big ten divisions

Now for a game of keepaway. [Bryan Fuller]

The conference is meeting this week to figure out its 2024+ scheduling. It seems they're already leaning towards doing away with divisions, and now only need to decide how to protect rivalries. So let's discuss the different ways they might do things, what's best for fans, the conference, and Michigan.

DIVISIONS?

Seem to be a dead letter. The result of the February meeting established two core tenets for their scheduling, in order:

  1. Do whatever we can to get teams in the (12-team) College Football Playoff.
  2. Every four-year player should get to play on every B10 campus at least once.

This was well-received, and means they are almost certainly heading towards a divisionless system with a championship game. Removing divisions effectually takes Big Ten teams from their current six protected rivalries to between one and three, freeing up those games to see the rest of their conference opponents.

CHAMPIONSHIP GAME? SHOWCASE?!?!

Now would be a good time to implement my alternate conference Plus-one plan. To reiterate, the most basic version of the plan is you play the top three conference games that weren't played and determine the champion by final record. Benefits:

  1. It's two more good games to broadcast.
  2. A clearer and more deserving conference champion.
  3. No chance of replaying Michigan-Ohio State a week after The Game.

When I presented the plan I ran through every year since 2008, and most of the time the Showcase 1 game was the de facto conference championship and matched the same two teams who played. Without divisions they're also probably stuck playing these at neutral sites, which I don't like, but is probably more palatable to the conference.

[After THE JUMP: What the rivalries would look like, what's the future?]

It's like this with more games. [Bryan Fuller]

On WTKA yesterday I made my case for a Big Ten Showcase week to replace the Big Ten Championship. It's a very simple plan: Use Championship Weekend to play the best Big Ten games that were not played already.

The weekend after Thanksgiving, each team would play one of the four Big Ten opponents they missed during the 9-game regular season, assigned by record. Sometimes—often I suspect—the top game would remain a winner-take-all championship bout. But it would do away with rematches, could do away with the need for divisions, virtually ensure all the championship contenders got a chance to play each other, and finish the season with relatively evenly matched Big Ten games we would have otherwise missed.

Values of a good scheduling system

I came to the Showcase idea by working backwards from the things we want to accomplish in a Big Ten season. They are (in order of relative importance):

  • Produce an uncontroversial Big Ten champion that has the best claim to the best season.
  • Play all the important rivalries, and most of the other rivalries.
  • Be fair. Contenders shouldn't have grossly different paths to their records.
  • Make money. Is business.
  • No rematches! (discussion at end)

The Plan

I. Big Ten Championship weekend will be replaced by Showcase games across the conference.

At the end of the regular season (IE the week after Thanksgiving) the Big Ten will host three to seven (preferably seven) games between Big Ten teams that have not yet played each other. These can be hosted on campus, or (sigh) at one or more neutral sites.

We'll have to get approved for a 13th game, but I can't see why they would allow 2 teams to do this and not the rest. If a de facto tenth conference game is an issue with the NCAA, the showcase can be chopped down to just the three best games not played, but that's less fun. More Big Ten football: good for everybody.

II. Best teams that haven't played each other play each other, and on down.

Choosing the games is actually really simple once the data (records and which games haven't been played yet) are in front of you. Let's take the 2021 season:

Seed School Rk Div Haven't Yet Played Showcase Opponent
1 Michigan (8-1) #1a East Iowa, Minn, PU, IL vs. Iowa (Game 1)
2 Ohio State (8-1) #1b East Iowa, Wis, IL, NW vs. Wisconsin (Game 2)
3 Michigan State (7-2) #3 East Iowa, Minn, Wis, IL vs. Minnesota (Game 3)
4 Iowa (7-2) #1 West UM, OSU, MSU, RU @ Michigan (Game 1)
5 Minnesota (6-3) #2a West UM, MSU, PSU, RU @ Michigan State (Game 3)
6 Wisconsin (6-3) #2b West OSU, MSU, UMD, IU @ Ohio State (Game 2)
7 Purdue (6-3) #2c West UM, PSU, UMD, RU @ Penn State (Game 4)
8 Illinois (4-5) #5 West UM, OSU, MSU, IU @ Indiana (Game 5)
9 Penn State (4-5) #4 East Minn, PU, Neb, NW vs. Purdue (Game 4)
10 Maryland (3-6) #5 East Wis, PU, Neb, NW vs. Northwestern (Game 6)
11 Rutgers (2-7) #6 East Iowa, Minn, PU, Neb vs. Nebraska (Game 7)
12 Nebraska (1-8) #6a West PSU, UMD, RU, IU @ Rutgers (Game 7)
13 Northwestern (1-8) #6b West OSU, PSU, UMD, IU @ Maryland (Game 6)
14 Indiana (0-9) #7 East Wis, IL, Neb, NW vs. Illinois (Game 5)

The best opponent Michigan hasn't played is Iowa; there's your Game 1. Ohio State already played Minnesota so they get Wisconsin, and MSU gets Minnesota. The rest fall into place with very little room for decisions (read: controversy).

In cases where there are multiple ways to organize the matchups, go with whatever makes for the best games, based on rivalries and knowledge of the specific teams in the context of that season. The Big Ten can have broad power to build the matchups that work best, so long as the results of the top game(s) will produce an undisputed champion, and there are no rematches.

