Divisions & Schedule

[Ski U Mah Gopher]

I am squarely in the East-West division camp, but let's talk about schedules.

Here is my proposal:

8 games - 5 in division, 3 out of division

Even year home schedule would include Iowa & Illinois in division and 2 eastern schools, odd years would include Nebraska, Northwestern & Wisconsin and 1 eastern school.

The eastern schools would be on a 4 year rotation, in odd years we would play Michigan, MSU & Purdue, and even years we would play Indiana, OSU & PSU.

I would also have 2 teams on byes each week during the middle 6 weeks of the conference season.

 

[dpodoll68]

Looks good, except the non-division schools would/should be on a 2-year rotation, not every other year. Rosters turn over so much in two years that to not allow them to play consecutively isn't fair to either school.

 

[WAGopher]

Looks good, except the non-division schools would/should be on a 2-year rotation, not every other year. Rosters turn over so much in two years that to not allow them to play consecutively isn't fair to either school.

What I dislike about the 2 year rotation is that after the last game in the rotation is played, the teams won't play each other again for roughly 3 calendar years. That's an eternity in college football and means some players will only play some out of division teams once in their career. Currently, there is a 2 year absence of 2 teams, but we still play those teams 3 consecutive years before they fall off the schedule again. And currently, there are only 2 teams that players may only see once in their careers, with the proposed schedule, there will be 3 teams in that category.

 

[Goldmember]

Rather than playing every non-divisional opponent twice every four years, I am hoping for a 12-year schedule where you play teams in the other division 4,6,8, or 10 times depending on the level of the rivalry.

Minnesota, for instance, has a much stronger rivalry with Michigan than Ohio State or Indiana. Why not take advantage of rivalries like this to create more interesting schedules for everyone in the league?

If there is an East/West alignment, imbalanced non-divisional scheduling would also allow Northwestern and Illinois to play Indiana and Purdue more regularly too.

 

[BrianW]

Here's my proposal.

E/W Divisions
West: MN, IA, WI, Neb, NW, IL
East: Pur, IN, MI, MSU, PSU, tOSU

Each team has one "non-protected" team in division
MN-IL, WI-Neb, NW-IA, Pur-OSU, MI-Ind, MSU-PSU

Each team has one "protected" team in the other division. Many of these are already trophy games.
MN-MI, WI-MSU, IA-PSU, Neb-OSU, IL-IN, Pur-NW

Scheduling is done on a 4-year cycle. You play your 4 protected in-division teams every year. This means we will play WI, Neb, IA and NW every year. (16 games over 4 years)

You play your non-protected in-division team and your protected non-division team 3 years out of 4. For us this is Illinois and Michigan. (6 games over 4 years).

You play the other 5 teams in the other division 2 years out of 4. These can be staggered over the 4-year cycle so you don't go 3 years in between games with any one opponent. (10 games over 4 years).

This adds up to (16+10+6=) 32 games over 4 years, or a nice 8-game schedule every year.

Easy, fair, and symmetric. Protects traditional rivalries (the last week each year will have Axe, Bucket, whatever that thing is that Sparty and PSU play for, whatever that thing is that NW and IL play for, IA-Neb [which will probably add a trophy] and of course Michigan-OSU).

Makes way too much sense to ever happen, unfortunately.

 

[dpodoll68]

Here's my proposal.

E/W Divisions
West: MN, IA, WI, Neb, NW, IL
East: Pur, IN, MI, MSU, PSU, tOSU

Each team has one "non-protected" team in division
MN-IL, WI-Neb, NW-IA, Pur-OSU, MI-Ind, MSU-PSU

Each team has one "protected" team in the other division. Many of these are already trophy games.
MN-MI, WI-MSU, IA-PSU, Neb-OSU, IL-IN, Pur-NW

Scheduling is done on a 4-year cycle. You play your 4 protected in-division teams every year. This means we will play WI, Neb, IA and NW every year. (16 games over 4 years)

You play your non-protected in-division team and your protected non-division team 3 years out of 4. For us this is Illinois and Michigan. (6 games over 4 years).

You play the other 5 teams in the other division 2 years out of 4. These can be staggered over the 4-year cycle so you don't go 3 years in between games with any one opponent. (10 games over 4 years).

This adds up to (16+10+6=) 32 games over 4 years, or a nice 8-game schedule every year.

Easy, fair, and symmetric. Protects traditional rivalries (the last week each year will have Axe, Bucket, whatever that thing is that Sparty and PSU play for, whatever that thing is that NW and IL play for, IA-Neb [which will probably add a trophy] and of course Michigan-OSU).

Makes way too much sense to ever happen, unfortunately.

