Now that the Big Ten will officially have 12 teams, divisions aren't far behind.  We have options here, and that's not even to speak of the question of whether other sports besides football should use divisions as well.  (Helpful hint: HELL NO.)

No, the options are the myriad ways this could be done.  Some choices to make:

- ACC-style split, non-geographical or Big 12/SEC-style split, by geography.

- ACC/SEC-style scheduling or Big 12-style scheduling.

There are probably other ways to do it, but these are the extant methods and I don't see a great many different ways to do it.  Those are basically the only options for a divisional split, for example.  So how would this look?

Well, the Big Ten is different than these other conferences, in that we have a lot of trophies to hand out.  No conference does intraconference rivalries like the Big Ten.  I count thirteen games that are played each year, or used to be before Penn State, for trophies - this includes Michigan/Ohio State, for which there is no formal trophy, but often, the winner receives a Rose.  So this kind of thing needs to be taken into account.  These thirteen are: 

Michigan-Michigan State	Paul Bunyan Trophy
Michigan-Ohio State	needs no trophy
Michigan-Minnesota	Little Brown Jug
Michigan State-Penn State	Land Grant Trophy
Michigan State-Indiana	Old Brass Spittoon
Illinois-Ohio State	Illibuck
Illinois-Northwestern	Sweet Sioux Tomahawk*
Illinois-Purdue	Purdue Cannon
Wisconsin-Iowa	Heartland Trophy
Wisconsin-Minnesota	Paul Bunyan's Axe
Penn State-Minnesota	Governor's Victory Bell
Purdue-Indiana	Old Oaken Bucket
Minnesota-Iowa	Floyd of Rosedale

The conference did a decent job of keeping rivalries intact as best they could when Penn State was added, so I think they will take these into account in the future as well.

Note that Nebraska has no established rivalries; this makes things easier.  What might a geographical split look like?  East/West is natural; this means:

Penn State	Wisconsin
Ohio State	Illinois
Michigan	Minnesota
Michigan State	Iowa
Purdue	Northwestern
Indiana	Nebraska

This isn't well-balanced, but it's not terrible either.  At least the eastern teams get to beat up on Indiana.  And the rivalries match up for the most part.  If you use the Big 12 system for scheduling, which means you play three teams two years in a row and the other three teams the next two years, a lot of trophy games get left behind; therefore, these are matched up with permanent opponents in order to save a few - here, Illibuck and the Jug.  Lost (or relegated to occasional status, are the Victory Bell - not very old - and the Purdue Cannon - and my brother is a Purdue grad and never, ever talks about some pressing need to beat Illinois.  Come to think of it, nobody does even though Illinois thinks everyone is their blood rival.)  In the ACC model, you play your permanently-matched cross-division opponent every year and rotate the other games.  Michigan would play Wisconsin and Illinois one year, Illinois and Iowa the next, Iowa and Northwestern after that, and so on.

Now suppose we were a little different about splitting this up.  As it turns out, this is geographical, in a way; it's a North/South split.  It also preserves 11 of the 13 rivalries:

Michigan	Ohio State
Minnesota	Indiana
Michigan State	Penn State
Iowa	Northwestern
Wisconsin	Purdue
Nebraska	Illinois

This also has the benefit of matching Nebraska with its western cousins, and in an ACC/SEC-style schedule system, 11 of the 13 rivalries.  This time the Victory Bell and the Spittoon are relegated to semi-rivalry status, and let's face it, anyone who claims to have a rivalry with IU football that doesn't share a state with them is doing it wrong.  The Spittoon is pretty one-sided.

In this arrangement, you could actually switch Penn State and Indiana's "permanent rivals" and save both those rivalries at the expense of the Land Grant Trophy and keep 12 of 13 rivalries intact.  But MSU-PSU is a lot more compelling (and liable to get MSU beat more often) than IU/MSU or Minny/PSU.

This allows, also, for the possibility of a Michigan/OSU title game, though it sacrifices the idea of the division as a prize for winning the game.

Either one is a tough draw for Michigan.  One puts them in a division with Penn State and Ohio State, which is a nasty way of doing things.  The other puts most of the crappy Big Ten teams in the other division, but also the two toughest teams in the conference.

These, I think, are the ways of splitting up this conference and still keeping the rivalries intact.  It remains to be seen how much these things come into play.