New Division Names (football)
New Division names are East and West per ESPN starting in 2014
http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/9191768/big-ten-conferen…
April 19th, 2013 at 10:17 PM ^
Kork Coupons helped them a ton on offense but now they're basically going to be a poor man's LSU from here on out: great defense, horrifying offense
April 19th, 2013 at 10:34 PM ^
I'm not sure they'll always even have a great defense. They're not recruiting all that well. If you've got to rely continually on 3-star guys to overachieve, at some point the well will run dry.
April 19th, 2013 at 10:59 PM ^
but I think as long as they have Narduzzi, he'll make those 3 stars into a respectable or better defense. When he goes, the wheels come off
I'm not a big Dantonio fan, but they will have a decent defense as long as he's still the head coach. For all his faults, the guy is still a solid defensive coach.
It makes it a lot easier to get to the Rose Bowl/NCG when we only have to play Ohio once and PSU will be down in the near future. It works out perfectly for us.
Way to get it right. I am happy with the names, simple.
Also, the SEC does just fine with perceived division imbalance:
East
Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vanderbilt
West
Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, LSU, Ole Miss, Miss St, TAMU
Whole lot more balanced than the new Big Ten. Plus, everyone is overlooking the fact that we have to play Indiana, Maryland, and Rutgers every year now. Fuck. That.
April 19th, 2013 at 10:01 PM ^
I can live with playing them as long as we're also playing Ohio, MSU and PSU every year, and in the same division (so we're not handicapped by having a better cross-division rival than everyone else). Not to mention that Rutgers and Maryland give us good East Coast exposure for recruiting.
April 20th, 2013 at 12:30 PM ^
No it's not that balanced the past 10 years. Alabama and LSU are the class of the West. Florida the East. Those are the 3 current power programs of the SEC. Auburn had its one year. Georgia, for all its hype, is the perpetual bridesmaid. They are like the Clemson of the SEC - a bunch of preseason hype but never do it at the end. Tennessee has sucked for a decade. South Carolina has only risen due to the coach. I imagine when they made the divisions the thinking was South Carolina is garbage and Tennessee is the power in that conference with Florida. How things can change in a decade. It's been a 3 team conference at the top for well over a decade and they put a pretty darn good Texas A&M team in the stronger side to boot. And not that long ago Arkansas was a top 10 team.
Don't forget that in the not-too-distant past the East division of the SEC was the "big dog" while the West was down. Currently, it is (perceived to be) the opposite. (Personally, I think the SEC is about as evenly balanced as it has ever been right now). That is why chasing "balance" in the divisions is a fool's errand.
is not perfect. I am powerless to help or I would. I'd be happy to take over for Mary Sue if you are on the board.
April 19th, 2013 at 10:28 PM ^
Louis Elbel wasn't writing the song about a mere division title...
Good. Much better setup for us.
msu was in the West and Purdue was in the East but I will take it. I can handle a trip out east. MGrowOld?? I will stop by and pick you and the Mrs up on the way to Rutgers.
I actually don't think the balance is terrible. The east just has pretty much all of the consistent football powers.
The west has a whole gaggle of teams that you could probably expect to be 6-6 to 9-3 every year: Iowa, Wisconsin, Northwestern, and Purdue While the east has the football powers: Michigan, Penn State (someday), and Ohio and the absolute tomato cans: IU, Rutgers, Maryland. (and no, MSU does not count as a football power for being good for 2 years in case you wondered)
Seems like overall it's fairly balanced and Penn State may be in the cellar for another decade
This isn't that unbalanced. The East has Michigan, Ohio, I guess MSU but it's not like they're a powerhouse, and a PSU team that still has most of the effects of sanctions in front of them, not behind. And three shit teams. The West has Wiscy and Nebraska and a purple time bomb that goes off every few years. Plus Iowa doesn't usually suck.
So 25 percent of Michigan's regular season schedule every year for the forseeable future will be Indiana, Maryland and Rutgers.
Yay?
April 19th, 2013 at 10:00 PM ^
April 19th, 2013 at 10:10 PM ^
I'd bet Hoke actually is really happy about that. There's a lot of HS football talent in New Jersey and Maryland and now we'll get an annual trip to one of them.
