If we are going to 20 (not that I want to, just for discussion) and we are working from the list provided by
@LittlePig then I think we should take these four schools:
Stanford:
Great research, #9 nationally. Great athletics overall. Their football and basketball have been shaky lately but they perennially win that Athletic Director's Cup for winning at a LOT of sports. Gets us into Northern California.
Washington:
Great research, #5 nationally. Better overall historic athletics than any other available western school. Flagship school in a reasonably populous state (Washington is up to #13 nationally with 7.7M people and grew by double-digits between 2010-2020).
North Carolina:
Great research, #13 nationally. Decent football history and an absolute blueblood in BB. Flagship school in a populous (#9 and growing rapidly) state.
Virginia:
Good research (#48), not terrible FB history and great BB history. Flagship school in a populous (#12 and growing rapidly) state.
Then we'd have to go to pods of five where in football each year you play the other four teams in your pod and all five (on a rotating basis) from one of the other three pods.
My proposed pods:
East:
- Rutgers
- Penn State
- Maryland
- Virginia
- North Carolina
Great Lakes:
- Ohio State
- Michigan
- Michigan State
- Indiana
- Purdue
Great Plains:
- Illinois
- Northwestern
- Wisconsin
- Minnesota
- Iowa
West:
- USC
- UCLA
- Stanford
- Washington
- Nebraska
For BB I'd propose going to a 23-game league schedule made up of:
- Playing the other four teams in your pod twice each (8 games)
- Playing the other 15 teams once each (15 games, 23 total).
If possible I'd balance the schedule by adding a tournament where the 10 teams playing 12H/11A games play on the road and the 10 teams playing 11H/12A host.
New B1G Basketball Tournament Schedule:
Tuesday:
- The worst eight teams in the league play to get down to 16.
Wednesday:
- The four Tuesday winners play the next four worst teams to get down to 12.
Thursday:
- The four Wednesday winners play the four best non-pod-Champions to get down to eight teams.
Friday:
- The four Thursday winners play the four pod Champions to get down to four teams.
Saturday:
- Two semi-finals to get down to two teams.
Sunday: