A Look At Your Post-Apocalyptic Big Ten

The fallout is happening. A sports writer used the phrase “flakes of snow.” Ohio State and Michigan fans were upset, understandably. Beat writers—most of which are from Northwestern—got painfully self-righteous. But if it looks like Michigan and Ohio State are splitting up let’s see what that means for the rest of us.

And please remember: I do not endorse this as the best of all possible outcomes.  There is no ‘best’, and as far as compromises go, I sign on with Chris.

As and objective observer I don’t really have an opinion of what splitting Ohio State and Michigan means for the conference as a whole, although I will say that if I was part of either fanbase I would be against the possibility of a rematch. But half-baked guesses are happening anyway (thrown together between all the crops I had to bring in):

Lake Erie	Lake Superior
Penn State	Nebraska
Ohio State	Michigan
Iowa	Michigan State
Minnesota	Wisconsin
Purdue	Indiana
Northwestern	Illinois

Protected:
PSU v Nebraska
OSU v Michigan
Iowa v Michigan State
Minnesota v Wisconsin
Purude v Indiana
Northwestern v Illinois

Final “Mostly Rivalry” Week:
PSU v OSU
Iowa v Minnesota
Purdue v Northwestern
Michigan v Michigan State
Nebraska v Wisconsin
Indiana v Illinois

What the TV People think:

• One of the most important things here is to get the four power-programs playing as often as possible.  There are six possible games, with this setup you are getting four of them every year because you’re protecting the superpowers.  That’s not bad, and you can’t get more unless you put all four in the same division.
• You could get a rematch of those four super-powers in the CCG, any will do for their purposes, really.
• You keep most of the other rivalry games, which I suspect helps keep the regional TV draws.
• You create two balanced divisions, which should give you a competitive CCG when you aren’t able to get one between superpowers.

What fans think:

• You achieve competitive balance, meaning the CCG is likely to be of interest.
• You keep most of the rivalry games annual, if you’re into that kind of thing.
• The final week remains mostly killer stuff.  I’m sure Michigan will be upset about Little Brother, etc., but I’m not convinced they don’t actually care about that game.  I’m sure Ohio State and Notre Dame are a mankind’s leap ahead, but if you polled every UM grad, who else is coming in at #3 besides their in-state rival?  Other than that, Purdue-Northwestern is meah, and Wisconsin loses Minnesota but gets the date they begged for his summer.
• Everyone has at least one reasonably close road game except Nebraska, and Penn State gets the only member of the league within spitting distance.  I make some kind of joke about being screwed as the new kid here.

The only major gripe here is probably whether Penn State or Iowa get Nebraska as a protected rivalry.  Iowa makes sense geographically, but Penn State has played the Cornhuskers almost twice as often since 1950.  Add in the 1994 thing and a vote from the TV people (see their first bullet above), and—with no comment on which is the “right” decision—I give the nod to Penn State simply because it seems more probable.

Although Iowa isn’t actually a land grant university, so some wood-shopping may be in order.

Update: I’m not usually in the business of updating posts several days later, but rather than continue pumping out silly projections: It looks like Wisconsin is going to be in the same group as Minnesota, which means the above gets shaken up or you just simple switch out Iowa and Wisconsin. Iowa then is almost certainly playing Minnesota in the final week and missing out on Wisconsin.