After 130 years as an independent in men's lacrosse, Johns Hopkins will be joining the Big Ten.
An announcement has been scheduled for Monday morning when the university will confirm the move, according to sources and a published report.
The news conference will be held at 11 a.m. at the Cordish Lacrosse Center on Johns Hopkins’ campus in Baltimore. The Blue Jays would join Maryland, Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State and Rutgers presumably after the 2014 season, when Maryland and Rutgers are slated to leave the Atlantic Coast Conference and Big East, respectively.
Big Ten and university officials would not comment on the move.
The addition of Johns Hopkins will give the Big Ten its sixth member – a requirement for the conference to earn an automatic qualifier to the NCAA tournament.
The announcement comes 17 days after a seven-member special committee recommended May 17 that the university seek conference affiliation after the team had spent the past 130 years as an independent.
During an ensuing conference call with athletic director Tom Calder and coach Dave Pietramala, Pietramala had said that he would like the Blue Jays to begin conference play in 2015.
Johns Hopkins’ move is the latest in the conference realignment wave in men’s lacrosse. In 2011, Syracuse announced that it would leave the Big East for the ACC, and Notre Dame followed the Orange in September. The month before the Fighting Irish’s announcement, Loyola, which captured the national championship in 2012, said it would switch from the Eastern College Athletic Conference to the Patriot League for the 2014 season.
In November, Maryland and Rutgers announced that they would join the Big Ten.
The Blue Jays bring a history of success to the Big Ten, capturing nine NCAA championships and qualifying for 41 consecutive NCAA tournaments before getting left out of the postseason last month.
Finding a conference gives Johns Hopkins another path to the NCAA tournament, which handed out eight automatic qualifiers this spring and is expected to add two more automatic qualifiers when the ACC and the Atlantic Sun field six teams each next season.
The university’s affiliation with a conference included several criteria. They include an initial membership term of five years, an option to extend membership after the first three years, a guarantee that the university’s affiliation would remain unchanged despite movement within the conference, and a guarantee that the school’s contractual agreement with ESPNU would not be impacted.
But the Big Ten has its own television network. It is unclear how the Blue Jays’ contract – which was recently extended through 2017 – will be impacted by the move to the league.
Joining the Big Ten will allow Johns Hopkins to retain its annual rivalry with the Terps and begin new series with the other four members.
Other leagues that were considered to be attractive options were the ACC with Duke, North Carolina, Notre Dame, Syracuse and Virginia and the Big East with Georgetown, Marquette, Providence, St. John’s and Villanova. But Friday’s announcement that Denver was leaving the Eastern College Athletic Conference to join the Big East may have changed that route for the Blue Jays.
The move would appear to involve only the men’s team. The women’s team announced last June that the 2013 campaign would be its last in the American Lacrosse Conference, and the plan during that May 17 conference call was for the team to continue to compete as an independent on the Division I level, and the rest of the athletic squads will remain in Division III.
edward.lee@baltsun.com