Big 12 does away with their divisions because of the decreased number of teams as the realignments become real.