A Big Ten Guidebook: Lessons Learned from SEC, Big 12, and ACC Divisions

Seemingly every one of the 26,611,200 (Warning: There be math ahead) possible Big Ten divisional splits has been proposed by one writer or another.

Luckily for the conference, it can look at what has worked and what has not in the three other conferences with divisions.

Considering this history, along with the relative strengths and many rivalries of the Big Ten teams, leads to one simple setup: dividing the teams geographically along the Indiana-Illinois border.

First, the obvious benefits.

In geographic divisions, every major rivalry is preserved. The only currently protected games that would become rotating are Northwestern vs. Purdue and Illinois vs. Indiana, which are easily the most forgettable. In the West, various animal and axe trophies would continue as yearly events. 

As well, Nebraska has the most history and similarity with that group. The Iowa-Nebraska game ("Farmageddon") would become a marquee matchup, and the "Barry Alvarez" bowl would also be hotly contested. Furthermore, Nebraska would definitely look forward to evening the all-time record with Minnesota (currently 29-20-2 in favor of the Gophers).

In the East, Michigan-Ohio State would remain a season-ending showdown, often with a trip to the conference championship on the line. The increasingly heated PSU-OSU series would continue, as well as other games like UM-MSU and Indiana-Purdue, games which might not draw well nationally but are very important to their respective fanbases.  

For more casual fans, the simplicity is inherently appealing. Most casual fans can tell whether Texas Tech is in the north or south or whether Arkansas is in the east or west. However, some fairly diehard fans cannot remember which division Virginia is in, or even what the divisions are called (Atlantic and Coastal).

There are two arguments for non-geographic divisions. The first is that Michigan and Ohio State should be split up to try to have a repeat game in the title. This idea is beyond stupid.

First, such an event would occur perhaps once every 10 years; since 1993, it would have happened at least once (in 2006) and possibly two other times. Breaking up many other rivalries and confusing everyone is not worth whatever small amortized financial gain would occur.

Furthermore, no Michigan or Ohio State fan wants a game with even the possibility of a rematch the next week. One reason that game riles everyone up is that one side must win and the other must lose, often with a trip to the Rose Bowl on the line. Moving the game earlier would only further cheapen it, slowly but surely turning it into just another game on the schedule.

This rationale was what led to the ACC's screwy divisions. Their organizers wanted to have a rematch of their best game, FSU-Miami. Since they did not want to have an immediate rematch, they moved the game to early in the season. Such an event has never occurred, and the regular season game has been greatly diminished. This setup, the "ACC model," should not even be considered.  

The sane argument against geographic divisions is that the East (with Ohio State, Michigan, and Penn State) would be far stronger than the West (with Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Iowa). The premise is that having such an imbalance would be harmful to the conference championship game and the conference as a whole. This idea seems more reasonable on the surface but does not stand up to closer inspection.

Here are the conference winning percentages of the top six teams since 1993:

Ohio State 0.783

Michigan 0.691

Nebraska 0.677

Penn State 0.632

Wisconsin 0.592

Iowa 0.526

The overall winning percentage of the top three in the East is .702, while the equivalent in the West is .598. At first glance, the difference (.104) seems to depict a wide disparity between the two sides.

However, consider another conference split East/West, the SEC. The top six in conference winning percentage since 1992:

Florida .805

Tennessee .701

Alabama .626

Georgia .622

Auburn .599

Louisiana State .571

Doing a similar calculation, the top three in the East have a .709 winning percentage compared to .599 in the West, a difference of .108. In other words, the SEC has a (slightly) greater East-West imbalance than the geographic Big Ten setup.

Carrying this line of reasoning further, consider the Big 12 (since 1996):

Texas .790

Oklahoma .698

Texas Tech .597

Nebraska .677

Kansas State .590

Colorado .520

South .695

North .595

Difference .100

Almost unbelievably, the conference most criticized for having imbalanced divisions actually is more equal than the most successful, at least at the top.

The final and least successful 12-team conference is the ACC:

Virginia Tech .784

Georgia Tech .660

Miami (Florida) .521

Boston College .625

Clemson .571

Florida State .571

Coastal .655

Atlantic .589

Difference .066

It has by far the least difference between the two divisions, yet no one is rushing out to buy ACC conference championship tickets to see "balance."

The point of this pencil-pushing is that rivalries are far, far more important than any notion of equality between the divisions. The SEC has had the most successful divisional split not because the teams have been equal on both sides, but because they kept rivalries together (and protected others with crossover games).

The Big 12 failed in part because it destroyed Nebraska-Oklahoma, which had been a top five (or top one depending on who was ranking) rivalry in the country. The ACC divisions lowered the FSU-Miami rivalry by moving it to the beginning of the season in the hopes of a rematch, leading to strange, confusing divisions and failing at ever having such a rematch.

Hopefully, the Big Ten will learn from the experiences of these other conferences and not sacrifices its many rivalries in favor of slightly better "balance" or an unlikely, undesirable OSU-Michigan rematch.