16 Teams, 4 Pods

I love this. Easily the best way to do it that I have seen. I'm afraid that if Delany saw this, his response would be: tl;dr.

You could get through every team in two years by playing the three teams in your pod and two teams in each of the other three pods.  I'm trying to imagine how that'd be less ideal?

Hear me out. I think this would work.

The winners of Divisions One and Three play a conference championship game every January first. Preferably someplace warm and sunny. The teams in Division two play each other or something, but only play the teams in divsions one and three by some kind of mutual arrangement between the schools during the first four games of the season, and those conference games do not count toward the conference record.

Thoughts?

for the B1G to adopt unless you can unequivocally demonstrate this proposal will add television sets and piles of money that rival what The Joker burned in The Dark Knight. 

Otherwise, it is fantastically awesome. 

I like the pods idea.

However, I think that M and OSU need to be in the same pod, for the same arguments this site as made for keeping them in the same division.  I would essentially switch OSU and ND. 

Pod A              Pod B           Pod C                  Pod D

Minnesota      Michigan      Notre Dame      East 1

Wisconsin      MSU             Northwestern    East 2

Iowa                 OSU             Illinois                 PSU

Nebraska       Indiana        Purdue                East 3

The horizontal groupings are the teams that would play every year, even if the pods are not paired as divisions.

This is an awesome idea, but I think your pods need some tweaking.  Michigan is in a pod with Notre Dame, who in the long term is about as strong as Michigan, and Michigan State, who is usually an average-to-above-average team.  Meanwhile, Ohio State will never have serious competition for the championship of its pod, and Penn State will only have competition for theirs (in normal, non-probation years) during Georgia Tech's once-a-decade good season.

I realize that the pods will be paired up to form divisions in any given year, but this still could lead to some crazy imbalance.  In a year where the divisions are North-West and South-East, Michigan/ND/Nebraska/Wisconsin/MSU/Iowa would be in a dogfight for the championship of the North-West division, while the competition for the championship of the South-East division would be pretty much just OSU and PSU, with maybe GT in the mix if they're lucky.

I like the pods idea and was talking with a fellow M alumn about something like this.  For me, I'd rather the pods be all about geography/traditional rivals rather than "competitive balance" because more and more I'm interested in seeing good football games week after week.  So I'd Pod the teams up like so:

POD A: Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin

POD B: Northwestern, Illinios, Purdue, Indiana

POD C: Michigan, MSU, OSU, Notre Dame

POD D: Penn State, Maryland, Rutgers, Syracuse/UConn/Etc

Keep everything else you said about pairing up pods into divisions, play one team from cross-divisional pods per year at random.

If Notre Dame is a pipe-dream (which, probably), then shift Penn State into POD C and let POD D be an East Coast leftover Pod.

Seriously, the more guarenteed interesting football each year the better.  Who cares about competitive balance if it means we have to play Maryland and Rutgers every year, and Wisconsin once every 5 years?

Let's keep the pods, but drop the permanent opponents.

Pod A:  Georgia Tech, Maryland, Penn State, Rutgers

Pod B:  Indiana, Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State

Pod C:  Illinois, Notre Dame, Purdue, Wisconsin

Pod D:  Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Northwestern

Let's not get too wrapped up on who is in what pod; I'm just using it as an example.

So we keep the 6-year rotation where each pod is paired with each other pod for 2 years.  That gives us 7 games, and we add 2 more cross-division games for a 9-game schedule.  If the cross-division games are rotated perfectly, each team will still play each team not in its own pod 6 times every 12 years (3 home, 3 away) and will play each team in its pod 12 times in 12 years (6 home, 6 away), for a total of 108 games (9 games/year x 12 years).

If you have permanent cross-pod opponents, you only see the other teams 4 times every 12 years instead of 6.  I think putting rivals in the same pods is a much better solution than having permanent cross-pod opponents.

Members of each pod are compared to other members in their pod, with four teams (one from each pod) chosen (by best overall conference record) to participate in a four team playoff.  This will consist of a semifinal and final round.  Semifinal games will put the two individual pod champions from the pod-pairing against the other pod-pairing champions (ex: If Pods A, B are matched and Pods C, D are matched, then Pod A Champion will face Pod C champion and Pod B champion will face Pod D champion) at a campus location.  The team with the best overall record will host. 

After this semifinal game is played, the two winners will advance to the final round (i.e. the Big Ten Championship game).  This game will be hosted at a neutral site, the winner designated as Big Ten Champion.

In this model the Big Ten champion could conceivably be 14-0 entering the NCAA playoff, and if they win the whole thing, they would end at 16-0.  Lots of football.

I put close to the same thing in the comments of a few threads a few weeks ago. Some alternate thoughts.

1. Change divisions every year, not every two. If you change every year, every four year player gets to play home and away against every other team in the B1G.

2. Figure out a way to get the NCAA to allow for flex scheduling. First seven weeks would be games against the other seven teams in your division. Week 8 is the flex week. First place in division A plays second place in divsion B and first place in division B plays second place in division A. These are your semi-finals and the winners play for the B1G championship. The otehr 12 teams play a "position round" where 3rd plays 3rd, 4th vs 4th and so on. This woudl require the NCAA to change its rules, but the NCAA is made up of schools, and it should work.

3. UM and OSU should stay in the same pod since there are no crossovers. My proposed pods...

North - Michigan, MSU, OSU, Rutgers
East - Penn State, Maryland, ACC#1, ACC#2
South - Indiana, Purdue, Northwestern, Illinois
West - Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska

I think the only problem with this is that it kind of makes sense.  And your proposed names of the pods are boringgggggg.

Need moar fancy names.

Keep the names Legends and Leaders and find two more awesome names to go with them.

 and consumes them in what Brian might call the dying glow of everything good about college football being torched by the pursuit of the almighty dollar.