Looks pretty good. But I have two questions/concerns:

1) Playing every other team in your division annually is a given. It has always been done this way for every 2-division DI-A conference, and I don't foresee the Big Ten being the first to go against the trend. In the interests of equity, you have to play every other team in your division every year.

2) Tossing that aside for a moment and going back to your model, I'm curious as to why you chose to "protect" Nebraska instead of Illinois. We and the Illini are both original Big Ten members, Illinois has played the Gophers more than Nebraska (63 vs. 51), and we have played each other virtually every season since 1952 (excluding off-years in the rotation). Conversely, we haven't played Nebraska since 1990.

 

[BrianW]

Looks pretty good. But I have two questions/concerns:

1) Playing every other team in your division annually is a given. It has always been done this way for every 2-division DI-A conference, and I don't foresee the Big Ten being the first to go against the trend. In the interests of equity, you have to play every other team in your division every year.

2) Tossing that aside for a moment and going back to your model, I'm curious as to why you chose to "protect" Nebraska instead of Illinois. We and the Illini are both original Big Ten members, Illinois has played the Gophers more than Nebraska (63 vs. 51), and we have played each other virtually every season since 1952 (excluding off-years in the rotation). Conversely, we haven't played Nebraska since 1990.

On 1), I don't think "it's always been done this way" really applies. There have only been two-division leagues for about 15 years. With all the other weird suggestions that have been floated (16-team league with 4 4-team "pods" that combine into different divisions every year, etc.) I wanted to do something that was slightly outside the box but which preserved equity.

For 2), there are a couple of motivations. One is that we are one of the few BT programs with an established series with Nebraska. I believe Becky has played them less than 10 times, for example. The other is simply geography; Illinois is the farthest school from us in our division. Lincoln is a much easier road trip for Gopher fans than Champaign, and Minneapolis is much better than Madison for Huskers.

 

[RodentRampage]

Playing every team in your division is a must. If you don't, you're going to have ties for the division title between two teams that haven't played. We can avoid having to deal with that tiebreaker by heaving everyone in the division play each other. Head-to-head will resolve ties unless there is a three-way tie.

I think protected games across divisions are not needed. Then again, that could be that because in the east-west alignment, our two main rivals are already every-year opponents. Michigan already goes off the schedule as it is. I suppose some other teams might find the lack of protected games to be a problem though, but from my perspective, the east-west alignment protects rivalries pretty well.

 

[dpodoll68]

I suppose some other teams might find the lack of protected games to be a problem though, but from my perspective, the east-west alignment protects rivalries pretty well.

There are currently 4 trophies that are affected by the proposed E-W split (in order of rivalry duration):

Little Brown Jug (1903) (Michigan 66 - Minnesota 22 - 3 ties)
Illibuck (1925) (OSU 58 - Illinois 23 - 2 ties)
Purdue Cannon (1943) (Purdue 30 - Illinois 26 - 2 ties)
Governor's Victory Bell (1993) (PSU 7 - Minnesota 4)

Most Iowa-PSU fans would assume that to be among their heated rivalries, and it's probably only a matter of time before a trophy is attached to that game.

There are two salient points here:

1) The two oldest trophy series are so lopsided that impartial observers wouldn't consider them of sufficient importance to merit playing every year anyway; and

2) Every one of these rivalries cycles off the calendar in the current rotation as it is, so the change to divisions would mean only that they would be played less frequently then they are now.

I agree wholeheartedly that the E-W split maintains most rivalries that are important to fans. But if they do go ahead with a "protected" inter-division game, keeping MN-MI and PU-IL (a much more competitive rivalry than IL-OSU) amongst those would mean the marginalizing of only two trophies: Illibuck and the Governor's Victory Bell (the latter a contrived rivalry that virtually no one from either side really cares about anyway).

 

[highwayman]

Playing every team in your division is a must. If you don't, you're going to have ties for the division title between two teams that haven't played. We can avoid having to deal with that tiebreaker by heaving everyone in the division play each other. Head-to-head will resolve ties unless there is a three-way tie.

I think protected games across divisions are not needed. Then again, that could be that because in the east-west alignment, our two main rivals are already every-year opponents. Michigan already goes off the schedule as it is. I suppose some other teams might find the lack of protected games to be a problem though, but from my perspective, the east-west alignment protects rivalries pretty well.

I agree, you must play all of your divison rivals every year. I think the home and away combinations will shuffle occasionally. As we saw in 2008 and 2009, we played OSU on the road, but we played here in 2007 and will again in 2010. As long as you play a division team twice at home every four years, I don't care what combination of opponents and H/A are used.

As for the inter-division games, you are correct as well. Whomever those opponents are, we play them twice and see them at TCFBS once every four years.

