The Athletic($)'s Dochterman's Updated B10 Realignment Proposal
The Athletic (paywalled, NY Times subscribers) proposes a division-less Big 10 schedule that retains 3 rivalries for each school.
(The scheme saves 3 rivalries because Iowa wants to keep 3 rivals—Nebr., Minn., Wis.—and the writer, Scott Dochterman, covers Iowa sports and teaches at U of Iowa.)
Anyway, this scheme decides Michigan's 3 rivals are MSU, OSU, and Rutgers.
[Ed-S: I changed the headline to be less clickbait]
Puh-leez
Well there IS a case to be made here if you look at the historical record. I know the modern edition of the rivalry has been a bit lopsided with us winning 7 of the 8 games we've played. But if you include some of the games dating back to the early part of the last century, it's more balanced, with us winning 7 of the 8 games we've played.
Underrated comment
Let's upvote this to 100 points to celebrate the century long struggle we've had with Rutger.
that is one funny comment!
If they fence they garden - our days could be numbered…
If they fence the garden, please make sure these Rutgers fans don't escape....
They're not OUR rival, but we may very well be THEIR rival. Even Rutgers needs some rivals.
or we could kick rutgers the fuck out of the big ten!
This. And make them take Maryland with them.
I don't mind having Maryland in basketball. At least they have some tradition.
I mean you kinda want some balance, we don't need 3 tough permanent games.
This is the way
Agreed. I'd rather see IL than Schiano every year. These seem to keep a lot of the East - West alignment. Just a few cross overs.
Was going to comment the same thing until I read your posting.
Agreed but I'd rather it not be Rutgers. I would rather play Northwestern as that third easy game. We have an academic rivalry (being the two highest profile schools in the big ten), have had a great competitive series recently and have a really cool new trophy.
Yes - NW or Minnesota would be acceptable as the 3rd. Rutger? They can fuck all the way off... I don't care how much they hate us from the old 'fence the garden' days, or how often they fill their stands with recruits to watch a game against UM. That football team has no business in the FBS, let alone in the B1G.
Yes, I will say this every time -- we have played over 100 games against Minnesota, and it's the oldest trophy game in college football. We should be playing them regularly.
And I would imagine Michigan's base is more solid in Chicago than the NY/NJ market.
each team should just have one protected rivalry. Stop making the schedule a mess. We take the Game and MSU can choose between PSU or the Jersey Shore.
I'd rather play ND annually than MSU.
^^^This. Three is way too many, and not every school can even claim two. With just one protected rivalry (OSU) Michigan will have a better opportunity to get to Lincoln, MSP & Evanston.
Lincoln is on my bucket list but the only way I set foot in NE is if Michigan is in town.
I do not understand this way of thinking. I would much prefer we play every game against tough opponents. The one improvement that could be made to college football would be for the competition to be such that the National Champion is a 3 loss team. Watching Michigan thump Rutgers is a boring game.
You need the cream puffs to balance the schedule, rest injuries and get the backups experience.
Not when people are paying hundreds of dollars per ticket and you only have six or seven home games a year.
If no one played cream puffs the schedule would be balanced and the games would be more interesting.
This is the way I feel about our preseason schedule. I'm all for the tough B1G lineup, but I don't see how playing the Jimmy Johnson Miami Hurricanes and ND to open the season (like we did in 1988) helps our Playoff chances.
Maybe not as "controversial" as I'm reading the mildly tongue-in-cheek OP to be.
(Highlighted rivalries would be permanent. Non highlighted would be revisited )
The article, for those without a pay to wall, is attempting to accomplish what Big Ten schedules have been struggling to accomplish since the addition of Penn State in 1993. A regular rotation and well-rounded schedule. I'm not entirely certain that this gets us there either, but it's just another in a long line of not-perfect attempts.
No, Rutger is not a rival of ours. But it also doesn't make sense for Michigan's three "protected" games to be against, say... the three best teams in the league that aren't Michigan.
Honestly though, other than the Athletic author (Scott Dochterman) picking these as the protected matchups, Im not even really sure what is new here. We've seen these type of suggestions before. I guess Dochterman is coming from a better shot at the playoff angle.
I don't dislike this list of rivals but i would swap Rutgers with MSU's Northwestern.
It makes more sense for UM-Northwestern to play against each other without making a tough protected 3 for Michigan.
and how else would The Situation trophy be played if MSU-Rutger are not protected?
They can play for Jersey Shore and we can continue to play NW for the Jewett Trophy and make that a big thing.
Rutgers has Indiana.. wtf. I grew up in Jersey. Penn state should be their rival. PSU historically came in and took tons of jersey kids to play. i was a psu fan growing up - and i dont think i even knew that "The college of new jersey" / rutgers had a football team.
They are neighboring states.. they are similar states in many ways.. and so rutgers has michigan and indiana.
Honestly, we shouldnt compain. its probably a way to throw us a bone, because if we have osu, msu every year as rivals, to get psu or wisky or iowa would just be brutal.
Sorta the same with PSU getting maryland
Looks like Penn State has Maryland as a rival in this scheme. Penn State does have slightly more of a rivalry with Maryland than Rutgers. I mean, they're 41-3-1 all time against Maryland, compared to 30-2 against Rutgers.
So, yeah. I got nothing.
The problem is there is no way you can protect both Rutgers and Maryland on PSU's schedule. My guess is most PSU fans would pick Maryland over Rutgers so Rutgers loses.
We all lose.
If I am a Maryland fan, I wouldn't be happy about it.
Shouldn't our third rival be Minnesota for the Little Brown Jug? That makes a lot more sense to me than Rutgers.
