Yes, but whenever you put the two both historically and currently best programs in one division, it's going to be inherently lopsided. It's worse now because they also have one of the two historical helmets, and then probably the historical (and current?) #5 school. But like I said, if you put OSU-UM and #10-#14 in one division, and #3-#9 in the other, and gave USC the choice, they'd pick the #3-#9.
If you look at historical/current tiers, it would be...
- 1. Ohio State
- 2. Michigan
- ----------------------------------------
- 3. USC
- 4. Penn State
- ----------------------------------------
- 5-8. Nebraska, Wisconsin, MSU, Iowa
- ----------------------------------------
- 9-12. UCLA, Maryland, Illinois, Purdue
- ----------------------------------------
- 13-14. Northwestern, Minnesota
- ----------------------------------------
- 15-16. Indiana, Rutgers
So I would start with OSU/PSU and UM/Ohio State, then divide the rest to preserve the rivalries we could
Division 1: Ohio State, Penn State, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Maryland, Northwestern, Rutgers
Division 2: Michigan, USC, Michigan State, Wisconsin, UCLA, Purdue, Minnesota, Indiana
Who says no?
I think what you have laid out here is very well thought out and you did the best that could be done to maintain rivalries while achieving some chance of competitive balance.
That said, I would have a couple issues with it. The first is something that
@FearlessF already hit on. We've seen a lot of conferences where the competitive balance has flipped back and forth. Remember when Nebraska and KSU dominated and the B12-N was MUCH stronger than the B12-S? Remember when UF and UT dominated and the SEC-E was MUCH stronger than the SEC-W?
This isn't a criticism of the divisions you came up with or even your method. I actually agree with your method of looking at it on a historical basis and figuring that will be best in the long run. Sure, you might have random hiccups like Michigan completely sucking for a while under RRod/Hoke or PSU completely sucking for a while after the scandal but hopefully we've got enough balance overall that when Michigan sucks maybe USC will be really good or maybe when PSU sucks Nebraska will be really good.
My second issue is just, as a fan, that I don't like the idea of so few games against most of the teams in the other half of the league. On your model I assume we would have:
- 9 league games
- 1 fixed cross-over
- 1 rotating cross-over
I'm assuming a fixed cross-over because I assume that we would have:
- tOSU/M - We aren't ending THE GAME (even if we do move it off the last weekend)
- Iowa/UW - You just can't abruptly stop this
- PSU/USC - mostly as a fairness thing
- UNL/MSU - mostly as a fairness thing
- IL/PU - I picked this instead of UCLA for travel costs reasons. UMD/UCLA is a long trip but not much more expensive than UMD/IL
- UMD/UCLA
- NU/IU
- RU/MN
So then schedule-wise just using my team as an example it would take 14 years to play the seven teams in "Division 2" not named Michigan H&A:
- at M, vs USC
- vs M, at MSU
- at M, vs UW
- vs M, at UCLA
- at M, vs PU
- vs M, at MN
- at M, vs IU
- vs M, at USC
- at M, vs MSU
- vs M, at UW
- at M, vs UCLA
- vs M, at PU
- at M, vs MN
- vs M, at IU
As a fan I just think it sucks that my team would only visit Bloomington, Minneapolis, West Lafayette, Westwood, Madison, East Lansing, and LA once every 14 years. We'd also, of course, only host USC, MSU, UW, UCLA, PU, MN, and IU once every 14 years.
That is why I've always assumed pods (you can call them something else if you like) once we go to 16+. With pods I'm assuming that you need a "headliner" in each pod and of the 16 those are:
- Ohio State
- Michigan
- USC
- Penn State
Then you add three teams to each headliner to make a 4-team pod and your schedule each year is:
- The other three teams in your pod
- The four teams in one of the other three pods on a rotating basis
- One or two cross-overs.
That way each team would still play the non-crossovers from other pods both H&A every six years rather than 14.
