Maybe moving the Big Ten Basketball Tournament out of the Midwest wasn’t all that great an idea.
With over 5,000 empty seats at the Verizon Center in DC, the Big Ten’s championship game on Sunday between Michigan and Wisconsin was the smallest championship game crowd (12,902) among the P5 conferences. Leaving the friendly confines of arenas in Chicago and Indianapolis, the Big Ten took the risk of extending its foot print eastward with its men’s championship in Washington this year and at Madison Square Garden in 2018. The MSG deal also includes a series of hockey/hoops doubleheaders at least through 2019.