I suspect we're more likely to poach two eastern schools, which would likely form a pod with Maryland/Rutgers; that locks in the East/West pods under your scenario.  M/MSU/PSU/Purdue could be the North which leaves OSU/Illinois/Indiana/NW for the South.

In the short term this looks relatively balanced - MSU and PSU are decaying, and NW is cresting, but the West pod is strong and the East pod is weak.  Hopefully the eastern schools are good at basketball ...

Someday, Mr. Wells, we're all going to be working for you. Great idea.

Looks great. Notre Dame joining really helps make things easy to break up. We have a tough schedule most years but anyone complaining about that can't also complain about not playing teams we like to play consistently. Complaining about adding Rutgers and Maryland by saying they aren't good then complaining when we have a tough schedule is what crazy people do too often.

I'm down for this schedule, does a nice job of keeping consistent opponents but mixing up the teams we have on and off.

We'll see. I don't really know what to expect in the next few rounds of conference movement.

When the Western Athletic Conference had 16 teams in the mid-90s, it divided the programs into four 4-team quadrants.  Two of the quadrants were permanently assigned to one of the WAC's two divisions (Coastal, Mountain) while the other two quadrants shifted from one division to another in the course of a two-year rotation.  The teams played the three teams in their quadrant, four teams form the other quadrant in their division and one crossover game for a total of eight.  The winners of the two divisions met in a conference championship game called at the Silver Bowl in Henderson, Nevada.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Athletic_Conference#Second_wave_of_expansion_and_turbulence

If the Big Ten were to do someting similar and let's say the 15th and 16th teams ended up being Virginia and Georgia Tech, then the four quadrants could be set up in this manner:

Plains Division Permanent Quad (PDPQ):  Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Wisconsin

Lakes Division Permanent Quad (LDPQ):  Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State, Penn State

Quad A:  Illinois, Indiana, Northwestern, Purdue

Quad B:  Georgia Tech, Maryland, Rutgers, Virginia

So in Years 1 and 2, the Plains Division would include the PDPQ and Quad A and the Lakes Division would have the LDPQ and Quad B.  In Year 3 and 4, Quads A and B would be swapped between the two divisions as such:

Plains Division (Years 1 & 2):  Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Northwestern, Purdue, Wisconsin

Lakes Division (Year 1 & 2):  Georgia Tech, Maryland, Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State, Penn State, Rutgers, Virginia

Plains Division (Year 3 & 4):  Georgia Tech, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, Rutgers, Virginia, Wisconsin

Lakes Division (Years 3 & 4):  Indiana, Illiinois, Michigan, Michigan State, Northwestern, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue 

With a nine-game conference schedule (unlike the WAC, who had eight games), a team would play seven games within its division plus two teams from the other division.  The remaining three games on the schedule would be with non-conference opponents.

For Michigan, the nine-game conference schedules might look like this (division games marked by asterisk):

Year 1  (LDPQ plus Quad A plus two teams from the PDPQ):

Michigan State*, Penn State*, at Ohio State*, Georgia Tech*, at Virginia*, Maryland*, at Rutgers*, Iowa, at Wisconsin (5 Home, 4 Away)

Year 2 (same as Year 1):

at Michigan State*, at Penn State*, Ohio State*, at Georgia Tech*, Virginia*, at Maryland*, Rutgers*, at Iowa, Wisconsin (4 Home, 5 Away)

Year 3 (LDPQ plus Quad B plus two teams from the PDPQ):

Michigan State*, Penn State* at Ohio State*, at Illinois*, Northwestern*, at Indiana*, Purdue*, Nebraska, at Minnesota (5 Home, 4 Away)

Year 4 (same as Year 3):

at Michigan State*, at Penn State*, Ohio State*, Illinois*, at Northwestern*, Indiana, at Purdue*,  at Nebraska, Minnesota (4 Home, 5 Away)

The arrangement above ensures that most of the rivalry games are played on an annual basis (althought the Little Brown Jug will only be played two games out of four).  It's also set up so that each team in the conference plays the other at least twice in a four year period.  The divisions are set every season in order to ensure there's the structure necessary to stage a conference championship game.

One negative in this arrangement may be that the four marquee programs aren't evenly divided between the permenant divisions (3 in the Lakes, 1 in the Plains).  That, unfortunately, is a product of basic geography and comes out of a desire to keep rivalries largely intact.  The WAC's failure to do those two things is one of the reasons why it didn't work out as a 16-team confernce.  See also http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/andy_staples/05/20/16-team/index.html

Another problem that fans had with this set up was that the composition of the divisions changed every two years and that led to some confusion for the fans.  I used the nomenclature Plains and Lakes for my two divisions, but that's going to sound awkward for the two-year period when the former division (Plains) includes four teams from states on the Atlantic Coast.  Perhaps not as head scratching as Leaders and Legends for division names, but perhaps still problematic.  

If the B1G went to two permanent 8-team divisions and adopted a nine-game schedule, we'd probably see a situation where teams played seven games within their division and two against teams from the other division.  The downside of that would mean that individual inter-divisional matchups during the regular season would only occur two years out of every eight.  On the plus side, it'd be easy to label the divisions (East, West), their membership would be permanent (thus reducing the confusion levels) and the driving distances for fans would be minimized on an annual basis.

West - Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Northwestern, Purdue, Wisconsin

East - Georgia Tech, Maryland, Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State, Penn State, Rutgers, Virginia

Michigan would play seven games each year against teams in the East Division plus two apiece from the West Division for nine total conference games.  If the pairings for games against West Division teams was based on their relative strengths plus geography, then they might go like this:

Nebraska/Indiana

Wisconsin/Illinois

Iowa/Purdue

Minnesota/Northwestern