Realign or Get rid of Divisions?-best options

I would be OK with having no divisions, but assuming we're keeping them, they should stay as is.  Geography is the way to go.  If the East is better than the West, so what?

 

Keep it as it is and send every fan of the B1G ten bucks.

That should make everyone happy.

...when I still play NCAA Football 14.

Add Rutgurz/Maryland to the B1G from the ACC (I usually swap in Lousville and a rando AAC team, usually Cinci because they were still decent as of 4 years ago)

Realign B1G conferences as follows (laugh at the conference names, but I am seriously open to suggestions):

Lakes:

• Michigan
• Michigan State
• Wisconsin
• Minnesota
• Northwestern
• Illinois
• Indiana

Plains:

• OSU
• Penn State
• Nebraska
• Purdue
• Iowa
• Rutgurz
• Maryland

One guaranteed/locked cross-over rivalry/trophy game per team, as follows:

• Michigan/OSU (The Game)
• Michigan State/Penn State (Land Grant Trophy)
• Wisonsin/Nebrasa (Freedom Trophy...stupid trophy they introduced when Nebraska joined but they first played each other in 1901)
• Minnesota/Iowa (Floyd of Rosedale) [would really love to see Minnesota/Iowa play every year for the $5 Bits of Broken Chair Trophy, but maybe in a few decades it will have the same gravitas as the Floyd of Rosedale]
• Indiana/Purdue (Old Oaken Bucket)
• Northwestern/Maryland (No one cares, overly obnoxious (for very different reasons) alumni trophy?)
• Illinois/Rutgurz (Dipshit trophy)

This still misses a few of the B1G rivalry trophy games like Illinois/Purdue (Purdue Cannon, but do you really care?), Iowa/Nebraska (Heartland Trophy) and Minnesota/Penn State (something called the Governor's Victory Bell, wtf?) but preserves most trophy games including the Jug, Bunyan and my personal non-Michigan favorite, the Old Brass Spittoon (Indiana/Michigan State)

In reality, I think we're more likely to see the Big 10 morph into a super-conference in the next 5 to 10 years, and that college football will generally trend in that direction as the current TV rights packages begin to tail towards expiration.

I don't see how the West is as big of a joke as people seem to think. Wisconsin is always a 9-3 to 10-2 team and was close to making the playoff last year. Iowa is hit or miss but is good enough to best some good teams every year. Same with Nebraska and Minnesota. The Big Ten West is no where near like the Big XII North was. I would argue it's better than the current SEC East also.

Big ten south: OSU Purdue Indiana Maryland Illinois Nebraska Iowa Big Ten North UM Sparty Minnesota Northwestern Wisconsin PSU Rutgers(or whoever replaces them when Delaney finds out Rutgers is a bad FCS team) Give each team a protected crossover.

The Big Ten East is the best thing that ever happened to Michigan.  

It's the glamour division in all of CFB, it helps our recruiting, and it keeps our last game with OSU meaningful.

Let Wisconsin worry about Wisconsin.  

 

In seriousness, this stuff is cyclical. It might be long cycles, but it's cyclical, and there's no way to do things in a way that either aren't subject to those cycles or otherwise unjust.

Face it, Michigan and Ohio State are likely to be the giants of the conference for the forseeable future. Either you have them weighing down one division, or you split them and give them each a raw deal by making their one protected crossover the hardest game of the year (whereas, say, Indiana's protected crossover is a pitiful Purdue team in this scenario). 

Beyond that, you have teams that have lower ceilings but are perennially solid in Iowa and Wisconsin, a program that could be every bit that good in Minnesota, a team that has the resources to be as good as anyone if they ever bother to care about football in Illinois, and one of the WINNINGEST PROGRAMS OF ALL TIME in Nebraska. 

The west will be fine. Maybe it will lose 70% of the title games, but that's going to happen somehow anyway. 

Who knew Neb was going to take it up the ass after Suh left town. It is what it is.

Play the hand you are dealt.

Can you imagine the calluses Fred Flintstone must have on his feet? Horrifying to think of really...

Just Split Michigan State And OSU so one is home, the other away, and I'm happy.

Ideally you scrap the divisions and send the top two teams in the conference to the title game. The West is a fucking joke outside of Wisconsin, and if they ever have a down year up there, the best team in the west could legitimately by 8-4. Tired of a far weaker division getting a shoe-in game.

But that method only provides a huge clusterfuck at the end of the year if you've got several teams who go 8-1 in conference.

I'd say re-align the conferences. UM and OSU in one division, PSU and Wisconsin in the other, and divvy up the rest randomly from there. And then toss Rutgers to get UConn in its stead. Whatever buy-out is necessary to get rid of Rutgers.

Re-institute the Big East, and move Rutgers and Penn State into it, which is their rightful place.

Revive the old Big 8, with Nebraska, Missouri, and Colorado going back home.

Revive the old SWC with Texas, A&M, Arkansas, and all those other Texas schools.

Revive old ACC, moving Maryland back to its rightful place.

Move Pitt and ND to the Big Ten for 12 total teams.

Post-season playoffs: BIG, BEast, ACC, SEC, SWC, B8, PAC10, and one at-large.

I'm hammered at a wedding... but to answer seriously. Notre dame will eventually join b1g and likely west. Nebraska is recruiting better. Notre dame, Wisconsin and Nebraska will be fine.

Pods

Go up to 16 teams, or back to 12.

Michigan, MSU, and OSU in the same pod. The rest doesn't matter.

 

Play a round robin ten game schedule, with 2 non conf games.

2 divisions for each of the 3 super conferences, PAC 10, Big 10, and SEC.

3 conf champs get bids to the playoffs, plus 13 at large teams.

First round games are played at home campuses based on seeding, second round games are played at the bowls, Rose, Orange, Cotton, and Sugar. Semi finals and Finals are rotated in Mid-western cities not named Chicago that have NFL teams.

Add 6 teams. One division is the Big 10 the way it was before Ped State joined. The other 10 teams can be in their own division. You play all 9 teams in your division. You can schedule the remaining 3 games as you want. If you happen to play a team from the other division, that's fine, but it doesn't count as a conference game. Winner from each division plays the Conference Championship Game.

SBNation had an interesting proposal that gave us 3 permanent rivals (OSU, MSU, Minn) and took the top 2 teams in a championship game. I'd be okay with that.

In order of date of athletic teams participating in the B1G. (Note: Iowa joined the academic alliance in 1899, but the athletic teams didn't compete unitl 1900)

OLD Guys Division: Illinois (1896), Minnesota (1896), Northwestern (1896), Purdue (1896), Wisconsin (1896), Michigan (1896), Indiana (1899)

NEW Guys Division: Iowa (1900), Ohio State (1912), Michigan State (1950), Penn State (1990), Nebraska (2011), Maryland (2014), Butgerz (2014)

 

FWIW if they instead created a B1G North/South based on 40.8 degrees north as the cutoff, you'd have: 

North: 

• Michigan
• Michigan State
• Minnesota
• Wisconsin
• Iowa
• Nebraska
• Northwestern

South: 

• Ohio State
• Penn State
• Rutgers
• Maryland
• Indiana
• Illinois 
• Purdue