Divisional Balance: The Stats

[Rosemountian]

School: Big Ten Record the last Ten seasons: Big Ten championships (outright): BCS appearances
Iowa (49-31) 2 (0) 2
Wisconsin (44-36) 0 (0) 0
Purdue (41-39) 1 (0) 1
Illinois (26-54) 1 (1) 2
Northwestern (38-42) 1 (0) 0
Michigan State (32-48) 0 (0) 0
Minnesota (30-50) 0 (0) 0
Indiana (18-62) 0 (0) 0
Michigan (54-26) 3 (1) 3
Ohio State (65-15) 6 (3) 7
Penn State (45-35) 2 (0) 2

If it were East-West
West Record 187-213 (..468) 4 (1) Big Ten Titles 4 BCS appearances
+Nebraska
East Record 255-225 (.531) 12 (4) Big Ten Titles 13 BCS appearances

This appears one-sided: Not so fast
Without Ohio State's Statistics: East 190-210 (.475) 6 (1) Big Ten Titles 6 BCS appearances


The moral of the story: Whichever division has Ohio State is going to have much more success because of the simple fact that the most dominant program in the conference will be in that conference.
If you were to attempt to balance the divisions more by trading Michigan State for Northwestern, the difference between the divisions would grow, not shrink.
If you were to attempt to balance the divisions by trading Michigan for Northwestern, the balance of power would be heavily in the west. It would leave the non Ohio State east teams with a winning percentage of just .435 (174-226) while the winning percentage in the west would jump to .503 (203-197)....though trading Michigan for Northwestern in order to "balance the divisions" would help support Ohio State's continued dominance. The division balance of Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Northwestern in the west and Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan State, Michigan, Purdue, and Indiana in the east not only make sense geographically, it also is the most competitive divisions on the field. Florida State and Miami were split in order to balance the divisions, look how well that has turned out for the ACC. Keeping traditional rivalries, regional competition, and competitive balance should be the 3 most important things in aligning divisions. The east-west does all of these.

Since the year 2000 I would rank the programs:
Ohio State
Michigan
Iowa
Penn State
Wisconsin
Purdue
Northwestern
Illinois
Minnesota
Michigan State
Indiana

if this were voted on like the AP poll,
the west would have 28 votes + Nebraska
The East would have 38 votes
Assuming Nebraska plays in the Big Ten at a level similar to Wisconsin or Iowa, the divisions are almost completely balanced.

 

[mplsbadger]

See next post.

 

[mplsbadger]

I compared a few different flavors and came up with the following:

WEST: MN,IA,WI,NU,IL,NW EAST: MI,MSU,OSU,PSU,IN,PUR
Conference titles: Six each
Strongest division: East 12, West 3


WEST: MN,IA,WI,NU,MI,MSU EAST: IL,NW ,OSU,PSU,IN,PUR
Conference titles: East 5, West 7
Strongest division: East 3, West 10

WEST: MN,IA,WI,NU,IL,NW EAST: MI,MSU,OSU,PSU,IN,PUR
Conference titles: East 4, West 6
Strongest division: 8 Each

The numbers show who would have won an outright conference title based on regular season wins and who would have had the highest average winning percentage among all teams in the division. For NU I used Big8/12 numbers.

The net result is that flipping Michigan and Michigan State west in pursuit of balance, doesn't work, it just moves the strength to the other division (as you stated above), and causes the problem of breaking up Michigan/OSU.

Flipping PSU west does actually balance things out in terms of strongest team and strongest division. It causes two big problems, geography and breaking up PSU / OSU.

One point I haven't heard mentioned is that the football alignment could be 'balanced' and all other sports could play a geographic schedule or if they play enough games a balanced schedule. There is no reason the divisions must be for all sports. This is the only way I can see having PSU and NU in the same division.

Frankly, I think PSU would rather play Ohio State and Michgan every year and risk missing the big game than play Iowa & NU in service of 'balance.