No more Leaders and Legends divisions in Big Ten football. Beginning in 2014, it will be East and West. Ohio State will be in the East along with Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State and Rutgers.
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- By realigning its divisions and announcing a coming switch to a nine-game conference schedule, the Big Ten on Sunday officially fixed a recent misstep and then took a page from its past.
Everyone knew it was coming, only needing the final approval of the conference presidents.
Still, it was a big day for the Big Ten.
The division fix, which will go into effect in 2014 when Rutgers and Maryland join the league, gets Michigan and Ohio State in the same division, eliminating the possibility of a potential immediate rematch of the regular season finale in the Big Ten title game, and scrapped the clunky names and supposed competitive balance of the Leaders and Legends divisions for simple, logical geography.
In short, it did what a lot of fans thought should have happened when Nebraska came aboard and the Big Ten first went to divisions in 2011. The league even said it listened to a fan survey the Big Ten Network did in December.
See. It wasn't that hard.
The nine-game conference schedule is a bold but necessary return to 1984, the last time Big Ten teams played nine conference games instead of eight. League athletic directors discussed jumping from eight games to 10 but decided that was too much to ask. But as the league grows to 14 teams, nine games had to happen. Otherwise, the league risked being a conference in name only, with some teams missing each other for too many consecutive years.
In this nine-game setup, which will commence in 2016, each team will play the six other teams in its division and three of the seven teams from the other division. And the schedule will be composed in a way that every team plays every other team at least once in a four-year span.
With the moves, the mistakenly monogrammed 14-team Big Ten will make as much sense as it can given its size. When coupled with the four-team NCAA playoff that will begin in 2014 as well, the wandering, wavering ways of college football in recent years will have led to a setup that should satisfy those looking for competitive, traditional, meaningful Saturdays of college football.
It's a lot of change in one chunk. So here are some points to remember:
The East is Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, Michigan State, Rutgers, Maryland and Indiana. The West is Wisconsin, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Northwestern, Minnesota and Purdue.
Ohio State is currently in the weaker Leaders Division, with only Wisconsin and Penn State as legitimate threats. In the new setup, the East should be stronger than the West. But OSU fans should welcome that – that's more good games each year.
The only cross-division protected rivalry in the entire conference will be Purdue-Indiana. Otherwise, the new divisions save the games that had to be saved.
The Ohio State-Illinois Illibuck series will be played far less often. And the burgeoning Ohio State-Wisconsin rivalry, which was heightened by the current division setup, will evaporate. But Bret Bielema's already gone anyway.
This season will be the last of the current 12-team Leaders and Legends divisions and the last chance, maybe forever, for Ohio State and Michigan to meet in the Big Ten title game. And that's good.
In 2014 and 2015 the 14-team league will still play an eight-game schedule, meaning teams will only play two cross-division games those years.
Starting in 2016, one division will play five conference home games and four conference road games. The other division will play four home games and five road games. The East, including Ohio State, will play the five home games in even years, starting in 2016.
Five conference road games half the time was a bitter pill for a lot of schools to swallow. But it had to be done. What it means is that Ohio State's major nonconference foe will rotate the opposite way of the conference schedule. For instance, Ohio State is scheduled to play at Oklahoma in 2016 and host Oklahoma in 2017. That fits with this schedule setup.
Expect Ohio State to keep that one major nonconference game. In fact, the conference wants every Big Ten team to schedule a major nonconference foe like that.
So, in 2016, Ohio State will have to drop one of the three other scheduled nonconference opponents – Bowling Green, Tulsa and Central Michigan.
Expect that model to be what Ohio State maintains. After the major nonconference foe, the other two nonconference games each year will be at home because the athletic department needs seven home games a year for budget purposes.
What's lost then? Some of the unique games Ohio State has played in the nonconference, like at Browns Stadium against Toledo in 2009, and the game in Baltimore against Navy that will kick off 2014. When 10 of your games are in the Big Ten and a major nonconference foe – five home and five away – those type of games probably have to be sacrificed in the name of home games. But that's OK.
There hasn't been talk for now of divisions in any other sports.
The Michigan-Ohio State game will be enhanced by this setup, rather then potentially lessened by a looming rematch in the conference title game. It's hard to imagine a year when at least one of the two teams won't be in contention for the Big Ten championship game going into the last game of the regular season. Some years, The Game could serve as a de facto semifinal, with the winner headed to the title game. Other years, one team will have a chance to spoil the other's bid for the postseason. Either way, everything great about this game should only get better.