Michigan Wolverines

As we've written for the past several days, Big Ten athletic directors have a whole host of decisions to make over the next few months, including how many league games they should play, how to align the divisions, the next bowl lineup and even what to call the divisions.

"We've got some heavy lifting to do here for the next few months," Purdue athletic director Morgan Burke said.

But what if all that huffing and puffing turns out to be a Sisyphean task? There's one thing that could send conference leaders scrambling back to the drawing board: more expansion.

The decisions the athletic directors will make for the 2014 season and beyond will be based on the new 14-team format with Maryland and Rutgers joining. Many people suspect the Big Ten is not done adding members and could soon grow to 16 or even to 20 members. Ohio State president E. Gordon Gee recently informed us that conference expansion talks are "ongoing."

The athletic directors are well aware of the possibility that more teams could be coming at just about any time.

“Based on the last three years I’ve been in this business, you’d be crazy not to think about it," Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon said. "But it’s hard to model anything because you don’t know what to model. The minute you get yourself convinced that you’re going to go from 14 to 16, for all you know you’re going to 18, and a lot of people think the ultimate landing place is 20. Who knows?"

For now, all the decisions they make will be based on a 14-team model only.

"You make your decision based on today," Iowa's Gary Barta said. "And today, we have that many teams. We can’t worry about something that’s not established yet. I don’t know if and when there will be more teams. Right now, we’re going to make decisions based on the additions of Rutgers and Maryland, and we’re going to make them with the information we have, consistent with our principles."

"It’s hard to predict the future," added Northwestern's Jim Phillips. "No one would have predicted we’d be at this place we’re at right now. I don’t think you can get polarized by the what-ifs or the potential of what might be and lose sight of where you’re at."

The league's ADs will do their best to come up with the best framework for a 14-team league. If future expansion arrives in time for the 2014 season or shortly after it, at least the conference has gained lots of recent experience in how to deal with it.

"When you get into the discussion of things like 10 [conference games], you say, 'Wow, if we had a couple more teams, it would be easier,'" Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith said. "That's a natural. But it's not something that motivates you to say, 'We've got to position this in case we have another team, or two more teams.' We don't do that."

"What I've liked about our league is, when we added Nebraska, we felt like we needed to settle and watch the landscape. We thought the East Coast was important, and we got two good pickups relative to that principal. So I think we deal with what we have now, sit, monitor the landscape, and if something emerges down the road, we're positioned to be able to absorb."

Earlier today, I wrote a story about the construction craze gripping college sports, including the Big Ten.

Even in a long story, I didn't have room for all the good notes and quotes from the reporting process. Luckily, that's why we have this blog.

Iowa is an interesting case study. The Hawkeyes, one could easily argue, have been doing just fine in the Big Ten under Kirk Ferentz. Yet outside of their recent improvements to Kirk Ferentz, their football facilities were lacking. Now the school is completing a $56 million upgrade that includes a new practice facility to replace the old bubble and eventually new offices. Will that make a difference competitively for Iowa, which has been cranking out NFL players under Ferentz?

Hawkeyes athletic director Gary Barta said the practice bubble was built in the early 1980s and had a life expectancy of 10-to-15 years.

"Was it a disadvantage for us?" Barta told ESPN.com "I don't know. I do know that the facility had outlived its lifespan, and it was time for a new one.

"My goal, first and foremost, is to hire and retain the best people. Then you have to make sure to give those people the tools to be successful."

Several athletic directors who were interviewed said having new and state-of-the-art facilities are critical in recruiting.

"When you have 17-to-18 year-olds who are being toured around the country to decide where they want to take their talents and perform, they are looking with a critical eye at facilities," Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon said. "They know these are the places where they're going to spend a disproportionate amount of their time. And it's the right thing to do; if you're going to ask world-class athletes to come to your institution, you want to provide them with the very best you can in terms of the facilities they're going to be operating in."

"Kids are smart," Indiana athletic director Fred Glass said. "We can say all we want to about our commitment to the program, but [they're thinking], 'Let's see how that manifests itself.' The perception is so important. When kids come in, when fans come in, when parents come in, they can see there's an institutional commitment to the sport."

While Glass noted in the story that Big Ten television revenue has had a huge impact on his program, others said they still rely mostly on donations to fund major facility improvement projects. At Michigan, for example, Brandon said the TV money might help get a project finished sooner but doesn't pay for the whole thing.

"The extra TV revenue has been terrific," Barta said. "I don't want to oversell it or undersell it. But without the contributions of our donors, we wouldn't be able to do it either. So it's a combination of support and contributions."

Schools have to decide on their priorities when undertaking construction projects. Things like new or expanded stadiums can help increase revenue, while the recent big push for better training and operations centers enhance the quality of the athletes' experience but don't add any dollars to the bottom line.

"You have a student-athlete focus, and you have a fan focus, and you have to make decisions accordingly," Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis said. "We’re trying to be extremely aggressive within the resources we have available at Michigan State to provide the best for both of those segments of our population. It becomes a challenge. You have to have a global perspective, and you have to have a long-range perspective and make sure that you can generate the funds necessary for the debt capacity that you’re building."

All of the ADs I interviewed for the story said they don't get caught up in the arms race, though each admitted they pay attention to what other schools are doing when it comes to facilities. The unanswered question is whether building craze will ever slow down.

"I'd like to say cooler heads will prevail and stop the escalation, but I'm not sure they will," Indiana's Glass said. "It's a marketplace, and at some level if athletic departments are generating the money, I'm not sure I see the downside of reinvesting it in their athletic programs. If it leads to the academic side subsidizing the athletic side, then think it's gone too far and hopefully the market will reorient itself."