Big Ten Considers Scheduling Changes
In a story first reported in The Athletic, Iowa athletic director Gary Barta discussed potential changes to the Big Ten scheduling and division realignment going forward. Among these changes was dropping the ‘East’ and ‘West’ divisions in football, reducing the conference season from nine games to eight, and a push to schedule games between the Pac-12 and ACC as part of the working arrangement between the three conferences. The conference’s media rights deal is set to expire at the end of 2022 which puts added pressure on conference leaders to have these discussions now.
One of the biggest critiques of the current Big Ten alignment is that is places many of the traditional powers on one side of the conference. The East division currently has Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State, and Penn State and is arguable the toughest division in college football. One of these four teams has won the Big Ten conference since these divisions were created in 2014. In the Big Ten championship game between the East and West division champions, the East division team has won all eight of the contests by an average of 20 points.
When these divisions were first created in 2014 it could have been argued that there was a fair balance and they would lead to a competitive Big Ten title game. Wisconsin, a current West division program, had won two of the three prior Big Ten championship games. Nebraska, also in the West, is a traditional blue blood program and had won 9 games or more in the first six years under then head coach Bo Pelini. Neither one of these programs has been able to keep up with the Big Ten East teams and have lost some of the stability they had going into the realignment.
Geographically this current conference alignment makes sense. Perfectly splitting the conference on one side or the other with the conference championship game in Indianapolis marking the midpoint. However, there should be more to the alignment then geography, and getting rid of the divisions might make the most sense. There is a precedent for a conference championship game without divisions in the conference. The Big 12 conference championship game is simply a matchup of the two teams with the best conference record at the end of the season. Using this format would assure that you get the best two teams based on record at the end of the season.
There are some complications that this could present for the Big Ten. The first being that the Big 12 only has ten teams while the Big Ten as 14. How well would this format scale in a bigger conference? The second has more to do with preference of the schools and the fans. The current power structure in the Big Ten has a lot of the better teams playing each other towards the end of the year, or in many cases in the last week of the season. Using 2021 as an example, Michigan and Ohio State would have played each other during the last week of the regular season and then again the following week in the Big Ten championship. Given the direction of both of those programs, that is a scenario that is likely to play out a few times if the Big Ten were to go in this direction. As good as ‘The Game’ is between Michigan and Ohio State, is this a matchup fans and players want to have twice in back-to-back weeks?
In addition to the potential changes in divisions, the Big Ten is also looking at different schedules options overall. These include reducing the conference games from nine to eight games and scheduling games within the newly formed alliance between the ACC and Pac-12. These two outcomes wouldn’t need to be mutually exclusive in my opinion. I think it would be acceptable for the teams to play nine conference games and an out of conference game against a comparable program.
As a fan of Big Ten football, the concern with a reduction to eight games is that it could be years before you play at another opponents field. The current proposal would have three ‘protected’ opponents and the remaining would rotate. In each year a given Big Ten wouldn’t play five teams in the conference under an eight game schedule. With three protected games, only five of a team’s conference games would rotate between the remaining schools. Would fans want to wait five years in between watching Ohio State play at Penn State, or Michigan at Wisconsin? With an alumni and fan base as passionate as the Big Ten these interconference games mean a lot and the Big Ten needs to consider what traditional games they might be breaking up with any potential realignment discussions.
With ‘The Alliance’ between the Pac-12 and ACC there is an opportunity to ensure that teams are playing competitive non-conference games. This has become an important consideration in a potential playoff team’s resume and the Big Ten should make sure that their contenders are well positioned to get a marquee win early in the year. Opportunities such as Ohio State playing Clemson or Michigan playing Oregon can elevate the status of the conference. On their own, these teams don’t always play these types of the games. As an example, the 2022 schedule for Michigan doesn’t include another Power 5 opponent out of conference. A hopeful byproduct of this alliance is that it pushes teams to play competitive games out of conference.
College football is unique in that whenever there is talk of realignment or scheduling there are more factors at play then professional sports. Tradition still means something in the sport (although seemingly less as the years go on), however with the introduction of the College Football Playoff conferences need to innovate to remain competitive in the overall landscape. The Big Ten still remains in a position of strength relative to most of the other conferences and the hope is that any changes going forward can keep it that way.
