Big Ten officials on Monday welcomed Maryland as the conference’s 13th member following a vote of approval from the university’s board of regents —  a move, according to multiple reports, that will trigger Rutgers to follow suit.

Maryland will begin competition in the 2014-15 season after the school pays a $50 million exit fee to the Atlantic Coast Conference.

“Some people fear the turtle,” Big Ten commissioner Jim Delaney said at the joint news conference announcing the decision. “We embrace the turtle.”

And university president Wallace Loh called this a “watershed moment” for the institution that has been decimated by financial woes, which have forced the school to cut back varsity programs.

At his 1 p.m. news conference, head football coach Tim Beckman said he has been focused on his team so he was “shocked” by the addition.

“I had no idea about it, but I know we have great leadership in the Big Ten, and I know that they’d be two great additions to the Big Ten but I don’t know a whole bunch about it,” Beckman told reporters.

Starting in the 2014-15 season, according to an ESPN report, Illinois will shift to the Legends Division, making room for the two East Coast schools. But Delaney said division alignment has not yet been a point of discussion among Big Ten athletic directors.

“We spent a lot of time constructing those divisions (after Nebraska joined), but that would be, if not No. 1, the No. 2 (item) in our athletic directors’ to-do list,” Delaney said. “It doesn’t need to be done tomorrow, but in the next three-to-five months, we’ll have new divisions.”

For the Big Ten, this move comes after talks with the Pac-12 for enhanced scheduling — mainly for football — fell apart earlier this year. Delany has said this would be an opportunity to reach out to the West Coast audience without the addition of another team.

Monday’s move creates an opportunity attract fans in lucrative markets, including New York City and Washington, D.C.

“It’s pretty obvious to us that the paradigm has shifted, and it’s not your father’s Big Ten. It’s probably not your father’s ACC,” Delany said Monday.

Maryland administrators formally submitted an application after the school’s regents voted Monday morning to accept the invitation. The Big Ten Council of Presidents and Chancellors then unanimously threw its support behind the move in a conference call.

Maryland athletic director Kevin Anderson said the school had the blessing of Under Armour founder Kevin Plank, an alumnus who has donated millions to the university’s athletic program.

Maryland’s addition breaks a long-standing tradition of the Big Ten being a Midwest conference. The Terrapins, who play in College Park, Md., will be the farthest school from the conference’s future headquarters in Rosemont, Ill., at over 700 miles. But the Big Ten plans to open an office in the east to accommodate its newest team.

“Today’s announcement of Maryland joining the Big Ten conference is very exciting on many fronts, including the addition of another highly regarded institution that stretches our conference footprint farther east,” Illinois athletic director Mike Thomas said in statement.

Meanwhile, Delany declined to comment on the possible addition of Rutgers as a complement.

“Today is Maryland’s day. I’m not talking about another team,” he told reporters in a teleconference.

The Terrapins become the third team to join the conference since 1954. Nebraska was added to the Big Ten for the 2011 season, leaving what is now called the Big 12 after over 100 years of competition.

Like other universities that have shifted conferences, Maryland, who has been a member of the ACC since its inception in 1953, is breaking away for financial stability “for decades to come,” Loh said.

The university accepted recommendations in mid-November from the President’s Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics to cut eight sports — six varsity programs, including men’s and women’s swimming, men’s cross-country, men’s tennis and women’s water polo — while dealing with a budget deficit. But now, Loh said, the university will begin the process of reinstating those teams.

Maryland is 4-44-1 against Big Ten schools in football and has never played Illinois. Maryland and Penn State used to play regularly; the Nittany Lions lead that series 35-1-1.

While this change would restore the school’s earlier rivalry with Penn State, Loh acknowledged that not everyone in the Maryland community is onboard with the decision.

“I am very aware that for many of our Terp fans and alumni this comes (as a shock), the reaction is stunned. They’re stunned, they’re disappointed,” he said.

Jamal Collier contributed to this report.

Darshan can be reached at [email protected] and @drshnpatel.