The Shailesh-tival

Note: Someone just pointed out to me that my proposal actually violates NCAA rules.  The NCAA rule for holding a conference championship game is that the conference must be split into 2 divisions of at least 6 teams apiece where all teams will play each other within  each division.  This make my proposal a moot point, but I’m leaving it up as an interesting idea nonetheless.  Here is the actual NCAA rule:

Rule 17.9.5.2 Annual Exemptions. [FBS/FCS] The maximum number of football contests shall exclude the following:

(c) Twelve-Member Conference Championship Game. [FBS/FCS] A conference championship game between division champions of a member conference of 12 or more institutions that is divided into two divisions (of six or more institutions each), each of which conducts round-robin, regular-season competition among the members of that division;

With Nebraska moving to the Big Ten next year, there is a lot of talk about how to restructure the league to add a championship game. The controversy around all of this revolves around the Ohio State – Michigan rivalry. There are a lot of great rivalries in the Big Ten, but that one has pretty much defined its football history, and any sort of proposal will likely impair the historic importance of this regular season match-up.

Most of the divisional proposals follow two general ideas:

1) Keep Michigan and Ohio State in the same division: This option allows the two schools to pretty much maintain their rivalry and the weekend on which its played. The downside is that this division is likely to be much stronger than the opposing division. This is bad for the other four teams in that division and its bad for the Big Ten, who will end up with a few anti-climactic championship games.

2) Put Michigan and Ohio State in seperate divisions: An Ohio State – Michigan rematch in the conference championship game would be epic, but I’m not sure its something the schools would want to go through. This option might also cause ‘The Game’ to be moved from its traditional November date to early to mid October. The league would do this to reduce the impact of teams playing back-to-back games with the same opponent.

There is one more caveat to this plan, and I’m surprised it hasn’t been addressed anywhere else. Putting the two schools in different divisions will force the league to create one ‘dedicated’ opponent from the opposite division. This means each school would play the 5 teams in its division, its dedicated opponent and then rotate the remaining two conference games amongst the 5 teams in the opposite division. Teams would literally go years without playing each other — this hurts conference identity. To the Big Ten’s credit the league reportedly plans to go to 9 conference games as soon as possible, which will alleviate this problem almost completely.

I’m not a big fan of the division system to begin with. Splitting teams into divisions creates three problems. The first is addressed above, where teams in opposite divisions get relatively few opportunities to play each other. The second is that it hurts the conference brand. How often do you hear people talking about the strength of the Big XII south, as opposed to that of the whole conference? Splitting a conference into divisions really just creates two mini-conferences.

The final reason is that creating arbitrary conferences can lead to anti-climactic championships. In 2008, Texas, Texas Tech and Oklahoma all finished with 7-1 conference records, but being in the same division, only one had the opportunity to play Missouri in the conference championship. 4 of the 6 teams in the Big XII south were ranked ahead of Mizzou. Oklahoma eventually played and beat them, 62-21.

When the ACC expanded to twelve teams, they essentially hand picked the divisional alignment to guarantee a Miami – Florida State match-up — which has yet to happen. The romantic notion of a stadium split down the middle with people wearing Maize and Scarlett is very nice, but in the modern era of college football, its not enough to drive a decision like this. Ohio State was uncharacteristically bad during much of the late 90s. Michigan’s recent struggles are almost epic. For that reason, I offer the following solution:

1. Keep the two guaranteed opponents as-is. Amend it only so that Nebraska gets guaranteed games against Iowa and Wisconsin. Remove Iowa and Wisconsin’s guaranteed game to compensate.
2. Play a regular 8- (or 9-) game conference schedule.
3. Play 1 versus 2 in the championship. A lot of times this *WILL* be Ohio State versus Michigan. But sometimes it won’t. And if its not, it’ll be some other team(s) that deserve it that season.

I know the arguments against this. The NFL doesn’t work this way and despite some incredible lopsided conferences in recent past (the AFC recently, the NFC in the 80s/90s), its hasn’t hurt the aura of the Super Bowl. No offense — but the Big Ten championship isn’t the Super Bowl. Plus having 16-teams conferences largely mitigates the chances of a truly horrible match-up. You don’t want to use a model like this in the league that is historically known for its disparity (remember the Big 2 and the Little 8?).

I went through the last ten years of Big Ten play, and here is what the match-ups would’ve been for a championship determined this way:

• 2000: Michigan, Purdue and Northwestern each finished 6-2 in Big Ten play. Since Michigan lost to both other schools, the championship would pit Purdue against Northwestern.
• 2001: 7-1 Illinois would attempt to get revenge on their only loss of the season, against 6-2 Michigan.
• 2002: Ohio State and Iowa each finished 8-0 in Big Ten play, but didn’t play each other. The would finally meet in the Big Ten championship game
• 2003: 7-1 Michigan would rematch 6-2 Ohio State in a chance for OSU to get revenge on the previous week’s loss in Ann Arbor.
• 2004: 7-1 Iowa gets an opportunity to avenge their only loss against 7-1 Michigan.
• 2005: 7-1 Ohio State plays 7-1 Penn State
• 2006: 8-0 Ohio State plays 7-1 Michigan, whose only loss came just the week before against the Buckeyes. A Michigan win puts them back in the National Title hunt.
• 2007: 7-1 Ohio State plays 6-2 Michigan. A Michigan win would knock Ohio State out of the National Championship picture.
• 2008: 7-1 Penn State battles 7-1 Ohio State.
• 2009: 7-1 Ohio State faces 6-2 Iowa

Overall, these are all match-ups I’d like to watch, and they’re all better than the Oklahoma-Mizzou game in 2008.