The Big Ten is taking its men's basketball tournament to Washington D.C.'s Verizon Center in 2017 as the conference undergoes other changes.
According to USA Today, Rutgers and Maryland will join the Big Ten in less than two months. While rooted in the Midwest, the conference is expanding toward the East Coast with these decisions.
"At the time Maryland came in, we set an aggressive goal - to live in two regions in the country," Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany told USA Today. "Those were our words. We've been working hard over the last 18 months to match our actions to our words."
Delany said the tournament will undoubtedly return to Chicago and Indianapolis," its original home, after 2017. He said the tournament would be on "a rotation" and could be on the East Coast as many as three times in the near future.
Delany wants the Big Ten to always keep its Midwestern roots, but he also wants to establish a strong presence in the Northeastern U.S.
"We don't just want to visit here, we want to live here," he told SI.com. "This was our first opportunity to do that. We think it's a wonderful opportunity for not just Maryland, but for expatriate Big Ten fans living on the East Coast to see great basketball in March."
The 2015 tournament is booked for the United Center in Chicago and Indianapolis' Bankers Life Fieldhouse in 2016. He compared the Big Ten's moving around to the ACC, which plans on holding its men's basketball tournament in the Verizon Center in 2016 and the Barclays Center, in Brooklyn, in 2017 and 2018.
"My expectation is you'll see it moving among and between venues in the Midwest and Northeast," Delany said. "You've got to figure out a pattern. I expect that over the next 10 years you're going to see us in both regions of the country."
