STUPID.

All the business bafflegab in the world can't change that.

In its original release in 2014 announcing the decision to play this week in Madison Square Garden, [Big Ten commissioner Jim] Delany said “this pairing is a natural fit for us as we continue to extend our brand and live in two regions of the country.” In the statement, the league crowed about “a significant branding presence both inside and outside the building.” All of that gobbledygook about “branding” is closer to the truth, a lot closer than giving players “a chance to see the Big Ten in the Big Apple,” but it wasn’t the primary objective, either.

The objective, if you can believe this, was to lure Rutgers to the Big Ten.

Rutgers!

That’s where this whole thing started, the same place where so many stupid decisions in college sports started: conference realignment. The biggest conference tournaments staged their own hunger games, eventually devouring the Southwest Conference and devaluing the Big East, but they didn’t get bigger intelligently. They got bigger stupidly because MONEY! The Big Ten wanted to expand its geographic footprint, a phrase I’m putting in italics because you need to hear it as I’m trying to write it: as an obscenity.

There’s no going back, but somehow the Big Ten is stuck with Maryland and Rutgers (!), and to get those schools to leave their own conferences, the Big Ten had to make all sorts of promises including this one: We’ll bring the men’s basketball tournament to you. Last season the Big Ten tournament was in Washington, D.C., where it was sparsely attended, and this year it will be in Madison Square Garden, where it will be sparsely attended. Put the Big Ten tournament in two of the four most populated areas in the country — greater New York City is first, greater Washington, D.C., fourth — and the league can’t fill the building. Why? Because those markets don’t care about the Big Ten.

For all the good it did. Rutgers? Out. Maryland? Out.

Longer term, though, we're seeing the Hunger Games eating the NCAA itself.  Four power conferences, sixteen teams per conference, no more pesky mid-majors and bubble talk.