April 19th, 2013 at 11:09 PM ^
Michigan fans who are going to religiously genuflect in front of the statue of St. Bo need to keep in mind that the Big Ten during his first glorious decade was completely craptastic. Ever hear of the "Big 2 and Little 8?" If you criticize the quality of opposition, keep in mind that you're criticizing the thing that helped make Bo a legend.
April 19th, 2013 at 11:17 PM ^
Yes, I am criticizing the quality of the opposition, and I am keeping in mind that I am criticizing the thing that helped make Bo a legend.
I remember going to those games in the 1970s. I remember that the only reason you got season tickets in even numbered years is so you could get them in odd numbered years. It sucked (except for that one game at the end of each odd numbered year). Things got much better by the 1980s, especially with the change in philosophy in the non-conference scheduling. Recently, though, things have been getting worse, and that worsening is accelerating with the addition of a couple of uninspiring universities to the conference. I guess I'm surprised that it is considered controversial to say so.
April 20th, 2013 at 12:47 PM ^
Who would you add to the conference then Alton? To make it better? And you cant answer "no one" because that's not how the landscape is going. The only premier programs I can think of to bring in is Notre Dame which has rebuffed the Big 10 for decades and... (crickets chirping). Oklahoma? Texas? That ship seems to have sailed. You say these teams are uninspiring we've added which I dont disagree with but there are only about 20ish premier programs in the country and a handful are in the Big 10 and most of the others have no intention of ever moving. If you say something like "Missouri" (which just moved to the SEC) or "Boston College" I say "yawn" - its just Purdue again. Tell me who you want and who is likely to come into the conference rather than whine about who is being added.
Here is a list of the teams that would "upgrade" the big 10 IN FOOTBALL (not basketball)
Oklahoma, Texas, USC, Oregon, Stanford, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Miami, Florida State, Tennessee, Auburn, Virginia Tech??, Clemson??, West Virgina??
Already "ours" - Michigan, Ohio, Penn State, Nebraska
I most certainly can answer "no one." It's entirely possible that the Big Ten will not expand for the next 30 years, and right now my hope is that they don't. I would have expressed that hope even more fervently 12 months ago, but the conference for some reason (yes, I know the reason) decided to ignore my advice and add Maryland and Rutgers.
The problem is that you're presenting this as a "who would you add, and you have to add somebody" argument. I reject your premises, so I also have to reject your conclusion. They didn't have to add anybody last year, and they don't have to add anybody next year. Because it would be profitable short-term to add two schools, they did.
From everything I have heard, though, if the Big Ten does expand, it would probably be in the southeastern direction (e.g., Virginia and North Carolina/Georgia Tech). It's not so great for the fans who buy the tickets, but this isn't about us any more, is it? They will add more schools when it becomes profitable short-term to add more (and profitable for the schools to make the move). I know they don't care about the product on the field, except as it relates to the bottom line. I understand that. I accept that. I do not like it.
April 20th, 2013 at 12:37 PM ^
Yes that is the downside but it will be an aid in recruiting. On the flip side while we have had some exciting games against Minnesota and Purdue I dont think they are very different programs than Rutgers and Maryland. Everyone is crapping on them but Maryland was a halfway decent ACC team early on under Friedgen and was 9-4, 8-5 as recently as 3-5 years ago... and Rugers was "MSU level" under Schiano - maybe that was their top or the move to the Big 10 will help recruiting. Is that much different than your average Minnesota and Purdue teams? Or even Illinois - nope.
Your logic is not welcome when people want to be pissed of for the sake of being pissed off.
Mean Husky over friendly Husky.
Let's play some football.
While this may be unbalanced for the conference as a whole, it is far more favorable for UM than the old divisions.
- Michigan already played MSU and Ohio every year anyway.
- We swap Nebraska for Penn State with the new set up.
- M will play in the untapped grounds of NJ & MD every year.
- Iowa, Nebraska and Wisconsin will rotate off the schedule regularly.
There will be seasons where Michigan will have very easy schedule on paper, especially with the ND rivalry on hiatus. I think we can expect to see more undefeated seasons heading into the Ohio game.
