Possible North-South Split

Donate To GopherHole
jerdogg1

jerdogg1

Member
Joined
Nov 13, 2008
Messages
183
Reaction score
0
Points
16
GopherHolers...
I'm not generally in the habit of outwardly plugging a blog I write for (outside of my signature anyway), but I wrote a post on what I think is a possible North-South split in the Big Ten. I'm sure some people will hate it, but I would be very curious to get people opinion on this.

Check it out here.
 

I don't care for the north-south alignment, east-west is far more natural. Your tiers may make sense when talking about prestige, but not necessarily when talking about actual quality of football.
 

You put Illinois and Michigan State in the middle tier and the Gophers in the bottom tier? below Illinois? (confused)

Illinois had one Rose bowl season surrounded by a bunch of losing seasons. The Gophers have had what, one losing record in the regular season in how long?

You aren´t giving your own team enough credit, IMHO

Also, it makes zero sense to split up Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. These schools are inextricably linked.
 

I don't see why people feel "prestige" needs to be split up. So long as performance on the field is fairly even between east and west (which it is), wouldn't name brand schools do a better service to the conference's bottom line by playing each other annually in the same division?
 

First, His tiers are off
Tier 1: Ohio State
Tier 2: Michigan, Iowa, Penn State, Wisconsin, Nebraska
Tier 3: Illinois, Michigan State, Minnesota, Purdue, Northwestern
Tier 4: Indiana

Iowa has a better winning % than Penn State in conference play over the last 10 years.

You cannot have 4 teams from tier 3 & 4 in one division. They have to be split 3/3. If you had 4 in one division, that division would instantly become the drastically worse division. If it is all about "competitive balance," they have to be split 3/3.
The same can be said of the top 6. The top 6 must be split 3/3. Arguable, of my top 6 Wisconsin is the worst of the 6 over the last Ten years. But Wisconsin is closer to being 5 than 7. There is a major gap between the 6th and 7th best teams in the Big 10.

The problem with everyone's arguments right now is that they are trying to split PSU, Mich, and Ohio State for the sake of "competitive balance." What these people are failing to recognize is that competitive balance is best in the East/West alignment. The only thing that would have better competitive balance than the East/West would be East/West + Trading Penn State for Wisconsin/Iowa.....but that would make absolutely no sense from a rivalry/geography prospective. Considering Michigan is currently so down, it is very possible that the West will be stronger than the east the first few years.

Delaney said balance was most important followed by rivalries and geography. He did not say balance would be the end all be all. He did not say that they would not make the common sense decisions. Delaney said not all rivalries were created equal. He did not explain whether that meant MN/WI doesn't mean as much as OSU/Mich...or if that meant MN/MI doesn't mean as much as IL/PU. It is all speculation. He did say competitive balance, he did not say name recognition balance. As I have stated in other threads, the population of the east is only 11 million more than the West if you include the entire state of Pennsylvania. The population of the East is shrinking and the West is growing.

In the East/West alignment,
the West had an average finish of 2,4,4,8,9 (5.4)
The East had an average finish of 1,2,6,6,10,11 (6)
So assuming Nebraska is 9th or better, the West would have been stronger than the East last year. 5/6 went to a bowl last year in the west, with 3 wins. 3/6 from the east went to bowls, with 2 winning.

In his North South alignment
The south had an average finish of 1,2,2,6,9,11 (5.2)
The North had an average finish of 4,4,6,8,10 (6.4) + Nebraska
So actually the divisions he has proposed are more unbalanced last season. It also causes the problem of creating a potential rematch in back to back weeks of the same game in the conference title game, because assuming there are locked rivalry games that are played the last week. 5/6 games in the final week of the season would be cross-divisional.
 



I think a lot of people are misconstruing what top-tier/top prestige schools are. Iowa and Wisconsin may be just as competitive as Michigan lately, but the long-term benefits the four elite programs have over the rest of the conference are obvious, and pretty dramatic (with the potential exception of Nebraska...I'm not sure what their recruiting base is like). Iowa and Wisconsin are competitive now because they're well put-together, well-coached teams. But one bad coaching hire, ncaa sanction or string of bad seasons for in-state recruits and they could easily be back to bottom-dwellers. OSU, Michigan and PSU, however, have much bigger states, with better football players in those states, and the ability to cherry pick those that they want. They also have more money than the rest of us, and a strong national recruiting base to supplement the in-states. That's why everyone assumes Michigan will be back (because they will) and that's why those three teams need to be separated.
 

