Ten does not equal 14.

I haven’t taken a serious math class in five years, and I can tell you that with a fair degree of certainty.

But that obvious fact, now more glaring after the additions of Rutgers and Maryland raises the number of teams in the Big Ten to 14, is only one of the factors in the latest phase of major conference realignment that does not add up.

The extra miles of wearisome travel do not add up. For the athletes at Rutgers, nearby trips to face St. John’s (26 miles away), Villanova (98) and Temple (89) will turn into weekly excursions halfway across the country to face conference opponents like Iowa (987) or Nebraska (1,286). Maryland’s regular jaunts up and down the East Coast will become daunting forays into the Midwest. It’s a manageable prospect for each schools respective football programs, where charter planes often come with the territory. But what about the Scarlet Knights’ volleyball team or the Terrapins’ women’s soccer team during midweek games and the athletes who attended each school so their families would live within driving distance of many of their road games?

The level of competition does not add up. Maryland was formerly a basketball powerhouse, winning a championship in 2002, but has made the NCAA tournament only three times in the last eight years and missed postseason play entirely the last two seasons. The Terps football program, meanwhile, is perpetually middling, with only three winning seasons since 2004.

Rutgers has achieved a modicum of success on the gridiron in recent years, reaching bowl games six times since 2005, but former head coach Greg Schiano, who led the program out of the cellar after taking over in 2001, departed to the NFL last year. The Scarlet Knights basketball team is a different story, and a sad one. Instead of hanging a Rutgers banner from the rafters of Assembly Hall, it would be quite reasonable to simply install a red doormat, as the Scarlet Knights haven’t had a winning season since 2006 and haven’t reached the NCAA tournament since 1991.

In fact, the only numbers that do add up in this realignment are prefaced with a dollar sign. This is purely a financially driven move by a major conference that is looking to expand its already massive footprint to new territory, and a lifeline for two athletic programs in desperate need of a winning lottery ticket.

The Big Ten, already one of the most expansive conferences in the country geographically, taps into a previously untappable East Coast market. With its lucrative TV contract expiring in 2017, negotiations for its next deal promise ever-abundant riches for the conference and its schools.

For cash-strapped Maryland and Rutgers, the invitation to join the Big Ten could not have come at a better time. Both athletic programs face dire financial situations. Last year, a panel formed by Maryland president Wallace Loh recommended the elimination of eight varsity teams in order for the program to remain viable. Rutgers’ athletic department, in the meantime, lost $26.8 million last year, a figure that is among the 10 worst in the country.

The move to the Big Ten is not without monetary consequences. Maryland must pay a $50 million exit fee to leave the ACC, while the Big East’s fee is either $10 or $20 million depending on how much notice Rutgers gives its former conference. But even those giant sums are negated by the massive payouts the two schools will receive annually from the Big Ten. Last year, the Big Ten doled out around $24 million to each of its member schools, the most of any conference in the nation, and that only figures to increase under a new TV deal.

This is not, as Big Ten commissioner Jim Delaney would have you believe, a move to improve the quality of the product or restore the Big Ten to national prominence in football. It is strictly a money grab, a case of a greedy major conference capitalizing on a perceived opportunity at the expense of the quality of its athletic product and its student-athletes.

Daniel can be reached at [email protected] and             @danielmillermc.