How a 3-division, 18-team B1G could work
A prior thread goes in a different direction than where we're more likely to go, in my view, so I started a new thread to discuss an 18-team B1G with three 6-team divisions.
The framework
- The three divisions are built to balance the goals of geographic sanity and competitive balance.
- B1G teams play 9 in-conference games, structured as 5 in-division, 3 from half of another division, and 1 protected rival. The out-of-division non-protected opponents are rotated, such that every school plays every other school over a four-year period (half of each of the other 2 divisions each year x 4).
- The top 2 division champions (decided by an absurdly complex system of tiebreakers) play in the B1G Championship Game in Pasadena.
The divisions
- West: USC, UCLA, Washington, Oregon, Iowa, Nebraska
- Central: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Northwestern, Illinois, Michigan, MSU
- East: Rutgers, Maryland, Penn State, Ohio State, Indiana, Purdue
The Central and East divisions could be designed a number of different ways, but this setup allows Michigan to play Minnesota, MSU, and Ohio State (protected rival) every year.
What say you, Comrades? Here's a map for your reference:
Too logical, it will never happen.
I like it! Nice job.
I agree to like it if we rename the Central Division the "Norris"
August 5th, 2023 at 10:46 AM ^
I prefer something like “Leaders” or “Legends” myself.
August 5th, 2023 at 10:54 AM ^
Only if we can paint a maize halo around the stadium.
Regulation Divisions for football
Leaders (current era powers, strong Media viewership): e.g. Michigan, Ohio State, USC
Legends (maybe the used to be good): e.g. Nebraska you lucky to be here, Michigan St. Wisconsin, Iowa
Losers (almost never good): e.g. Rutgers, Indiana forced to play night games or Thursdays when playing each other
If you wanted to be nice to the West Coast teams, you could swap Illinois/Northwestern with Iowa/Nebraska (because flying commercial to Chicago is much easier than to Iowa/Nebraska).
I kind of agree with you but Champaign, IL is no where near Chicago.
August 5th, 2023 at 11:19 AM ^
I would prefer seeing more of the west coast teams every year rather than continuing to waste our time with MSU.
Times are different and annual chances to beat Oregon, USC, and/or UCLA mean better rankings and better odds of winning a ship.
Beating Lincoln Riley gives us clout. Beating MSU gives us absolutely nothing.
So, OSU is getting an automatic win every year with Rutgers, Maryland, Indiana, Purdue??? and PSU who they have lost to only like twice since they joined...hard pass.
You could swap MSU and OSU and make Michigan MSU's protected rival, but not sure that that's much better. Creates a pretty easy road for Penn State.
Another option would be to put Illinois & Northwestern in the East (assuming Bielema continues to improve Illinois) and swap out Indiana & Purdue.
August 5th, 2023 at 10:09 AM ^
Purdue has as many wins against osu as Michigan does in the last 20 years and psu is currently the third best team in the conference. Who exactly do you think is going to be challenging them?
August 5th, 2023 at 10:34 AM ^
Michigan was lost in the wilderness half of those 20 years, whereas Purdue's been Purdue.
I can't wait to see how they completely screw up these divisions.
The problem is that this whole thing is being driven by the TV networks whose sole job it is to get ratings, not to have balance and parity.
If they had it their way, there'd be a division of just UM/OSU/USC/Oregon/Wisconsin/PSU, and then the non ratings generating schools would be in their own division, a Big Ten Jr division.
Can't wait til some Fox exec pitches that USC and UM should play 4x a season in primetime. Think about the ratings 🤮
I believe Ant Wright had the exact same division setup on Twitter.
If Communist Football and Ant Wright agree, then it must be done.
I have a hard time seeing 3 divisions when they were going to be completely division-less for a 16 team conference
I would assume they'll just keep the same concept of flex protect and rework it some
You could do that, with one protected rival and then you play 8 of the other 16 teams each year. But that makes the travel logistics much harder for the West Coast teams. One priority for the conference is to reduce the travel burden for the West Coast.
August 5th, 2023 at 11:18 AM ^
The priority of the conference is to make fox more money travel has nothing to do with it USC didn’t want them in they don’t care about the travel. The networks are going to want the 3 of the 4 west coast teams playing at least 2 games between PSU Mich OSu every year at least.
My proposal: add the two Bay Area schools, poach the Arizona schools that just joined the Big 12, then make a Big Ten Pacific (or "Pac" for short) out west and a Big Ten Classic in the midwest/east. Winners of each division to play the conference championship game at the Rose Bowl.
Duck the rose bowl, I would like to go to Indy again and not give the west coast (new members an advantage)
It was a joke about reworking our way all the way back around into the traditional pre-playoff system, not a serious proposal.
People talk about swiping Stanford & Cal now that they are in free fall, but looking at the map I wonder if Colorado and Utah might make greater sense in the *long* term.
Obviously will not happen now, but maybe something to consider down the road.
I say let's just play some football and let God sort it out.
August 5th, 2023 at 11:33 AM ^
I've decided that with all this re-allignment there is no God.
It is imperative that we solve this immediately.
By the time we've hashed this out the B1G will have added Cal, Stanford, UVa, NC, ND and GT or something similar and we'll need to figure out four 6-team divisions.
Stop, just stop. The big ten will change again before the season even begins
I think they should round it up to 20 and create two divisions of big tens (east, west) (north, south) etc.
