No Ohio State, Wisconsin, or Michigan State in Big East-Big Ten Challenge

B1G v Big East Xavier @ Michigan Creighton @ Ind Rutgers @ St. John's Ill @ Prov Neb @ Nova Penn St vs DePaul Iowa vs Marquette G'town vs MD

— Brian Snow (@BSnowScout) April 21, 2015

What is going on here? Arguably the biggest three programs in the Big Ten are missing from the mix of the challenge. If the leagues were hoping to launch this event with a bang, they've managed to do just about the exact opposite of that. I'm too confused to even be angry.

At least that Georgetown v. Maryland game is happening. Beyond that, all the obvious matchups are missing. Even among the teams participating, how does it make sense to have Penn State face DePaul instead of staying in state to take on Nova? Among those who aren't, did we really believe Seton Hall had better things to do than take on Rutgers in a branded event? It's a 28-mile drive!

I'd love to know who came up with the matchups. Surely the Big East didn't ask the Big Ten to leave their marquee names out, and I'm guessing FS1 would have liked to broadcast a few really good games. That leaves only the Big Ten and their broadcast partner ESPN involved in the decision making. You can work out the rest of that particular conspiracy theory from there.

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence though. From my angle, it just looks like they laid an egg here. A quick search of Twitter will show you that people are going bananas about the Georgetown-Maryland game. I just wish it wasn't the only one drawing national attention.