Team travel distances for the proposed divisions

I like option 3.  Keeps little brother and ohio in our division and keeps the other division competitive with PSU, Wiscy, Neb and NW.  Good Diary!

New York is the #1 media market in the country (and ESPN is located in Connecticut).  If you want to draw on an additional factor besides geography and competitve balance, than that's one to keep in mind.  The Big Ten will want to have its best programs shuttling thru the NYC/NJ area, which means Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State will all be in the east so they can play at Rutgers (or more likely, at the new stadium in the Meadowlands) on a regular basis (we'll add alumni distribution as another reason for those schools being in the east).

Here's another--the post-season.  With the 4-team playoff coming into being in 2014 along with the New Year's Day/New Year's Eve bowl lineup, the conference will not want to have two teams playing one another in the regular season finale and then one week later in the conference championship game.  That's why Michigan and Ohio State will both be in the same division and will continue to play one another the last regular game of the year.

The conference will have annual protected cross divisional games.  Why?  Because that ensures that the major teams play one another each year, which means that when the B1G television rights contract goes up for negotiation, the conference can say that the major programs in each division will play one another regularly each year.

Will travel time and mileage be a factor?  Perhaps, but when you look at a map and consider an Inner-Outer setup, you can see that it doesn't work at least in terms of fan perception.  A fan in Lincoln, NE or College Park, MD will see seven other teams from the other division physically located between them and the other teams in their own division.  That will not pass the "Does this make sense?" test.  

The other thing that the Inner-Outer setup does is structurally make the B1G a midwest-centric confernce.  Just put a point somewhere in northern Indiana and draw a small circle inside a larger ellipse and you have what that setup looks like.   Keep in mind that this is a conference that's planning on putting a second office in the east (probably New York City).  They want to the Big Ten image to be one of a national conference.

Jim Delany has said that geography will play a more important role than in 2010--see http://thegazette.com/2012/11/30/whats-next-for-b1g-expansion-football-r...

So you add all that up and what do you get (with rivalry games and better competitive balance in mind):

West - Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Northwestern, Illinois, Michigan State

East - Michigan, Indiana, Purdue, Ohio State, Penn State, Rutgers, Maryland

Protected Rivals Games:

Michigan-Michgian State

Ohio State-Wisconsin

Penn State-Nebraska

Indiana-Minnesota

Purdue-Iowa

Rutgers-Northwestern

Maryland-Illinois

This is a likely lineup for the Big Ten for the 2014/5 seasons.  Things may change a bit if they go to nine conference games by that time frame, although that will require a number of non-conference games to be cancelled or rescheduled.  I suspect in the short term we'll see eight conference games and then go to nine by perhaps the 2016 season.

On the final weekend of the season, we'll see the rivalry games being played out.  All these games will take place within the divisions (with perhaps one exception because there are seven teams in each division).  That includes the following:

Michigan-Ohio State

Indiana-Purdue

Illinois-Northwestern

Wisconsin-Minnesota

Iowa-Northwestern

The remaining teams are one from the west (Michigan State) and three from the east (Penn State, Rutgers, Maryland).  MSU-PSU could be a season ender, but it's just as likely that one of those two teams would take a bye.  Rutgers-Maryland could also be a season ender as well or one of those two teams takes a bye while the other plays Penn State.  Or you could make Maryland or Rutgers play Michigan State while the other team plays PSU.

The B1G is likely to add at least two more teams to get to 16.  Right now, the informed speculation is that those teams will be two of Virginia, North Carolina, Duke and Georgia Tech.  If that happens, I imagine the conference will want to have that in place by the 2016 or 2017 season, i.e., in concert with the new television contract.

At that point, we could see the conference adopt the pod system with four 4-team pods or the B1G might go to two permanent 8-team divisions playing nine conference games.  Regardless of the setup, the factors I listed above will still be in play and they would still effect how a 16-team B1G would look like in the end.

I too was a little surprized by the average travel numbers in the Inner-Outer set up.  The one draw back about this is, while the average travel may be acceptable, it really makes 4 teams pay via travel.

Nebraska- 783 composite travel (up from 630 or 697)

Rutgers- 770 (up from 654 or 719)

And to a lesser extent:

Minn- 672 (up from 557 or 624)

Iowa- 508 (up from 389 or 455)

Plus, the in division games for some of these programs would make it pratically impossible for fans to travel to road games in division.  To an extent is depends on if you think people would travel 500 miles but not 800 miles.

Nebraska divisions games 844 (up from 480 or 658)

Rutgers division games 804 (up from 498 or 668)

Maryland division games 746 (less than exisitng [840] but 425 in East-West]

I think one thing to keep in mind is... the teams are still going to have to travel EVERYWHERE it's just a matter of how often you travel to each of these places.

for the inner outer config, it could be arranged such that the outer teams have 2 far road games per year.  It's not like we go to every road game (I live in the chicago area and I thought Nebraska was too far to go to, so I doubt many people from Michigan would go there).

I guess the feast or famine doesn't sit well with some of the people I've spoken to, but I am still a fan of the eye of doom.

approach, but I don't see the league approving it. 

Great diary. 

The real question is travel time, not miles. Beyond a certain distance, teams and their fans are (mainly) going to be flying, not driving.

Now, airplane trips are much shorter in the air, but you've got to get to and from an airport, get through security, board/disembark, check and claim luggage, and so forth. For most Big Ten trips that require flying, travel time is dominated by these other factors, and it almost doesn't matter where you're going.

So the real issue for the Big Ten is not the average distance, but maximizing the drivable games. Once you're beyond driving distance, it doesn't matter who's in your division, and other factors will take over (rivalries, competitive balance, marketing).

For comparison look at some of the distances while the Huskers were in the Big 12:

NU to UT ~ 820 miles

NU to TT ~ 750 miles

NU to A&M ~ 807 miles

NU to Baylor ~ 629 miles

NU to CU ~ 500 miles

Do teams like Nebraska utilize chartered air, and if so,  is distance really that much of a factor?

How did you reconcile "Maryland or Rutgers" for Option 1?

Did you assign one to each division? Take an overall average? Or something else?

In any case, I agree with most of the posters here that Option 2 seems most likely. I think it's an improvement over the current setup- especially with new names. How about "Elitist Snobs and "Flyover Farms"?