Big Ten Tournament Tickets

Big Ten Tournament
The United States' oldest Division I college athletic conference, the Big Ten Conference enjoys the prestige of both high athletic achievement and academic excellence. Its eleven member institutions are located primarily in the Midwestern United States.

The conference competes in the NCAA's Division I. Their football teams compete in the Football Bowl Subdivision which is the highest level of NCAA competition in that sport.

Member schools of the Big Ten also are members of a leading educational consortium, the Committee on Institutional Cooperation.

A meeting of seven Midwest university presidents was held on January 11, 1895 at the Palmer House in Chicago. Aiming to discuss the regulation and control of intercollegiate athletics, the meeting proved to be the first development of what became one of organized sports' most successful undertakings.

Under the leadership of James H. Smart, president of Purdue University, those seven men established the principles for which the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives or Big Ten Conference was founded.

Eleven months later, one faculty member from each of those seven universities met at the same Palmer House, and officially established the mechanics of the Conference.

Those seven universities were: University of Chicago, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, Northwestern University, Purdue University and the University of Wisconsin. Chicago withdrew in 1946 and Michigan State University was added three years later in 1949.

Today, the conference Ten of the eleven conference schools are considered Public Ivies. Despite the conference's name, there have been 11 schools in the Big Ten.

They are signified by the hidden ?11' in the Big Ten Conference logo. The Big Ten Conference started playing baseball in 1896.

From 1896 to 1980, the conference winner/champion was determined by the team with the best record. The following year, the conference began a tournament to name its champion.

The Big Ten Conference split the 10 schools into two divisions: East and West. In 1988 the conference would go back to a single division but still used the tournament to determine its champion.

In 1993, the conference would return to using the regular season to name it champion while the winner team receives the automatic bid to the NCAA's College World Series.

Each year at the end of the men's college basketball regular season, the Big Ten Conference men's basketball tournament is held. The tournament first started in 1998.

The champion of the tournament is designated the Big Ten Tournament Champion, receiving the conference's automatic bid to the NCAA men's basketball tournament.

The finals of the tournament are typically held prior to the field for the NCAA tournament is announced. So is applied to the Big Ten Conference women's basketball tournament.However, the Big Ten did not begin sponsoring women's basketball until the 1982-83 basketball season.

In February 1982, the conference held a tournament at Michigan State in which Ohio State took a lead over Illinois with 69-66 points in the championship game. The conference has scheduled this in some publications as a regular season championship.