More mental masturbation. Anything other than East/West divisions will be the result of trying too hard. :rolleyes:
 

RedPoo said:
Iowa and Wisconsin are competitive now because they're well put-together, well-coached teams. But one bad coaching hire, ncaa sanction or string of bad seasons for in-state recruits and they could easily be back to bottom-dwellers.
Click to expand...

Any and every team is one bad hiring away from being bottom dwellers. Michigan hadn't had a bad season in thirty years, they make a hire that by most people was considered great at the time. All of a sudden they are bottom 3 in the Big Ten 2 years in a row. This could happen to any team.

Nineteen Seventy Eight- The U of M is still essentially the number 3 football program in the conference, despite the fact that they have been down to about a .500 team over the past 7 years under Cal Stoll. Stoll is let go. The gophers make a hire. They make the right hire and the 2nd biggest public university in the nation is back to being the clear #3 in the conference and contending. The team is just 11 years removed from a conference title....what Wisconsin presently is....and just Eighteen years removed from a national title. That is less time than Notre Dame's current drought.

Minnesota makes the wrong hire of Joe Salem and is sent to spend some bonding time with IU in the Big Ten cellar the next fifteen years.

Any and every team is one bad hire away from spiraling into 15 years of nothingness.
 



Rosemountian said:
Any and every team is one bad hiring away from being bottom dwellers. Michigan hadn't had a bad season in thirty years, they make a hire that by most people was considered great at the time. All of a sudden they are bottom 3 in the Big Ten 2 years in a row. This could happen to any team.

Nineteen Seventy Eight- The U of M is still essentially the number 3 football program in the conference, despite the fact that they have been down to about a .500 team over the past 7 years under Cal Stoll. Stoll is let go. The gophers make a hire. They make the right hire and the 2nd biggest public university in the nation is back to being the clear #3 in the conference and contending. The team is just 11 years removed from a conference title....what Wisconsin presently is....and just Eighteen years removed from a national title. That is less time than Notre Dame's current drought.

Minnesota makes the wrong hire of Joe Salem and is sent to spend some bonding time with IU in the Big Ten cellar the next fifteen years.

Any and every team is one bad hire away from spiraling into 15 years of nothingness.
Click to expand...

Good point(s). It's all on a sliding scale...it's just that some organizations have more built-in advantages than others, and have a wider margin for error and a quicker recovery time from the reparable errors.

In the Big Ten, there's a pretty clear line between some of those tiers. The big 3-4 have some obvious advantages over the rest of the conference, and will generally out perform them. There's a middle tier, which we SHOULD be competitive in (I think it's safe to say we're in a down cycle) with Wisky, Iowa, MSU and probably Illinois, and an even lower tier in Northwestern and possibly Indiana (I'm not sure how their demographics pan out, but a good part of the state's population basically lives in Chicago...so they might be in the middle tier as well). Northwestern overachieves their demos, Wisky and Iowa have been doing well recently given their situations, and us and Illinois have been underachieving for the most part lately, but the historical/long-term trends seem pretty apparent.
 

Rosemountian said:
Any and every team is one bad hiring away from being bottom dwellers. Michigan hadn't had a bad season in thirty years, they make a hire that by most people was considered great at the time. All of a sudden they are bottom 3 in the Big Ten 2 years in a row. This could happen to any team.

Nineteen Seventy Eight- The U of M is still essentially the number 3 football program in the conference, despite the fact that they have been down to about a .500 team over the past 7 years under Cal Stoll. Stoll is let go. The gophers make a hire. They make the right hire and the 2nd biggest public university in the nation is back to being the clear #3 in the conference and contending. The team is just 11 years removed from a conference title....what Wisconsin presently is....and just Eighteen years removed from a national title. That is less time than Notre Dame's current drought.

Minnesota makes the wrong hire of Joe Salem and is sent to spend some bonding time with IU in the Big Ten cellar the next fifteen years.

Any and every team is one bad hire away from spiraling into 15 years of nothingness.
Click to expand...


That was extremely depressing.
 

You must log in or register to reply here.



Top Bottom