Probably. And he doesn't really go into it. His idea is that:
Each school has its own preferences. Iowa could play Minnesota, Wisconsin and Nebraska and never change it. Perhaps Penn State’s protected games would include Michigan State, Ohio State and Maryland for the first five-year block. Then after five years, the league could swap Rutgers for Maryland. Over a 10-year period, Penn State would play both Maryland and Rutgers eight times rather than one team every year and the other only six.
In the inaugural five-year cycle, maybe Nebraska faces Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota. But if the Huskers return to their 1990s form, then maybe a schedule alteration could include a five-year block with Ohio State instead of Minnesota. Or maybe the Gophers rekindle their Little Brown Jug series with Michigan and the Badgers meet Northwestern while both keep Iowa and one another.
So, the idea being that after a period of time the non-permanent protected games could change. I think part of "our" collective issue here is that we're just going to look at this from a Michigan standpoint. Ultimately, Rutgers doesn't really have a lot of "rivalry" options in the Big Ten. Michigan needs a "cream puff" -- sorry Rutger. Rutgers needs 3 protected games.
Couldn't Iowa and their 3 cohorts could have 3 protected rivalries while the rest of the league has one?
I'd rather see them cycle through much faster than every five years. Talking to former players they say they regret that they didn't have a chance to play all the other teams in the conference.
There is no way to add Michigan-Minnesota without breaking up the 4-way Minnesota-Wisconsin-Iowa-Nebraska setup. Michigan and Minnesota were going to lose a rivalry game in this setup. IMO, Michigan should be playing OSU, MSU, and Northwestern.
Reading this list, it seems like it's less about Dochterman saying that Rutgers is Michigan's rival and more about each B1G team needing at least one marquee game that they play every year (and I don't think you could, in good faith, consider games against Indiana or Maryland to be "marquee"). It's the same thing with him assigning Maryland as Ohio State's 3rd "rival"... despite the fact that Maryland has literally never beaten the Buckeyes.
The strange part about his proposal is that Maryland and Rutgers get better outcomes than Illinois, Indiana and Northwestern in terms of "marquee games" which makes no sense to me. Maryland and Rutgers should be getting last priority in this process with the least amount of history in this league. Illinois should play OSU every year, not Maryland. Northwestern should play Michigan every year, not Rutgers. Indiana should play MSU every year.
I suspect that some of that is acknowledging the importance of east coast TV markets.
I don't think that changes anything. My guess is that Michigan-Northwestern and OSU-Illinois games are going to do better TV numbers than Michigan-Rutgers and OSU-Maryland. At worst it would be a wash. If that is the case, you would be better off preserving the traditional rivalries.
I feel like these protected rivalries just keeps in place the competitive imbalance that already exists with the East & West divisions. OSU, PSU, UM, MSU (the only 4 teams to win the B1G title since we went to the current divisional alignment and the only 3 teams to go to the CFP) all beat up on each other by playing 2 of each other (with potentially 3 depending on the non-protected games they draw that year) whereas Wisconsin, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota all play each other in annual protected games? What’s even the point of getting rid of divisions then?
To your point, I agree that the 3rd "rival" of Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State should be teams that are currently in the B1G West, lest they risk recreating the same balance issue that is currently causing issues with the geographical divisions.
Practically the only reason to drop divisions is to put the two teams with the best records in the championship game.
Everything else is just figuring out the mechanics. An attempt to balance reasonable fairness with keeping the fans happy.
Honestly, this is a pretty good list of protected games, at least in terms of protecting rivalries. I can only think of a few changes:
- Drop NW-MSU
- Drop Illinois-IU
- Drop OSU-Maryland
- Add MSU-IU (trophy game)
- Add OSU-Illinois (trophy game)
- Add NW-Maryland (filling in the gaps)
We still miss a few rivalries:
- Minnesota-Michigan
- Northwestern-Michigan
- Minnesota-Penn State (apparently)
But, we can't get all of those unless we move to 4+ protected games. I honestly think the 5 protected/4 rotating might be better than 3 protected/5 rotating. If we do that we can actually protect all of these rivalries and balance out difficulty.
IMO, you also drop Northwestern-Purdue and Michigan-Rutgers. Scrap your proposed Northwestern-Maryland matchup.
Add:
Michigan-Northwestern
Purdue-Maryland
Northwestern-Rutgers
Saves the Michigan-Northwestern trophy game without sacrificing anything else. My guess is that Northwestern fans would take Michigan and Rutgers over Purdue and Maryland for protected games. I don't think Purdue fans would miss Northwestern. I don't care about what Rutgers fans want. But I am pretty close to the same place you are.
I think we have covered this topic before, but IMO there are better ways to do this than his proposal and save more rivalries with a couple tweaks.
Michigan: add Northwestern (trophy game), drop Rutgers
Northwestern: add Michigan, drop MSU
MSU: add Indiana (trophy game), drop Northwestern
Indiana: add MSU, drop Illinois
Illinois: add OSU (trophy game), drop Indiana
OSU: add Illinois, drop Maryland
Maryland: add Purdue, drop OSU
Purdue: add Maryland, drop Northwestern
Northwestern: add Rutgers, drop Purdue
Rutgers: add Northwestern, drop Michigan
Trying to fit Maryland and Rutgers in this format is tough. It does not make sense from a tradition or even a TV rights perspective to put any team other than PSU on Maryland or Rutgers yearly schedule. Let PSU matchup with one (Maryland), and let Rutgers kick rocks. With a couple tweaks, the only major trophy game lost in this format would be Minnesota-Michigan.
Interesting that IA, WI, NE, and MN would all have each other as rivals, essentially creating a mini division