(05-01-2022 11:59 PM)Eichorst Wrote: (05-01-2022 11:38 PM)Wedge Wrote: (05-01-2022 10:13 PM)Stugray2 Wrote: Honestly I think it's the B1G who alone are firmly against ending Divisions, or at least the conference HQ.
I don't know about the conference office. But among the members, the east division schools are probably all in favor of a no-division format. Rutgers, Maryland, and Indiana would love it because they would never have to play all of the Big Four in the same football season, and the Big Four would figure that among them they would have a pretty good chance of getting both of the CCG spots in any given year. The west division teams might all favor the current format that guarantees one of them will be in the CCG.
That's the only conference for which it seems possible that as many as half of the members would oppose a no-division format for football.
I also think B1G fanbases like the current division format. The divisions seem natural and strongly contested.
I guess I'm going against the grain here: I believe that the Big Ten would be better off without divisions and, if I had to wager, they're going to get rid of divisions eventually.
The DNA of the Big Ten is that we really did play each other all of the time with very infrequent breaks up until expansion in the last decade. This is in contrast to the SEC DNA where each school had a handful of fierce protected annual rivals but played everyone else in the league much less frequently.
Two reasons why I believe that the Big Ten will eliminate divisions:
(1) The DNA that I mentioned matters because the Big Ten schools really LIKE playing each other, particularly Michigan and Ohio State. That's a huge reason why a school would want to be in the Big Ten in the first place. While the Big Ten West has benefited from an easier-on-paper path to the Big Ten CCG, they're also missing out on those marquee games against Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State more frequently and that eventually catches up in terms of unbalanced exposure. Case in point is to look at the Big Ten recruiting rankings this past year where Iowa has the #6 ranked recruiting class in the conference, but otherwise every single other Big Ten East team has a higher ranked recruiting class than all of the other Big Ten West teams (yes, Maryland, Rutgers and Indiana are pulling in better recruiting classes than Wisconsin).
Going to no divisions with a 9-game conference schedule would allow for a format where each school has 3 protected rivals and then plays everyone else in the league 6 times out of 10 years. That creates a much stronger bond across the entire league and is much closer to the DNA of the Big Ten where it's a truly cohesive unit that's not segmented by geography.
(2) Despite the Big Ten wanting the P5 getting auto-bids in a 12-team playoff, there are plenty in the league that are realistic enough that we're probably going to end up with the original CFP expansion committee proposal of a 12-team playoff with the top 6 conference champs getting bids plus the top 4 conference champs getting byes.
If/when that happens, it HEAVILY incentivizes everyone to do everything possible to have their very two best teams meeting in the CCG every year. Frankly, it would be crazy not to do so - no league wants to lose out on either a top 6 conference champ bid or a top 4 conference champ bye (which would still apply even with P5 auto-bids) because of a weak division winner upsetting a higher ranked team in the CCG. The Big Ten knows this all too well with the most recent example of an unranked Northwestern putting a scare into Ohio State in the 2020 Big Ten CCG. In fact, THAT is the specific example that keeps getting brought up in the media as why the CFP expansion committee wanted top 6 conference champs for bids as opposed to P5 auto-bids.
As a result, I believe that the Big Ten has done a 180-degree turn on this issue compared to the start of the CFP era. At that time, they blocked the ACC proposal to eliminate divisions because the Big Ten was legitimately concerned that it was a way for the ACC to entice ND to join that league full-time. I don't believe that the concern is there for the Big Ten any longer and, even if there's still residual concern on that front, it doesn't outweigh the practical consideration that the 12-team playoff is definitely going to provide every incentive for leagues to have their top 2 teams to play in their respective CCGs (which means getting rid of divisions).