Hokepoints Wants Divisions Consensus

Good breakdown and I agree with most of this as far as how the divisions should be structured, etc. I disagree with your conclusions about Ann Arbor being too far of a drive for Rutgers fans. I live in Manhattan and have been to 29 consecutive Michigan home games. Usually I drive - a 10-hour trip each way, which is about the amount of time a typical office drone sits in their cubicle on a weekday. It's a completely reasonable and fun weekend trip.

I suppose there is no explanation for Rutgers and Maryland being in the former Big Ten except for the New York City and D.C. television markets ... although we'll have to wait and see how that pans out. I'm not optimistic ... and I'd love to be privy to Delaney's market research before adding those universities. I think the "Big" Ten is looking more and more like the mediocre ACC (in football).

If Delaney had a real sense of what's what, he would have pushed for this line-up ...

East

Indiana

Michigan

Michigan State

Northwestern

Notre Dame

Ohio State

Penn State

Purdue

West

Illinois

Iowa

Minnesota

Nebraska

Oklahoma

Oklahoma State

Texas

Wisconsin

and assuming Notre Dame wasn't too wussy to affiliate with a real conference. That's a football conference that would be on a par with the SEC, and it would consist of some excellent universities (for the most part).

It is a real shame that Notre Dame won't be part of the eventual Big Ten ice hockey conference.

Michigan will be in the eastern division with Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan State, Rutgers, Maryland and Indiana.

The Big Ten will want to do this in order to ensure that three of the four major name programs have regular appearances on the East Coat.  That means games in the New York City/New Jersey area and the Washington DC/Baltimore region on a regular basis against Rutgers and Maryland.  

Not only will those games get the immediate attention of the eastern media (especially NYC), but the distribution of alums in those areas mean they'll be able to play in the larger professional stadiums in New Jersey, Baltimore and outside Washington, DC.   The BTN will also want them out there if they're looking to get on basic cable in those markets.

Michigan will want to be in that area as well because it's a better setting for its fund raising efforts.  Hosting events in NYC or DC is a bigger draw when you're entertaining people who write million dollar checks to UM than Iowa City or Champaign Urbana.

The western division will include teams that want to play one another annually (Nebraska-Wisconsin-Iowa-Minnesota), one traditional rivalry (Illlinois-Northwestern) and Purdue.  Set up a 6-1-2 (six games within the division, one protected interdivisional opponent, two interdivisional games) format with the Indiana-Purdue game being an annual protected inter-divisional game and the Old Oaken Bucket continues to be played betwwn those two teams.  The other protected rivalry game could be Michigan-Minnesota for the Little Brown Jug.

That leaves ten other teams to be paired up with one another.  If you go with the remaining teams going from west to east in their respective divisions, then it'd be something like this:

Nebraska - Michigan State

Iowa - Ohio State

Wisconsin - Penn State

Illinois - Rutgers

Northwestern - Maryland

There are other ways to put those ten teams permanent rivals together, but you this would be the general idea.

If it were to work out this way and the conference did agree to a nine-game conference schedule, then Michigan would play Indiana, Maryland, Michigan State, Minnesota, Ohio State, Penn State and Rutgers on an annual basis.  The other two conference games would be against the six remaining teams over a six-year period.  Those opponents could be paired up as follows:  Nebraska/Illinois, Wisconsin/Purdue, Iowa/Northwestern.

That leaves three non-conference games on the schedule.  One home-and-home series with a major opponent coordinated in such a way to assure UM has seven home games per year.  Two other non-conference games with teams will to pay for play--programs in recent and future years like Air Force, Vanderbilt, San Diego State, BYU, Colorado, UNLV and Oregon State.

wow that makes me feel like a bad ass now. I drive 7 hours to the majority of the home games. I usually have less of a drive when it's an away game.

I'm actually a big fan of Seth's divisions, 4 teams that would be in Michigan's division would be less than 4 hours away from me, so that's a win... damn me for moving back home to the St. Louis area!

It also does a good job of keeping the rivalries together. The Little Brown Jug is running out of room for scores anyways.

One way to deal with competitive imbalances caused by protected cross-over games in an eight game schedule is to simply not count the cross-over games to determine the division winner.

I know this diminishes the point of having a conference in the first place as the cross-over games essentially become equivalent to non-conference games, but there is still  the conference championship and there would still be two games against the other division every year.

... but our priorities are not the B1G's.  Theirs are $, $$ and $$$.

I foresee that as breaking down into the following goals:

- schedule games with major TV interest

- give each school games against major powers (but not too many)

- as many home games as possible

#1 means that OSU and UofM should travel to the east coast regularly.

#2 means that OSU and UofM shouldn't be in the same division (with the benefit to #1 if they meet in the conference championship)

#3 means that we'll do the 9 conference games and 3 ooc body-bag games, dropping an ooc game for another conference game when we pick up more teams.

I suspect that we will end up with the same protected rivalries as before with something like

UofM/MSU/PSU/Indiana/Purdue/Maryland/Rutgers

Minnesota/Wisconsin/Nebraska/Iowa/OSU/NW/Illinois

where we play our division and three other-division opponents each year.  Whichever of Maryland or Rutgers comes to the Big House will get OSU at home (#1) and will probably get a brutal schedule until their recruiting gets caught up (we'll probably have Wisconsin and Nebraska play them, to rotate the B1G's marquee teams through their TV markets).

We need to go to eighteen teams.  Then we can have 3 6 team divisions.  Round Robin in division (5 games) and 4 cross division games, seeing every team every three years.

Playoffs would be three division leaders and one wild card.

This is exactly the set-up I've been hoping for and a lot of things you posted here were exactly what I was thinking.  One it was great to feel like, maybe the Big Ten will listen at least a little to the fans this go around.  Two, we must get a set-up with no locked crossovers if we are sticking to 8 games (and ideally even for 9).  Losing The Little Brown Jug and Ohio State-Penn State as annual won't be great, but it's a small cost given all the other advantages. 

I was thinking about it, and while I wouldn't care for it, they could even make those every other year events.  In this set-up we get 2 non-divisional games a year.  There are 7 teams in each division, so in 4 years, you get 8 games.  You could play the 7 other teams, with 1 of them locked in for a second time.  That way, you'd have The Little Brown Jug and Ohio State/Penn State 2 out every 4 years if they wanted it (I personally don't care about Ohio State/Penn State continuing, but think the conference will).  Doing that and locking Michigan State with an eastern school (2 out of 4 years), you could end up with the following season ending games:

Ohio State/Michigan, Nebraska/Iowa, Wisconsin/Minnesota (or switch Wisconsin and Iowa if you want), Purdue/Indiana, Northwestern/Illionis.  The 3 eastern schools would take turns playing each other and Michigan State.

Just wondering, if anyone saw real steel, when they first brought out the robot they bought, did anyone else think "cool, Michigan colors"