Penn State coach Joe Paterno, left, and Nebraska athletic director Tom Osborne, right, join Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany on stage Monday at the conference's football media day in Chicago.

CHICAGO — Commissioner Jim Delany expects the Big Ten to hold a championship game next season, when Nebraska joins and brings the league to 12 members.

He also said teams will likely play nine conference games instead of eight in the future to help preserve rivalries.

"I think there's a real consensus among our athletic directors to do that," Delany said Monday at the league's football media days. "How quickly we can do that? We can't do that in the next year or two. I'm hopeful we can make some progress for years three, four. Hopefully, it's not three or four, but it could be depending on the contractual commitments."

The timetable for the championship game is sooner.

Delany expects there to be one next season, although he's not sure where it would be played and if the site would rotate. He also wants to sell naming rights to the game.

Delany said he's spoken to representatives from potential host sites and Chicago is in the running. But he's not sure he'll have time in the next four months to make visits. The conference could choose one for the first game and then tour venues in the spring.

"I just think that selection, the philosophy, the economics around a championship venue may require more focused energy than we have right at this moment," Delany said.

Luring Nebraska from the Big 12 and adding one of college football's traditional powers put the Big Ten in position to add what figures to be a lucrative championship game to the schedule. It also created some issues.

The conference now has to figure out how to align into two six-team divisions while maintaining long-standing rivalries, like Michigan-Ohio State. Delany hopes to have that resolved in the next 30 to 45 days.

Nebraska athletic director Tom Osborne said "there's a framework there that's pretty good" for the division alignment, although nothing's been decided.

Further expansion remains a possibility, although Delany said the Big Ten "is not actively involved" at the moment. He said the league will probably decide in December whether to look into it again.

If it does, Penn State coach Joe Paterno hopes the conference looks east.

"It would help us particularly in the recruiting, the television and all those kinds of things, that are pluses that you get when you expand as we have with Nebraska," he said.

And he was in favor of adding the Cornhuskers, calling it "a good move for the Big Ten."