University of Chicago is still a member of the academic side of the Big Ten, the Committe on Institutional Cooperation (CIC).
http://www.cic.uiuc.edu/
The Big Ten Conference is the
only major athletic conference to have such an academic affiliation. Membership benefits include cooperation and collaberation on ideas and funding.
This gets brought up every time this (stupid) arugment surfaces, and everybody seems to forget it, nobody pays attention, or we just have completely new people agruing this thing every eight weeks. This is the reason you can take 90% of that list and flush it down the crapper. The Big Ten is not just about football and basketball.
Some of those schools just plain suck at sports, and don't belong (Iowa State, anyone?) Most of those institutions do not fit the overall academic profile of the CIC. It's not enough to have strong undergraduate programs (Notre Dame, Miami). They have to be strong in research and graduate study as well.