Why the Big Ten Can't Have a Conference Championship Game

I'm not going to get into the mess of specifically which team the Big Ten would add (Notre Dame?  Rutgers?  Missouri?  Syracuse?  Kentucky?  That's a bigger issue I don't really want to delve into here), but for the time being, let's just assume they have added a twelfth team, hypothetically.

Now what?  You have to divide the teams.

Before you divide the teams, you have to make sure to keep rivalries intact as much as possible.  More than anything, the Big Ten loves to honor historic rivalries (Minnesota and Wisconsin have College Football's oldest rivalry), so this would be an important factor in determining the two divisions.

Here's a look at each team's two most important rivalries (luckily, Adam Rittenberg just did a feature on these rivalries on his Big Ten blog on ESPN.com, so I credit him with the research of this list):

•    Illinois: Indiana, Northwestern
•    Indiana: Illinois, Purdue
•    Iowa: Minnesota, Wisconsin
•    Michigan: Michigan State, Ohio State
•    Michigan State: Michigan, Penn State
•    Minnesota: Iowa, Wisconsin
•    Northwestern: Illinois, Purdue
•    Ohio State: Michigan, Penn State
•    Penn State: Michigan State, Ohio State
•    Purdue: Indiana, Northwestern
•    Wisconsin: Iowa, Minnesota

In keeping these rivalries as intact as possible, here is a possible Divisional scenario for the Big Ten.

Division A

•    Iowa
•    Minnesota
•    Wisconsin
•    Purdue
•    Indiana
•    (Notre Dame/Missouri/Syracuse/Rutgers/etc.)

Division B

•    Ohio State
•    Michigan
•    Penn State
•    Michigan State
•    Illinois
•    Northwestern

Wait a second, that doesn't look right.  Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State in the same division?  The strength of these divisions is not equivalent.

The rivalries are there, but it is very feasible to imagine a team (Wisconsin probably, perhaps the new Big Ten team or Iowa) dominating Division A, turning it into Wisconsin-and-the-little-five.  That would be very bad.  So let's bag that method of dividing the teams.

Instead of organizing teams by rivalries, let's group them by geographic location.  Here's a quick look at how that could go.

Big Ten West

•    Wisconsin
•    Minnesota
•    Iowa
•    Illinois
•    Northwestern
•    Purdue

Big Ten East

•    Indiana
•    Michigan
•    Michigan State
•    Ohio State
•    Penn State
•    (Notre Dame/Missouri/Syracuse/Rutgers/etc.)

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