Going to two divisions, split east and west, changes very little, if anything in the Big Ten scheduling as it has been since the addition of PSU.

For Minnesota, we will play OSU, Michigan, PSU, MSU, Pur, and Ind twice every four years, only once at home. We will play Neb, Wisc, Iow, NW, and Ill every year, and twice at home every four. So, I guess we will see more of NW and Ill (and Neb), but will see everyone else roughly the same. Same goes for most every school.

You add "protected games" to the mix and some players will never have a home game against some Big Ten teams. What's the sense in that?

I don't see the issue here with E/W and a straight-forward schedule...and it certainly protect rivalries better than any other configuration.

 

[highwayman]

What I dislike about the 2 year rotation is that after the last game in the rotation is played, the teams won't play each other again for roughly 3 calendar years. That's an eternity in college football and means some players will only play some out of division teams once in their career. Currently, there is a 2 year absence of 2 teams, but we still play those teams 3 consecutive years before they fall off the schedule again. And currently, there are only 2 teams that players may only see once in their careers, with the proposed schedule, there will be 3 teams in that category.

The "roughly 3 calendar years" doesn't make sense. You're not including the third year as a played game. You still play twice in four years. Every player will see every team twice.

Current Minnesota opponents through 2012 (which will change):
Michigan: yes 2008 no 2009 no 2010 yes 2011 yes 2012
Indiana: yes 2008 no 2009 no 2010 yes 2011 yes 2012
MSU: no 2008 yes 2009 yes 2010 yes 2011 yes 2012
OSU: yes 2008 yes 2009 yes 2010 yes 2011 yes 2012
PSU: no 2008 yes 2009 yes 2010 yes 2011 yes 2012
NW: yes 2008 yes 2009 yes 2010 yes 2011 yes 2012
Purdue: yes 2008 yes 2009 yes 2010 no 2011 no 2012
Illinois: yes 2008 yes 2009 yes 2010 no 2011 no 2012

Assuming a straight forward rotation on the non-divisional foes:
Michigan: yes 2008 no 2009 no 2010 yes 2011 yes 2012 no 2013 no 2014
Indiana: yes 2008 no 2009 no 2010 yes 2011 yes 2012 no 2013 no 2014
MSU: no 2008 yes 2009 yes 2010 no 2011 no 2012 yes 2013 yes 2014
OSU: yes 2008 yes 2009 yes 2010 no 2011 no 2012 yes 2013 yes 2014
PSU: no 2008 yes 2009 yes 2010 yes 2011 yes 2012 no 2013 no 2014
Purdue: yes 2008 yes 2009 yes 2010 no 2011 no 2012 yes 2013 yes 2014

It seems to work out for all teams, even the east division teams playing Nebraska.

I don't see the once in 4 years thing...

 

[WAGopher]

The "roughly 3 calendar years" doesn't make sense. You're not including the third year as a played game. You still play twice in four years. Every player will see every team twice.

Current Minnesota opponents through 2012 (which will change):
Michigan: yes 2008 no 2009 no 2010 yes 2011 yes 2012
Indiana: yes 2008 no 2009 no 2010 yes 2011 yes 2012
MSU: no 2008 yes 2009 yes 2010 yes 2011 yes 2012
OSU: yes 2008 yes 2009 yes 2010 yes 2011 yes 2012
PSU: no 2008 yes 2009 yes 2010 yes 2011 yes 2012
NW: yes 2008 yes 2009 yes 2010 yes 2011 yes 2012
Purdue: yes 2008 yes 2009 yes 2010 no 2011 no 2012
Illinois: yes 2008 yes 2009 yes 2010 no 2011 no 2012

Assuming a straight forward rotation on the non-divisional foes:
Michigan: yes 2008 no 2009 no 2010 yes 2011 yes 2012 no 2013 no 2014
Indiana: yes 2008 no 2009 no 2010 yes 2011 yes 2012 no 2013 no 2014
MSU: no 2008 yes 2009 yes 2010 no 2011 no 2012 yes 2013 yes 2014
OSU: yes 2008 yes 2009 yes 2010 no 2011 no 2012 yes 2013 yes 2014
PSU: no 2008 yes 2009 yes 2010 yes 2011 yes 2012 no 2013 no 2014
Purdue: yes 2008 yes 2009 yes 2010 no 2011 no 2012 yes 2013 yes 2014

It seems to work out for all teams, even the east division teams playing Nebraska.

I don't see the once in 4 years thing...

Thank you for pointing out my error. It still is a long time to go 3 calendar years before playing a team and it would be nice if the Big 10 could work out an every other year rotation, instead of playing 2 seasons in a row, and then skipping 2 seasons.