The Big Ten basketball tournament is headed to the nation’s capital. Conference commissioner Jim Delaney announced the 2017 men’s basketball tournament will be played in the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C.
The tournament has been held in either Chicago or Indianapolis since it began in 1998. “I see there being a regular rotation, we have 3 institutions in the East, we’ve got 11 institutions sort of in the Midwest, and I don’t know what the precise rotation will be, but I can tell you we will be here regularly during the coming decades,” Delaney says.
Delaney knows the decision won’t be popular with some fans in the more traditional Big Ten states. “I believe the best things come out of competition through collaboration. And this is an example of that,” Delaney says. “People do struggle with change, I get that and try to be sensitive to that, but also try to get enough persuasive momentum behind what we are doing to kind of sustain the change.”