I hate the idea of (say) Penn State only playing in Michigan Stadium once every 8 years.
Really I don't see any reason to drop the scheduling concept that the Big Ten was going with anyway--where every team had 0-3 rivals and the rest of the schools rotated.
August 5th, 2023 at 10:20 AM ^
Respectfully, I don’t like your proposal. One, it has the same problem the legends and leaders had where Michigan and OSU were split but were a protected rivalry. I’m sure you’ll recall that guaranteed a much more difficult schedule for Michigan opposed to the rest of the teams in their division.
Two, the Michigan and OSU divisions are unbalanced. If you’re not going to split the teams by absolute geography like they are now, I feel you need to balance them out more. Your west division is fine, but I would flip Penn State and Michigan and Illinois and Indiana. Illinois brings a little bit more pedigree to the east and if Michigan continues playing MSU at the least their schedule won’t be substantially more difficult than what OSU would be playing.
Three, if OSU and Michigan are in the same division I would hope it would make it more likely they wouldn’t have a non-playoff rematch.
August 5th, 2023 at 10:24 AM ^
I'm open to that. You could swap OSU and MSU, and Illinois/Northwestern with Indiana/Purdue, to achieve the result you're looking for. Personally, I would love to get MSU off the schedule as often as possible.
August 5th, 2023 at 10:54 AM ^
You elide the killer problem. There's no point in having three divisions if only two of them get to play for the league championship. In every other sports organization, division winners make a playoff. Otherwise there's no point of divisions.
August 5th, 2023 at 11:27 AM ^
18 divisions, 1 team each!
August 5th, 2023 at 11:28 AM ^
You make 4 divisions/pods. 2 will have 4 teams, 2 will have 5 teams, balance the rivalries and strengths that way, plus leaves open to adding the next 2 teams in fairly smoothly.
August 5th, 2023 at 11:58 AM ^
That will work much better after the B1G adds 4 more teams, ie Cal, Stanford, ND and some team from the ACC (Miami?).
August 5th, 2023 at 12:03 PM ^
nice.... best solution that I've yet to hear...(basically Rutgers doesn't count as a real team so that's clearly 1 that goes to a 5 pod.... we all know they brought us the NY market)
August 5th, 2023 at 11:49 AM ^
looking at that map....can we start calling this college football misalignment?
I get that we are going after the big TV markets and gained LA and already had NY, thus the higher payout by school, but I actually like how the SEC is geographically based.... (I hate the SEC, don't get me wrong)
I live in Portland so I am pretty happy that I now have 2 an opportunities to see Michigan within a 3 hour drive
But I sent 2 kids to Oregon State because it has a pretty decent engineering program, always ranks high on the list of great college towns and was just a great value for me
I am a little crushed to see this happen to the Beavers.... they have really dedicated fans and I consider myself a fan
could care less about Cal and Stanford.... I lived in the Bay for a long time and know their alumni could care less about their teams
Now that this is done, I hope they add some more teams so they can have divisions that keep the geography and traditions alive
August 5th, 2023 at 11:54 AM ^
Given the 12 game regular season plus a conference championship game and then 2 game playoff system (2023) for a national title, totals 15 games for the two teams in the final. Add to that the 12 team playoff format, even if the top 4 teams get a bye for the 2024 season, then 1 or 2 more games are added to the schedule. The 3 division B1G idea would have to add a second game to settle the conference championship.
What might seem fair to have 3 divisions in the expanded B1G conference, it won't work regarding a championship game and then add the extra playoff games. Besides, the B1G isn't done expanding, as we all know. It's looking like no less than 2 more and likely 4 more teams to be added in the not too distant future. So, this idea could be a moot point.
August 5th, 2023 at 12:47 PM ^
Looks good!
Iowa and Nebraska won't be happy they're given the long travel, especially as Iowa's campus is east of Minnesota's.
1) Add Cal & Stanford to get to an even more even 20.
2) Divide the new ‘league’ into 2 ‘conferences’: the ‘BIG 10’ and ‘PAC 10’.
3) The two conferences/divisions/sides can play for the championship in the Rose Bowl.
4) Profit.
August 5th, 2023 at 11:25 PM ^
If Notre Dame would get their head out of their ass, you could add ND and Stanford and create regional quads.
West: Washington, Oregon, Stanford, UCLA, USC
Midwest: Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois
Mideast: Northwestern, Notre Dame, Purdue, Indiana, MSU
East: Michigan, OSU, PSU, Maryland, Rutgers
- Play 3 non-conference games.
- Play everyone in your division (2 home/2 away).
- Play one game against a team from each division.
- *Play one out of division protected game every year.
- Week 13: Rank division winners, #1-#4, by CFP ranking and have #1 play #4 and #2 play #3. Have the rest of the league play each other as well. 12th game for everyone.
- Play championship game.
**********
- Michigan/MSU
- Notre Dame/Stanford
- Northwestern/Illinois
- UCLA/Nebraska
- OSU/USC
- Maryland/Oregon
- Purdue/Wisconsin
- PSU/Washington
- Indiana/Iowa
- Rutgers/Minnesota
August 6th, 2023 at 12:38 PM ^
Not bad actually. But how would the championship game tiebreakers work? That seems like a large wrinkle to be worked out.
I hate the Big Ten championship game here. The idea that the loser of that game in all probability is in a worse playoff position than the winner of the 3rd division sits wrong with me.