You can call it the Rust Belt or the Industrial Midwest if you like, but when presidential election time comes you should call it precious real estate. The seven states that hold the schools that comprised the old, pre-expansion Big Ten athletic conference – Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin – are full of important battlegrounds. …
On Monday, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is set to announce his campaign for the Republican nomination. And if he captured it, the GOP would have its first true Big Ten candidate since Gerald Ford in 1976 and perhaps give the party some hopes for reversing its presidential problems in the region. CONT.
Dante Chinni, NBC News
The seven original members of the conference were: University of Chicago, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, Northwestern University, Purdue University, and University of Wisconsin.
As a Purdue grad, I resent the error.