The Big Ten has an associate commissioner for Ice Hockey, Steve Traviolia. He's making these decisions on behalf of the ice hockey part of the conference. I don't think Jim Delany is using hockey as a means to an end.

Now the pundits on the Big Ten Network are going to ask that question all the time. I saw an interview where they asked Jack Swarbrick about it when Notre Dame joined.

When you have a television network, you start to work on the competitiveness of the sub leagues for each sport. Hockey is no exception. Neither is lacrosse. I hope that when the ACC gets a network we'll start to explore the possibility of associate members in sports where we have low participation at the varsity level. Men's lacrosse comes to mind.