New divisions/schedules to be announced on BTN tomorrow
We get to see if Michigan will go to Jersey Shore in 2014 or 2015 for their annual East division game. Woohoo?
Per their FB
The Big Ten Conference is apparently close to announcing new divisions, new division names, and an expanded league schedule format. Sunday's "BTN Football Report" at 7:30 p.m. ET will examine the results of Sunday’s vote by the Big Ten Council of Presidents and Chancellors. The show will also include an interview with Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany. BTN.com's Tom Dienhart chimes in on the latest reports. What do you think of what we're hearing?
Be nice, this is my first thread post.
...they announce the joining of additional schools during that announcement.
If I had to guess, I would say that we will get Rutgers on the road in 2014 and at home in 2015. Our main competition for the division title will be Ohio State, Michigan State, Penn State, and Rutgers. This year (an odd year) we play Ohio State at home and Michigan State and Penn State on the road. To balance it out, we should play Rutgers at home in odd years.
Moreover, I think this means we will play Maryland on the road so that we travel to the east coast once per year. So my guess is the schedule (division opponents only) will look like this:
2014 - Michigan State, Penn State, Maryland, @Indiana, @Rutgers, @Ohio State
2015 - The opposite.
I think it's a bunch of crap IU-PU is the only protected cross over.
The Little Brown Jug is ten times more important than Paul Bunyan. Love having Paul, but it doesn't have the history or a good backstory.
I just wish the games with minny would be a little more comeptitive and be like the old days where that was THE game. The LBJ was almost as valuable as a conference title in the 20s, 30s & 40s.
April 27th, 2013 at 11:03 PM ^
I don't want protected cross-overs, period. They screw up scheduling. It's going to take IU and PU forever to cycle through the rest of their cross-divisional opponents because of their protected game.
The Jug is definitely a better trophy than Paul Bunyan, but MSU is a much better rivalry. A trophy can only do so much for a series. I think it's unfortunate that we'll only play Minn about half the time going forward, but if I had to choose between playing them or PSU every year (which we weren't going to be doing in the Legends/Leaders setup), it's no contest.
Especially that having protected cross-overs would somehow end up benefitting Ohio. Like everything always does.
For the first 10 years of the new divisions, Michigan and OSU will account for 9 of the division titles. I'm going to guess Rutgers has a crazy year once and gets a division title.
We need an alternating schedule of at Maryland and at Rutgers so that we can cash in on New Jersey recruiting one year and then Maryland recruiting the next.
I'm just hoping that Rutgers plays Michigan and either PSU or OSU in the same year instead of Michigan 1 year and OSU and PSU another year. If they play another big game the same year as Michigan I would consider buying tickets and then selling everything but the Michigan game. Should be able to get pretty good seats that way.
Could be in a couple more years, we have two more schools to add and more shifting of divisions and schedules.
If not, I can live with what we have now . . . 14 teams, East / West, Michigan and OSU in the same Division, the Game on the last Saturday of the regular season, 9 Big Ten games.
Wouldn't mind if they went to 10 Big Ten games though.
will all teams in a division play 5 home or 4 home in a given year?
with so few conference and division games- titles will hugely be affected by home and away schedule.
note; no organized sports league on earth has ever played an odd number of games
April 27th, 2013 at 10:14 PM ^
PAC 10 used to play a true round robin with 9 games when they had 10 teams. Yes, it's crazy with the home/away balance but it's not unprecedented. Heck, go back to 1982 - Michigan won the Big 10 with an 8-1 record. The lone loss was to Ohio State who went 7-1. Ohio State played one less conference game than us that year. Every team played 9 conference games except Ohio St and Iowa who played 8. Now that's some weird stuff.
As long as Michigan and OSU are in the same division and play on the last Saturday of the season, I'm totally indifferent.
The Big 10 is basically dead to me. There are four new teams that I have no stake in and the teams in the (please call it) Western Division are basically the equivalent of the Big 10 - ACC Challenge to me given how often I expect to play them.
The table is set for a long, long run of Big 2 / Little X, unless Texas and Oklahoma are somehow the next two dominos to fall in the expansion game.
At least what I have known as the Big Ten for the last 30 years. Any system where we play half of the old conference two or three times a decade, but see Rutgers and Maryland every year is simply not the Big Ten. I would say go ahead and change the name, but I cringe at what Delaney would come up with.
/ GOML
April 27th, 2013 at 10:55 PM ^
There are four new teams that I have no stake in
Four? You still think of PSU as a "new team"? I think of the PSU series as basically a rivalry game at this point.
