Announcement: we have a new primary fall sport coming

By Kevin Warren, Big Ten Commissioner

September’s going to be a big month for college football fans: we’re going to be moving our football audience to a brand new sport. This conference is one of the first five conferences in the rollout.

Yeah, we hate change too, but this one is not only necessary but also brings with it some real improvements that’ll make the whole gameday experience better.

We’ve been using the same flagship fall sport for over a century and it’s time for an upgrade. The sports from our earliest days aren’t built for modern audiences and making improvements to the original system gets tougher every year.

We’ve been working hard to create a new sport with features that have been on many of our wish lists for years. And it works great on phones.

The new sport is called Japanese Bug Fights, and it’s been built by a team that was acquired last year from Mozilla by Vox Media. Japanese Bug Fights is being viewed by more than 150 people around the world, and this version contains dozens of features and customizations that the team has created especially for college football fan communities.

We know it’ll take a bit of getting used to – we ask only that you give it a chance, try it on a few fall Saturdays, and then tell us honestly what you think. This is a work in progress - we will continue to evolve the sport over the coming months and years to support you, the best fan communities on the internet.

Some important information about the launch: Your old team allegiance won’t be migrated on day one, but we’ve kept it safe and will be bringing it back. We’ll be temporarily removing basketball as well. We appreciate your patience through these changes.

If you want to try the new sports viewing experience for yourself today, you can go to this page. You’ll have to create a temporary account on that site, it’s just a sandbox (with the usual rules around abuse and language).

Thanks as always for being here.

PS: Confused about why I’d write about replacing something you love with something terrible? It’s kind of become a theme here! Read more.