April 19th, 2013 at 10:02 PM ^
What happens if, as expected, the B1G expands toward the mid-atlantic? The natural response would be to put Indiana in the West, right? Depending on who is added, the East could become even more top heavy.
April 19th, 2013 at 10:02 PM ^
April 19th, 2013 at 10:16 PM ^
April 19th, 2013 at 10:36 PM ^
Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm firmly in the "bring it on" camp. It's just that I think many people were willing to take an unbalanced tradeoff (presuming the divisions are actually unbalanced) to get OSU and M, and to a lesser extent MSU, in the same division. Will people be willing to accept further lopsidedness in the future when there's no proportionate benefit to Michigan?
April 19th, 2013 at 10:42 PM ^
April 20th, 2013 at 12:48 PM ^
Bingo. Good for basketball though.
Interesting that you'd use that word.
When I was little and learning to read (this was a long time ago) my parents gave me books like "The Thirty Greatest College Football Stories of All Time." Georgia Tech was in those books. The Cumberland game, Wrong Way Riegel, John Heisman and Bobby Dodd. It may not be the greatest of programs now, but it's storied.
And with the exception of Indiana and Northwestern, that's what every B1G team had prior to this last round of expansion--they all have stories. There's Red Grange. Nagurski. Nile Kinnick, and the Fainting Irish game. All the great QBs at Purdue. I remember an interview with Keith Jackson where he talked about listening to games on the radio when he was small, and the aura of football power he felt given off anytime any Big Ten team was mentioned.
Penn State was a worthy addition in that regard. Nebraska, obviously. But Rutgers? Maryland? What's their story?
Rutgers played in the first college football game ever, in 1869.
But is there a story to go with that?
I guess, now that I look it up, that the Rutgers student body chasing the Princeton team out of town after the game makes a pretty good story, or it would if I could find more than a paragraph on it. But it wasn't part of the football lore that I learned growing up--that first game was more of a factoid than a story, and as far as the common fan was concerned they might as well have stopped playing football in 1870.
Their wiki page bears that out. The entire history of Rutgers football is split into two parts:
College Football is Born: The First Season (1869)
The Remaining Years (1870-2011)
The second section is about half again as large as the first.
April 19th, 2013 at 10:04 PM ^
so much win!! Also this makes those rings OSU made even funnier now because they say "leaders division" on it or something
April 19th, 2013 at 10:06 PM ^
Finally, some common sense from the league office (both in terms of the division names and their composition). Having us in opposite divisions with OSU and playing the last week of the season (and thus possibly playing two weeks in a row) was not going to satisfy anyone in the long-term. Either the Game was going to be moved or we were, into their division. I feared the former but thankfully it's proven to be the latter.
I don't care if it's "unbalanced" or not. That's a problem for schools like IU to worry about. We can handle our business in this division, and after 2013, we'll no longer have to root for OSU to beat our division rivals (which is quite disgusting to have to do).
April 19th, 2013 at 10:15 PM ^
Potential Best Case Scenario Schedule (2 home games vs West)
HOME: Ohio, Penn State, Maryland, Illinois, Minnesota
ROAD: MSU, IU, Rutgers, Purdue
Potential Worst Case Scenario Scheudle (2 road games vs West)
HOME: MSU, IU, Rutgers, Iowa
ROAD: Ohio, Penn State, Maryland, Wisconsin, Nebraska
April 19th, 2013 at 10:18 PM ^
Who cares if it seems unbalanced?
I get to watch Michigan football live in person every other year when we obliterate the Terps!
How much will Dave be paying the Maryland AD to move the game to M&T or Fedex Field?
Otherwise we'd probably play N'Western at Soldier Field and Indiana and/or Purdue in Lucas Oil.
Byrd/Capital One isn't that bad...they just can't fill it. More seats for Michigan fans on the east coast, it'll be like going to Evanston, just bigger.
April 19th, 2013 at 10:28 PM ^
April 19th, 2013 at 10:31 PM ^
April 19th, 2013 at 10:31 PM ^
Let's wait for MSU to win something before claiming they are going to beat up on anybody.