April 28th, 2013 at 12:22 AM ^
I've never really thought of Penn State the same way as the rest of the Big 10. Now, they're basically a joke and a soap opera combined and I'm disgusted with how the Pennsylvania legislature is handling the fallout from the whole scandal.
O'Brien did great things his first season with a strong group of seniors, but we saw last year that even USC couldn't survive without depth. Basically, the Big 10 kept a school that demonstrated it was willing to do absolutely anything to win football games, but still sucks at football. Now that they're going to spend some serious time in the depths of awful, I fully expect whoever the coach after the guy who replaces O'Brien to do some seriously shady crap to get the program back to the top.
As for the rest of the new teams, I think most of us agree that we don't have much of a stake in them yet.
April 28th, 2013 at 10:41 AM ^
OK, I'll grant that it's a little different to think about PSU after the Sandusky scandal. Still . . . from 1993-2010, there were some epic games in the series. PSU was a game that I really looked forward to every year. I can understand the desire to want to disassociate from PSU because of the scandal, but at the same time, I think it's only fair to assume that the players and virtually all of the PSU fans did not know what was going on with Sandusky during that time. I'm hesitant to paint them all with a broad brush.
I think of the Sandusky case as sui generis among NCAA scandals. It was horrible criminal behavior by one individual, which his superiors allowed for whatever reason not to come to light. But to take that to saying that they were "willing to do absolutely anything to win football games" . . . I don't know if that's fair. I see it more as a really unprecedented case where people who could have done the right thing were paralyzed by inaction. In any event, they have cleaned house since.
I view the Penn State coverup as a single-minded attempt to win football games. The only reason I can come up with for the cover up was to avoid a scandal that would harm the football program. If the institution is willing to do that, it's willing to do anything we've seen elsewhere in NCAA violations to gain an edge.
Something strange about institutions is that they somehow retain a character even as people move on. That the institution and state legislature has acted so pathetically in the aftermath indicates a determination to continue on the path toward football glory regardless of any impediment put in its way. Frankly, paying players is only wrong because the NCAA says it is--I'd rather have Auburn in the Big 10 than Penn State.
As for the series with Penn State, I view it like I view Notre Dame. Sure, some of it has been great, but it's just not the same as the Big 10. That's just me.
April 27th, 2013 at 10:13 PM ^
Getting 7 guys drafted shows that Rutgers is the class of the conference.
/s but really, what the hell?
April 27th, 2013 at 10:21 PM ^
That could just means their team is probably gutted. Don't follow them enough to know.
April 27th, 2013 at 10:37 PM ^
They return 8 starters
April 27th, 2013 at 10:38 PM ^
But it still means that NFL teams thought it was worth gutting, so to speak. That's what I'm amazed by. And Illinois ties Penn State for second most with 4.
April 27th, 2013 at 11:01 PM ^
There's a lot of talent in New Jersey. If RU can just keep it home, it could have a high ceiling as a program. They've got a golden opportunity now with PSU temporarily down. It's not out of the question that they could be the third-best team in the East division at some point.
April 28th, 2013 at 12:57 AM ^
There is almost zero BCS level college football happening in the mid-atlantic and northeast region. Penn State is basically the only team out there with any major following. Rutgers has a golden chance to keep some of the NJ talent home and potentially dip into PA and MD talent as well.
Gut feeling though is that Rutgers completely fails to take advantage of this and all of that regional talent continues to go to Michigan, ND, OSU, etc
April 27th, 2013 at 10:46 PM ^
we can count on Delany and the university presidents to make decisions and sweeping changes that will please all fanbases and not embarrass the conference on a national level.
April 27th, 2013 at 10:54 PM ^
I just hope they give us a more balanced home schedule each year, instead of our current system of having totally awesome odd-numbered years and horrible even-numbered years. PSU and OSU need to come here on differing years.
is if they alternated 5 home and 4 away games between the divisions every other year
For example in:
odd years the Western Div has 5 H & 4 A
even years Eastern Div has 5 H & 4 A
That way you wouldn't have an unfair advantage of differentiating a # of home and away games within divisional teams, this would seem like a no-brainer decision to me.
I suppose if you're 3H 3A within your own division and everyone in your division is 2H 1A or 2A 1H against the other division then that would make it fair. It would tend to artificially make one division appear stronger than the other because of the schedule imbalance across divisions, but it's worth it to give everyone an equal shot.
Seems to make sense. Let's see if the conference screws it up tonight. :/
Correct, that is how it will go down starting in 2016!
April 28th, 2013 at 10:17 AM ^
Automatically the first thing I think about when someone says be nice it's my first time.