Note: this leaves open an opportunity to match a #2 and #3 against each other even if one or both didn't play #1, if that's the best game not played that year. For example if #1 Michigan went 12-0, #2 OSU and #3 Iowa are both 11-2/7-2 and haven't played each other, and Minnesota is 10-3/6-3 but already played Ohio State, you're not locked into a Michigan-Iowa game that won't change the champion. Have OSU and Iowa play each other, and get your Jug on.

III. Declare a champion based on best Big Ten record/standard tiebreakers.

Once the showcase games have been played, there should be no doubt who won the Big Ten, or if there's a tie in the record, which team gets the Rose Bowl berth. The Big Ten already has tiebreaker rules in place; the Showcase game only adds information, and gives the schedulers an opportunity at the end of the season to supply what's missing.

Keeping the system in place:

  1. Best conference record, determined by % of Big Ten games won.
  2. If two teams are tied, head-to-head wins.
  3. If three or more teams are tied, they go through a series of steps until they can get down to 2 that played each other (head-to-head wins) or 1.

IV. Hosting Options

The Showcase can be held at home sites or neutral sites. If you keep the divisional structure, the division that had four home games gets to host, and will know years in advance that they're hosting that weekend.

If you get rid of divisions, choosing who hosts adds a layer of complication. I always prefer college sites, but if they limit the Showcase to just 3 or 4 games, they'll probably want to use neutral/NFL sites so they can advertise. Not today's battle.

[After THE JUMP: I test every Big Ten season from 2009-2021 to see how this would work out]

woody

[Bentley]

It's was sunny and lovely out yesterday in Michigan. Sunday night's storm swept the humidity aside and deposited rain where it belongs: on my lawn. So why did it feel like that sun was a little darker, that sky a little hazier, this July a little less nice than the June that preceded it? Oh, right.

It's official: our moms are forcing us to play with Scott Malkinson.

Why is this happening again? Well they're joining for the money: both schools have had relatively bad athletic departments who over-leveraged themselves in the big sport facility and coaching arms races, Rutgers less so than Maryland, but then Rutgers was about to wind up trapped in the sinking ship of the Big East/American. Maryland has massive debt from its building projects and the ACC ain't gonna pay them, so they were ready to whore themselves out to whichever conference came along, even if it meant an end to their relationship with Duke.

(No, Penn State fans don't care about either as rivals.)

The real question is why in the heck we'd want them. It's cable TV. Starting with the Big Ten, the big conferences have been getting in on the great scam of cable bundling. Cable providers have monopolies in their markets, and are second only to the military-industrial complex in political spending, all so they can force subscribers into all-or-nothing tiers of hundreds of channels to get one they want (and try to charge people extra to not get their internet slowed).

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Big Ten's Expansion Plan: rip off the cable companies after they rip off America. [Image credit: HuffPo]

 

This works out very well for the cable giants but leaves them a particular vulnerability to any network with a sports license. Fiercely loyal college football fans will scream at their cable providers if they can't watch the game, and advertisers lust after sports because they're the last of the DVR-proof live events, so cable providers pay out the nose for the network with the game. Then they place that network on a relatively accessible tier that everybody in that market must pay for, and raise prices accordingly.

In this way, if there are just enough A&M fans in Dallas, every cable subscriber in Dallas will pay an extra $5/month to the SEC and its partner (ESPN). If there are just enough Missouri fans in St. Louis, if there just enough Maryland fans in D.C. metro area, if there are just enough Rutgers fans in New York City, etc. The Big Ten schools are gambling on there being enough Rutgers fans to scam $5/month from everyone in New York. So far they've already got New Jersey and Maryland.

The gamble for the schools is they think they'll sell out the stadiums no matter who's visiting, so who gives a damn if it's Maryland visiting instead of Wisconsin. The fans aren't going to see a dime of the Comcast deal (at least not at Michigan—most schools are a little less adversarial to their fans) and just have to decide to put up with the new faces, or not.

In the list of downsides, there are worse things that can happen than having Wisconsin disappear forever, or the invention of more derived, ugly trophies. So long as it ends with Ohio State and MSU is in there, it's a Michigan season, while any Notre Dame or Minnesota you can sprinkle in is appreciated. To put the loss in context I thought I'd look through Michigan's history with the conference with respect to the frequency we've faced various conference rivals.

A History of Western/Big Ten Conference Scheduling

Early years (1892-1906): Prior to the invention of the conference, Michigan already played some of its future rivals. They played Chicago twice in 1893 (both on the road), and even after joining the conference Michigan had an extra (non-conference) game against Chicago's med students.

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Hey, just 'cause we left you guys aren't supposed to be rivals. [Chicago vs. Minnesota in 1916.]

 

There were seven teams in the original 1896 conference—Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Northwestern, Purdue, and Chicago—with Indiana and Iowa joining in 1899. Teams customarily only played games in October and November, and Michigan played anywhere from two to five conference opponents a year. The 1906 team (the last before leaving the conference for a time) played just one conference game (Illinois) among five games plus an alumni exhibition.

If there was any pattern to this, it's that Michigan and Chicago would play every year except 1899 and 1906. There were a few stretches of other rivals lasting not more than four years. The newcomers (Indiana 1900-'03, Iowa 1900-'02) apparently were guaranteed some starter games with Michigan. Wisconsin (1899, 1902-'05) was the next-most regular. Northwestern and Michigan only played twice before M left. Once we did, we played Minnesota twice but nobody else.

[after the jump, we lose Chicago, gain worse]