Dennis Dodd at CBSsports.com believes Ohio State and Michigan should be in opposite divisions. Doug Lesmerises disagrees.
Same division or different divisions? Aligning Ohio State and Michigan in the new Big Ten can be viewed a lot of different ways.Dennis Dodd offered an interesting story on why Ohio State and Michigan should be in opposite divisions when the Big Ten decides how to break up the conference's new 12-team configuration.
Dodd wrote at CBSsports.com, "The league has a unique opportunity. Ohio State and Michigan must be separated when the Big Ten ADs divide the league into two six-team divisions for the 2011 season."
Jim Tressel seemed to lay some groundwork for this possibility with his comments in Chicago last week about the future of the Ohio State-Michigan game and whether it could move from the final game of the regular season.
After bouncing some ideas around with Marcus Hartman at Buckeye Sports Bulletin, it seems to me like the Big Ten would be taking a chance at lessening the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry in almost ANY scenario if they are in separate divisions.
Let's assume, fairly I think, that if the Buckeyes and Wolverines are in separate divisions, they will not play to end the regular season, as Tressel suggested. Risking a rematch in the title game a week later is just too odd.
So, consider these two possibilities:
Example A: Michigan soon returns to its previous from and rises to the top of its division while Ohio State continues its run as the dominant team in the conference and owns its division much of the time. Over the first 10 years of the Big Ten Championship Game, the Wolverines and Buckeyes meet six or seven times, meaning they'll play maybe 16 times in a 10-year period. Anything that isn't an Ohio State-Michigan title game then pales in comparison. Fans outside the two programs tire of seeing the same two teams all the time battle for the title, and even the fans inside the rivalry start wearying a bit of playing each other so much.
The regular season game in the middle of the year doesn't quite fire up the fans the way playing to end the regular season used to. And the championship game is already enough of a big deal in its own right, with a BCS or maybe national title game on the line, that the rivalry itself isn't what matters most.
The Big Ten again gains a reputation as the Big Two and the Little Ten, and its greatest showcase game gets overexposed.
Example B: Michigan does not return to its former glory, or the Wolverines do just as the Buckeyes hit a slump, and Ohio State and Michigan don't meet in the title game nearly as much as everyone expected they would. With Michigan battling Nebraska and Iowa, the Wolverines make just two title games in the first decade of the 12-team league, and in only one of those years do they meet the Buckeyes.
So now, the regular season game is no longer at the end of the year. The teams are not meeting for the title. And the tent pole of each team's season has been sacrificed for what? Yes, Michigan and Ohio State still don't like each other, but without both teams enjoying success, and without the special place in the schedule, the game starts to feel too much like a late October game against Purdue.
When the teams played at the end of the regular season, it didn't matter how good or bad the Wolverines and Buckeyes were - they still took an entire season to build up a new tank of distaste for each other, and the placement of the game at the end of the year helped ensure that it meant something, regardless of the records. Stuck in the middle of the season, it's just a little harder to do that.
Are either of those scenarios impossible to imagine? I don't think so. Are either of those what the conference or either fanbase would want? I don't think so.
So consider option C.
Example C: The Buckeyes and Wolverines are in the same division and continue to play at the end of the regular season. Chances are at least one of them will be involved in the race for the division title, so college football's greatest rivalry is only magnified by what turns into a de facto semifinal game when both teams are good, or the ultimate spoiler opportunity if one team is headed to the title game and the other is out of it.
Sure, there could be seasons when one team has a spot in the title game wrapped up and the Michigan-Ohio State game doesn't matter in that regard. But would anyone ever take for granted an Ohio State-Michigan game at the end of the year, when you've been building to it all season? It certainly would be less likely to be taken for granted than a game in the middle of the season, wouldn't it?
There's almost no scenario here that would lessen the game, and there are several that would take this showdown to an even higher level.
In the new Big Ten, there will be two games that will define the league and draw the most attention - the title game and the Ohio State-Michigan game. Do they really need to be the same thing? Keeping them distinct might be the best way to ensure that they both draw the attention they deserve and don't in any way cancel each other out.