If John Lennon had lived into his 80s, he probably would have imagined a college football world without conference divisions. (Hey man, it’s possible. The guy really enjoyed the only American football game he went to. Randomly becoming a college football fanatic seems like a reasonable midlife crisis he might have encountered.)

A world once reserved for the dreamers is nearly upon us.

Later this month, the NCAA Division I council is expected to pass a measure that alters the rules for conference championship games. Under the current system, conferences with at least 12 members must split into divisions in order to hold a championship game.

Once that hurdle is eliminated, every conference will be able to join the Big 12 in sending its top 2 teams to the title game.

Of course, that’s pretty easy to accomplish in the Big 12, which presently has 10 members. The league plays a 9-game round-robin schedule. Any tiebreakers are determined by CFP rankings.

Eliminating divisional play in the Big Ten, which has 14 members, will be a bit more complex. But conference leaders have seen this possibility coming for awhile. In December, Iowa athletic director Gary Barta noted the league already was discussing such a scheduling model as soon as 2023.

In that model, teams would only play 8 Big Ten games each season. This is needed for the symmetry of giving each team 3 protected annual opponents, plus at least 1 game against every other Big Ten team every 2 years. This means there would be no major scheduling lapses.

For example, Minnesota and Michigan have only played twice since 2016. They’ll miss each other again in 2022. That’s not good enough for a trophy game that was played every single season from 1929-99. Based on the proposal Barta mentioned, this year would be their 4th meeting since 2016.

What will the B1G look like?

If the Big Ten placed me at Kevin Warren’s desk for a day, every team’s protected rivals would be as follows.

Illinois

Northwestern
Purdue
Rutgers

Indiana

Purdue
Rutgers
Maryland

Iowa

Nebraska
Minnesota
Wisconsin

Maryland

Indiana
Rutgers
Penn State

Michigan

Ohio State
Michigan State
Minnesota

Michigan State

Michigan
Ohio State
Penn State

Minnesota

Iowa
Michigan
Wisconsin

Nebraska

Iowa
Northwestern
Wisconsin

Northwestern

Illinois
Nebraska
Purdue

Ohio State

Michigan
Michigan State
Penn State

Penn State

Maryland
Ohio State
Michigan State

Purdue

Indiana
Illinois
Northwestern

Rutgers

Illinois
Indiana
Maryland

Wisconsin

Iowa
Nebraska
Minnesota

As I would be arrested for trespassing if I sat at Warren’s desk, there’s a chance the actual outcome looks a bit different. But those would likely be fairly minor tweaks.

Realignment winners and losers

As with anything, there will be winners and losers here.

From a competitive standpoint, Ohio State and Michigan State would have the toughest permanent schedules. But both teams already face those 3 opponents annually, so nothing would change in that regard.

The beneficiaries of the new setup would be the teams that are trapped in the bottom half of the East — Indiana, Rutgers and Maryland. The path to an 8- or 9-win season suddenly becomes manageable for those programs. A magical run to the Big Ten Championship Game might even come into play once a decade or so.

Things will become more difficult for every team in the West. But at this point, that’s what needs to happen.

Since the B1G split into geographic divisions in 2014, the West champion is 0-8 in the title game. That streak began with Ohio State’s 59-0 win over Wisconsin, and reached No. 8 with Michigan’s 42-3 win over Iowa.

If the Big Ten Championship Game was more even on the field, doing away with divisions would not feel like a necessity. But the way things have gone, the West champ frequently puts the entire conference at risk.

In an ideal world, the winner of the Big Ten title game will all but guarantee itself a spot in the College Football Playoff. Over the past 8 seasons, an upset by the West champ only would have served to prevent the B1G from reaching the CFP.

Revisionist history

The most worrisome element of moving away from divisions is the potential for giving us a Michigan-Ohio State matchup in consecutive weeks. Without question, it diminishes the significance of The Game to have to come back and do it again a week later. (Though some might argue that the chance to be the first Ohio State or Michigan team to beat their rival twice in a single season would have a great deal of value.)

If the proposed rule change was in effect since the birth of the Big Ten Championship Game in 2012, the Buckeyes and Wolverines would have played in the 2018 and 2021 title games.

In total, 5 of the 11 championships matchups would have been altered. The would-be matchups are listed in parentheses.

  • 2021: Michigan vs. Iowa (Michigan vs. Ohio State)
  • 2020: Ohio State vs. Northwestern (Ohio State vs. Indiana)
  • 2019: Ohio State vs. Wisconsin
  • 2018: Ohio State vs. Northwestern (Ohio State vs. Michigan)
  • 2017: Ohio State vs. Wisconsin
  • 2016: Penn State vs. Wisconsin (Penn State vs. Ohio State)
  • 2015: Iowa vs. Michigan State
  • 2014: Ohio State vs. Wisconsin (Ohio State vs. Michigan State)
  • 2013: Michigan State vs. Ohio State
  • 2012: Ohio State vs. Nebraska
  • 2011: Michigan State vs. Wisconsin

Interestingly, all 5 of those altered championship games are after the geographical split. The 3 years of the Leaders and Legends era produced an equitable split. But because equity came with stupid names, it did not stick.

Wisconsin and Northwestern would be the biggest overall losers with 2 championship game appearances removed. For the 2018 Wildcats, it would be due to their lone Big Ten loss coming against Michigan. And in 2020, Indiana carried a higher CFP ranking heading into championship week.

As for Wisconsin, I have a feeling Badgers fans would be willing to erase a “2014 Big Ten West champs” banner if it meant avoiding a 59-0 humiliation to the Buckeyes.

Will it happen?

When the elimination of divisions was being discussed back in December, Barta mentioned that administrators were keeping an eye on CFP expansion. That element fell through. So it will be interesting to see what, if any, effect it will have on the Big Ten’s plans.

Of course, the Division I council wouldn’t be making this move without backing.

The ACC has already signaled that it wants to move away from divisions. For the Big Ten, it seems it will only be a matter of picking which year to start the new scheduling model. Given the need to add a non-conference game to the schedule, it would not be surprising if that’s done in conjunction with the ACC — or at least not too far behind.

The East and West Divisions are not extinct just yet. But they do officially belong on the endangered list.

Imagine that.