Eliminating divisions sounds cool, but does it make sense for Big Ten?

This season’s Big Ten championship game laid bare that which has been obvious for some time — a competitive inequity exists at the top of the league’s East and West divisions.

Michigan’s 42-3 annihilation of Iowa improved the East to 8-0 all-time in the B1G title game. The past 4 title tilts have been decided by an average margin of 21.1 points. And things don’t look poised to get much better in the near future.

In this year’s recruiting rankings, Iowa is the only program in the West to crack the top-8 Big Ten signing classes. The Hawkeyes’ incoming class is ranked sixth in the conference.

All of this has led to internet chatter about the future structure of the conference, and whether geographical divisions should be given the business end of Paul Bunyan’s Axe.

That chatter is no longer just message board fodder.

In a story published by The Athletic on Wednesday, Iowa athletic director Gary Barta said that the Big Ten is seriously discussing the abolition of its divisional structure.

Under the proposal, the conference schedule would drop from 9 games to 8 beginning in 2023.

Each team would play 3 protected rivals every year, then play the remainder of the league’s 10 opponents within 2-year cycles. The ninth game currently reserved for a conference opponent would ostensibly be filled by a member from the ACC/Pac-12 “Alliance” that was formed last offseason.

Based on Barta’s comments in the story, College Football Playoff expansion is the only thing potentially holding up such a switch.

“We’re wondering if we’re going to know what the [CFP] format is before we have to make that decision,” Barta told The Athletic’s Scott Dochterman. “So, we’re kind of waiting to see where that lands. But we have had active conversations about the schedule beyond 2022.”

How would the Big Ten championship be determined?

The article doesn’t get into the full nitty-gritty, but the presumption is that there would still be a Big Ten championship game. And without divisions, the current Big 12 model is the only thing that would make sense for determining the championship field.

The top 2 teams in the standings would play for the conference title.

The Big 12 would also be the place to turn for determining tiebreaking procedures. That tiebreak starts with head-to-head outcome, moves to record against the next-highest placed team in the conference, then record against all common conference opponents, then cumulative record of each tied team’s conference opponents, and then finally the CFP rankings.

There might have to be some tweaks, as there are no schedule quirks in the Big 12. All 10 teams play all 9 of their league opponents, making tiebreakers a lot less complicated.

The irony is that the Big 12 will move back to a divisional model when it adds BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF. But given that there was a time the Big Ten had 12 teams and the Big 12 had 10 teams, seeing these leagues swap positions is nothing new.

How would the Big Ten be structured?

If the league goes through with the plan, the next headache will be determining the protected rivalries for each school.

In some cases, it’s quite obvious. Michigan and Ohio State have to be lumped together, as do Indiana and Purdue. For relative newcomers Rutgers, Maryland and Nebraska, it’s a bit more like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. There are no great solutions, so you have to find the least-bad one.

So with that established, I formally present the Hickey Proposal for Big Ten restructuring.

It’s not perfect, but I’m not sure how much better it can be made.

Illinois

Northwestern
Purdue
Rutgers

Rutgers has no clean fits outside of Penn State or Maryland, so we’ve schlepped the Scarlet Knights with the Fighting Illini. Perhaps a pizza-oriented trophy can be created pitting deep dish against New York-style.

Indiana

Purdue
Rutgers
Maryland

IU has a large contingent of East Coast students, so it gets the East Coast “rivals” along with its in-state foe.

Iowa

Nebraska
Minnesota
Wisconsin

Probably the most obvious grouping of the bunch.

Maryland

Indiana
Rutgers
Penn State

Two East Coast schools and a fellow basketball school seems like the right mix for the Terps.

Michigan

Ohio State
Michigan State
Minnesota

A downside to the current divisional structure is how it has de-emphasized the Little Brown Jug. Well, that and the past 40 years of results. But PJ Fleck has the Gophers on the rise, so time to bring this game back to the forefront.

Michigan State

Michigan
Ohio State
Penn State

If equity is what we’re striving for, well, the Spartans aren’t getting it. This would be the toughest draw in the conference. But Michigan State is already playing all 3 of these teams every year, so it’s not as if things would be any different than they are now.

Minnesota

Iowa
Michigan
Wisconsin

Every Golden Gophers trophy game on the schedule every year.

Nebraska

Iowa
Northwestern
Wisconsin

If Nebraska-Northwestern is important enough to play in Ireland next season, then it must be important enough to protect as a rivalry! Or something like that. They’re both NU. We have to get creative here.

Also, the alternating seas of red between Madison and Lincoln certainly feels like a good backdrop for a rivalry.

Northwestern

Illinois
Nebraska
Purdue

At 140 miles from Evanston, Purdue is the nearest Big Ten campus to Northwestern, barely edging out Wisconsin (144 miles) and Illinois (152 miles). Therefore, rivals!

Ohio State

Michigan
Michigan State
Penn State

With all due respect to Indiana, these are the border-state matchups that actually matter to the Buckeyes. And from the perspective of the league office, all these rivals guarantee good TV ratings against Ohio State.

Penn State

Maryland
Ohio State
Michigan State

The Land-Grant Trophy must be protected at all costs.

Purdue

Indiana
Illinois
Northwestern

Did you know Illinois and Purdue play each other for possession of the Purdue Cannon? It’s about a foot long. If armed, it probably couldn’t kill a squirrel. But it is a cannon. And that counts as an already established rivalry.

Rutgers

Illinois
Indiana
Maryland

From a competitive standpoint, this is the most fair way to go for Rutgers.

Wisconsin

Iowa
Nebraska
Minnesota

Similar to Iowa, you just look at this trio and say “Yeah, that’s right.”

What are the drawbacks of eliminating divisions?

You need look no further than this year’s standings to find flaws with this model.

In theory, Michigan would have celebrated its first win over Ohio State in a decade — an emotional release like no other in Ann Arbor — only to be forced to face the Buckeyes again just a week later. That’s not fair to your regular-season conference champion of a sport that puts more emphasis on the regular season than any other.

Or if Ohio State had won that game, the Buckeyes would have drawn a rematch against a Michigan State team they had already clobbered.

In both cases, a championship game rematch hardly seems necessary when the better team was already proven.

Such a model might actually hinder the Big Ten’s chances of getting multiple teams into the Playoff, too. If the East champion goes 12-0, and the runner-up is 11-1, both of those teams could theoretically reach the CFP. If they play each other in the title game, the loser may very well get eliminated from contention. (It would certainly be true if the 11-1 team dropped to 11-2.)

There’s also a wider-angle component to all of this.

Does dropping a conference game to essentially boost the overall health of the ACC and Pac-12 serve the Big Ten? The Alliance commissioners appear to have the attitude that this will work to undermine the SEC’s power in some way, but I’m among those who don’t see how that’s the case. Whether the CFP is 4, 8 or 12 teams, the SEC isn’t getting frozen out.

As intriguing as it sounds, eliminating divisions would not guarantee better outcomes for the Big Ten in the big picture. More interesting outcomes, almost certainly.

But shouldn’t better be the ultimate goal?

That’s what conference administrators will be left to decide.